I once wrote a very similar list, composed of questions to ask yourself when in an argument. I don’t remember most of it, but my favorite one was:
This is yet another situation where my favorite question is “What do I want?” Being rational is the easy part—if and when I pull ’have an epistemologically rational conversation” goal into my self awareness. On the other hand if realize that social factors are more important to me I am a lot better at explicitly being social rather than just letting social signaling biases corrupt my epistemic reasoning while I pretend to be defending Truth.
This is yet another situation where my favorite question is “What do I want?”
That seems sensible—and, actually, stating this explicitly might help avoid some types of conflict. When “I want to be entertained by having a nitpicky argument” meets “I want to convince you because I’m passionate about this,” someone’s going to wind up unhappy.
This is yet another situation where my favorite question is “What do I want?” Being rational is the easy part—if and when I pull ’have an epistemologically rational conversation” goal into my self awareness. On the other hand if realize that social factors are more important to me I am a lot better at explicitly being social rather than just letting social signaling biases corrupt my epistemic reasoning while I pretend to be defending Truth.
That seems sensible—and, actually, stating this explicitly might help avoid some types of conflict. When “I want to be entertained by having a nitpicky argument” meets “I want to convince you because I’m passionate about this,” someone’s going to wind up unhappy.