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buybuydandavis comments on [LINK] Two Modes of Discourse: Taking everything personally v. debate as sport - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Vaniver 10 December 2012 07:46AM

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Comment author: bogus 11 December 2012 10:18:48PM *  2 points [-]

People swapping sides on an issue in a debate team setting seems natural, but people swapping sides in an anti-offensive discussion seems rare.

Unfortunately, "people swapping sides" basically never happens in highly factionalized debates: at some point, the adversarial mode degrades into "debate as war/struggle", with no redeeming sportmanship. I think this is something that the sensitivity mode might be able to guard against. Even "taking offense" is not wholly unproductive after all: we should keep in mind that there are many issues that people physically fight over. Even leaving the issue of shared notions/values aside, the sensitivity mode seems to be much more open to "political" mitigation efforts such as mediation, compromise and conflict de-escalation.