These tips seem designed for cases where everyone has read them and everyone wants to reach the truth. An important case, certainly, and what we’re trying (probably pretty successfully) to achieve here.
I can’t help suspecting that an argument containing someone like this and someone arguing to win will either go nowhere or conclude whatever the arguer-to-win went in thinking. Clearly no good.
Any ideas how to deal with that (rather common) case?
I actually tried pretty hard to teach an intelligent person off the street to argue productively with this post. (Agonized over the wording a fair amount, started with simple techniques and then discussed advanced ones, made no assumptions about prior knowledge, etc.) So, share this prior to your argument?
Clearly, your argument’s productivity will be bounded if one participant is totally intransigent. So the best you can do in that case is collect evidence from the intransigent participant and move on.
These tips seem designed for cases where everyone has read them and everyone wants to reach the truth. An important case, certainly, and what we’re trying (probably pretty successfully) to achieve here.
I can’t help suspecting that an argument containing someone like this and someone arguing to win will either go nowhere or conclude whatever the arguer-to-win went in thinking. Clearly no good.
Any ideas how to deal with that (rather common) case?
One option is to spend less time with people who argue to win, and more time with people who argue to reach truth.
I actually tried pretty hard to teach an intelligent person off the street to argue productively with this post. (Agonized over the wording a fair amount, started with simple techniques and then discussed advanced ones, made no assumptions about prior knowledge, etc.) So, share this prior to your argument?
Clearly, your argument’s productivity will be bounded if one participant is totally intransigent. So the best you can do in that case is collect evidence from the intransigent participant and move on.