I’d go with “I don’t think this conversation is helping us ________” (eg, come up with solutions, figure out what to do next, understand why we really disagree). It opens the door to suggest meta-level changes to how you’re interacting without 1) accusing them, 2) suggesting that they’re the only one who should change, or 3) inviting arguments about their intentions or internal state. It might also help reorient the conversation from a small-scale win/lose frame towards a broader shared goal of accomplishing something. Finally, it allows you to suggest specific changes to make the conversation more truth-seeking while also addressing whatever may be motivating them to not be truth-seeking (eg, fearing that if they “lose” then their needs won’t get met, perceiving you as trying to pull status on them, trying to preserve their image for an external audience).
If you’re having a debate that’s mostly for an external audience, then maybe you should just call out that the liar is lying. If you’re trying to work with them, then it’s probably better to try to figure out what aspect of the conversation is motivating them to lie and trying to incentivise telling the truth instead. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in their head; you’re not going to have a productive conversation anyway.
I’d go with “I don’t think this conversation is helping us ________”
I think this can be fine, especially if in a context where you know the person well and you are working together on something explicitly (e.g. coworker), but I think this often won’t work in context where you don’t know the person well or that are more adversarial.
If you’re having a debate that’s mostly for an external audience, then maybe you should just call out that the liar is lying.
Sometimes you should be I think its totally possible you shouldn’t (and I think you should have a very high bar for doing so).
If you’re trying to work with them, then it’s probably better to try to figure out what aspect of the conversation is motivating them to lie and trying to incentivise telling the truth instead. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in their head; you’re not going to have a productive conversation anyway.
This will obviously depend on the situation, but I think its totally possible that you can have a productive conversation even when someone is lying, you don’t call them out, and you can’t motivate them to tell the truth. It just depends what counts as “productive” from your perspective. That should depend primarily on your goals for the conversation, not some cosmic principle about “truth-seeking”. If I’m trying to buy a car and the salesperson lies to me about how the one I’m looking at is surely going to be sold today, I can just keep that to myself and use my knowledge to my own advantage, I don’t have to try to make the salesperson more honest.
I’d go with “I don’t think this conversation is helping us ________” (eg, come up with solutions, figure out what to do next, understand why we really disagree). It opens the door to suggest meta-level changes to how you’re interacting without 1) accusing them, 2) suggesting that they’re the only one who should change, or 3) inviting arguments about their intentions or internal state. It might also help reorient the conversation from a small-scale win/lose frame towards a broader shared goal of accomplishing something. Finally, it allows you to suggest specific changes to make the conversation more truth-seeking while also addressing whatever may be motivating them to not be truth-seeking (eg, fearing that if they “lose” then their needs won’t get met, perceiving you as trying to pull status on them, trying to preserve their image for an external audience).
If you’re having a debate that’s mostly for an external audience, then maybe you should just call out that the liar is lying. If you’re trying to work with them, then it’s probably better to try to figure out what aspect of the conversation is motivating them to lie and trying to incentivise telling the truth instead. If you can’t do that then it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in their head; you’re not going to have a productive conversation anyway.
I think this can be fine, especially if in a context where you know the person well and you are working together on something explicitly (e.g. coworker), but I think this often won’t work in context where you don’t know the person well or that are more adversarial.
Sometimes you should be I think its totally possible you shouldn’t (and I think you should have a very high bar for doing so).
This will obviously depend on the situation, but I think its totally possible that you can have a productive conversation even when someone is lying, you don’t call them out, and you can’t motivate them to tell the truth. It just depends what counts as “productive” from your perspective. That should depend primarily on your goals for the conversation, not some cosmic principle about “truth-seeking”. If I’m trying to buy a car and the salesperson lies to me about how the one I’m looking at is surely going to be sold today, I can just keep that to myself and use my knowledge to my own advantage, I don’t have to try to make the salesperson more honest.