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query comments on Six Ways To Get Along With People Who Are Totally Wrong* - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (43)
Occasionally I wonder at how insulated and feeling-safe has the West become.
Your advice is excellent advice for the situation where the disagreement doesn't matter. An amicable disagreement between gentlemen about which wine goes best with roast partridge. At worst everyone will just order his own bottle.
That is not always the case. Sometimes when you lose a dispute -- especially a political dispute -- consequences can be very dire. People with guns might come to kill you and your family.
I think your critique of this being only for disagreements that don't matter is too strong, and your examples miss the context of the article.
This is not a suggested resolution procedure for all humans in all states of disagreement; this is a set of techniques for when you already have and want to maintain some level of cooperative relationship with a person, but find yourself in a disagreement over something. Suggestion 5 above is specifically about disengaging from disagreements that "don't matter", and the rest are potentially useful even if it's a disagreement over something important.
So it's just unrolling the basic "don't be an asshole, be polite instead" advice?
I don't know what you mean, but I think I see a lot of people "being polite" but failing at one of these when it would be really useful for them.
For example, you can be polite while internally becoming more suspicious and angry at the other person (#3 and #4) which starts coming out in body language and the direction of conversation. Eventually you politely end the conversation in a bad mood and thinking the other person is a jerk, when you could've accomplished a lot more with a different internal response.
Maybe the other person is a jerk and is on an obnoxious power trip at your expense. If you don't get suspicious and (internally) angry you're just setting yourself up as a victim.
Generic advice doesn't apply everywhere. A default "nod and slowly back away" response isn't bad but is not always useful.
Agreed on the 2nd paragraph.
Optimally, you'd be have an understanding of the options available, how you work internally, and how other people respond so you could choose the appropriate level of anger, etc. Thus it's better to explore suggestions and see how they work than to naively apply them in all situations.