Beginner's Guide to Arguing Constructively

> Debates about personal identity, like race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, can easily become inflammatory. When people feel that something so close to them is in question, they often lose sight of reason and argue instead from an emotional perspective.

I think this document does a good job describing ways that people who want to can have a fact-based, clarifying discussion. But in cases where I and my interlocutor both have the curiosity, openness of mind and desire to come to a better understanding ... I don't think we need this document to have a productive debate, and it might not even feel like a debate, but rather a conversation.

People have vitriolic debates because they feel threatened, marginalized, attacked -- and then their goal is to defend themselves. We have ugly fights because we don't want a richer understanding in that moment. And for issues in which no one feels at risk, I think people tend to have either useful conversations, or none at all due to lack of interest.

If a colleague and I, neither of whom have put a lot of work into any specific approach to building compilers for functional languages enter into a conversation about the relative merits of compiling with continuations versus administrative normal form, either we can have a good nerdy time, or one of us leaves bored.

If I, a renter in a rent-controlled apartment, and a family member who is a landlord have a conversation about rent control, property taxes, the mortgage interest deduction, and the policies which have benefitted each of us, we can both feel attacked and defensive even if neither actively wishes the other ill, even though both of those groupings are potentially temporary states which apply to us. The goal becomes not just to better understand, but to walk away feeling ok about your life. Am I a parasite for paying below market rate? Is he a villain for being subsidized by his less wealthy tenants? Once the stakes involve how you live your life, or how you view yourself, it's hard to keep wanting it to be a collaborative and open-minded exploration.

1. I don't really think any of the tips and strategies in this article are helpful unless both (or all) parties go in to it with this same mindset. Which means that, for example, I believe it is simply impossible to have these kind of "constructive arguments" on, say, Twitter, for example. One of the things I like most about HN is the guidelines are clear about the goals of the forums, and while of course they are not always followed (I've certainly not always followed them), they are very helpful to help recenter debates, and I think there are a lot of helpful commenters that try to get things back on track if they go off the rails (thank you, dang).

2. > When people feel that something so close to them is in question, they often lose sight of reason and argue instead from an emotional perspective.

This may sound condescending, and it's really not meant to be as I also used to believe this, but I have come to the realization over the years that this mindset is woefully naive and immature. As someone who identifies as pretty "Spock-ian" in nature, it took me a long time (and years of therapy) to realize that everyone argues from an emotional perspective. It's what it means to be human. The entire purpose of emotions is that they are they only place where human motivation comes from. Trying to separate "logic" vs. "emotion" when dealing with humans is a fools' game in my opinion.

This makes me sad because I agree. And yet, in the USA, your right-wing uncle probably isn't that interested in the truth. And the new generation of identity-politics liberals are the generation who have grown up taught in an academic world infested with post-modernism; they are also less interested in truth, but to their credit, very interested in improving the world. One would hope the two would coincide, but honestly, it's not looking like it's going to work out that way.

You kind of have to. If you were not emotionally invested in some way, you wouldn’t be arguing.