A third prong could be playing “philosophical bomb squad”, which means permanently defusing landmines by supplying satisfactory nonconfusing explanations of things without causing too many explosions in the process. Needless to say, this is quite hard. I think we do a pretty good job of it here at LW, but for topics and people not yet defused, avoid and abort.
I suspect this is best to do before the “landmine” (which I read as being similar to a factional disagreement, correct me if I’m wrong) gets set off… that is, try to explain away the landmine before it’s been triggered or the person you’ve talked to has expressed any kind of opinion.
Yes. I was actually thinking of this as a project on its own. Separate from any given operation, it’s a good idea to clear the field of landmines. Trying to do it as part of some other conversation is just begging to set something off and destroy the conversation, not just the minesweeping attempt.
For me, reading LW is like removing the landmines. Many articles are essentially: “if you read or hear this, don’t automatically react this way, because that’s wrong”.
The problem is, when there are hundreds of landmines, you need to remove hundreds of them. Even if you know exactly in advance where your path will go, and you only clean landmines in the path, there is still at least a dozen of them. And all this explaining takes time. So in order to get some explanation safely across, you first need to educate the person for a while. Which feels like manipulation. And cannot be done when time is short.
I suspect this is best to do before the “landmine” (which I read as being similar to a factional disagreement, correct me if I’m wrong) gets set off… that is, try to explain away the landmine before it’s been triggered or the person you’ve talked to has expressed any kind of opinion.
Yes. I was actually thinking of this as a project on its own. Separate from any given operation, it’s a good idea to clear the field of landmines. Trying to do it as part of some other conversation is just begging to set something off and destroy the conversation, not just the minesweeping attempt.
For me, reading LW is like removing the landmines. Many articles are essentially: “if you read or hear this, don’t automatically react this way, because that’s wrong”.
The problem is, when there are hundreds of landmines, you need to remove hundreds of them. Even if you know exactly in advance where your path will go, and you only clean landmines in the path, there is still at least a dozen of them. And all this explaining takes time. So in order to get some explanation safely across, you first need to educate the person for a while. Which feels like manipulation. And cannot be done when time is short.