Comment on Change Contexts to Improve Arguments

Tue, 08 Jul 2014 19:15:16 GMT

Well, in my experience, we don't all arrive at consensus, just because we start by liking each other more. This was the discussion where one of my friends said that disagreeing with Eich's resignation was the moral equivalent of endorsing genocide against gays (for a variety of slippery slope reasons that I don't feel the need to disentangle).

The main difference, as far as I could tell, is that we all heard his reasoning, rather than all jumping in right after his assertion, and got a better idea of the reasons of his belief and then could decide what arguments to marshal (or whether we wanted to let the most inflammatory statement dominate the topics we covered at all).

Basically, think of changing contexts as all along a spectrum. Probably it's a bad idea to have a discussion while pleasantly tipsy in a spa. And also a bad idea to have it while quickly tabbing back and forth between facebook and your work and hiding windows from your boss. My main point isn't that "Cookies" is always the right context, but that it's often worth not staying in the venue where your argument started.

Personally, I find that people are more likely to show me the soft underbelly of their beliefs if they're relaxed and in a situation where it's clearer I care about them (and easier for me to do the same thing). So I like creating contexts of warmth and trust, because it often means people are sharing their beliefs with me, excited to show me how they work, rather than just looking for weak points in mine. (and vice versa).

Discuss