Bits

Discourse

How to argue with reasonable people, drawing on Carl Rogers, Karl Popper, Anatol Rapoport, and Daniel Dennett. Not everyone is reasonable. Someone committed to pseudoscience may not be open to discussion at all; for those cases skip to the second section.

Do not proceed until all sides agree on three things:
1. An appropriate time and place for the exchange.
2. Readiness to tolerate criticism.
3. The freedom to pause or end the debate at any time.
Follow these guidelines:
1. Listen attentively and make the other side feel understood.
2. Restate their position so clearly that they might say, “Thanks, I wish I had said it like that.” That is Dennett’s test.
3. Be humble and ask honest questions to seek understanding.
4. Talk things over rationally, preferably using science.
5. Take seriously the idea that you could be wrong and they could be right.
6. Remember that agreement is comparatively unimportant, since both sides could easily be mistaken, as Popper held.
Repeat until any party pauses or ends the exchange under step 1.

Peter Boghossian and James A. Lindsay wrote How to Have Impossible Conversations in 2019, the source of most of these techniques. They rest on older and better documented practice: motivational interviewing, the Socratic method, street epistemology, and Rapoport’s rules. A brief and incomplete mnemonic:

Model it. Be and do what you want them to do. Admit ignorance.
Watch words. Be careful, and understand their definitions.
Ask questions. Calibrated, open-ended how and what questions that do not lead to a simple yes or no.
Acknowledge extremists on your own side to build a bridge across the moral divide, with concessions such as “some on my side are fanatics who should be arrested” or “looters are destructive and need to be stopped.” Do not expect reciprocation; build trust. Treat their side charitably.
Do not blame. Focus on contribution.
Focus on epistemology. How do they know what they claim to know?
Learn what makes someone closed-minded.