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TheOtherDave comments on According to Dale Carnegie, You Can't Win an Argument—and He Has a Point - LessWrong
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I am often described as applying the Socratic method, and I understand why, and I don't strictly speaking disagree... but I find the phrase "Socratic method" problematically ambiguous between Vaniver's usage and Plato's. In Plato's dialogs, what Socrates is mostly trying to lead his interlocutor into a contradiction, thereby demonstrating that the man is in fact ignorant. I do that sometimes, but what I'm usually trying to do is apply Miller's Law.
I agree that this ambiguity exists, and dislike that it exists. Generally, when there's an ambiguity between ancient use and modern use, I go with the modern use, because moderns read what I write much more than ancients do. The phrase seems to have broadened to "lead by questioning," not necessarily to a contradiction, which even then isn't quite right, because I often want to lead them to a clear description of what they think, not someplace I've decided on. I probably ought to just call it "gentle questioning."
(For example, I think "man" was a beautifully inclusive word- it originally meant "mind," and so meant basically "all sapient beings," and so things like "one giant leap for mankind" also includes any of our robotic descendants, say- but that was at a time when "male adult" was "wer" and "female adult" was "wif," and now that both of those are out of style "man" mostly means "male adult.")
Absolutely agreed on all counts, but I find that the ancient (and currently mostly negative) usage of "Socratic method" is still alive enough in my social circle that it's worth taking into consideration.
Yes, well this certainly isn't what I meant so it's good that you brought this up. Miller's law describes you better. I suspect Socratic method has invaded common language to the point it has lost some of its original meaning.
Absolutely. As I say, I find the term ambiguous, but I don't disagree with the claim.
That said, I have often run into the problem of people getting extremely anxious when asked questions that don't quite fit into their script of how the conversation is supposed to go. Sometimes that's just because their beliefs are fragile and rigidly held, but sometimes it seems more that they're afraid I'm going to try to make them look/feel stupid. So it's something I try to stay aware of.
EDIT: And I just noticed your edit, and was amused.