Fernando Lasman

well, i think practicality is part of morality, because it is a value people hold that seems to be inherent to human life. if you think about it, survival depends on how well we do things, thus practicality emerges as a value from our necessity to survive. so one could say people aren't acting morally if they're not thinking through everything they can, and vice versa. anyway, you're right. i agree with you that people are mostly unaware of, or don't care about going through moral implications when making decisions, which goes against the practicality value. i will try to express my point differently: i think that to change peoples minds we should rather approach them in practical terms than abstract ones, since, to me, people seem to be less attracted to abstraction (morality) than practicality (how to get things done) simply because keeping debates within an objective/practical perspective seems more productive and exciting, on one hand. on the other hand it's hard for anybody to question their own morals, it is too aggressive and people avoid this subject most of times. also if we intend to change society, which is a practical matter, it seems obvious we should address the problem mostly in practical terms, as we would with any other practical matter, and expend less energy in abstract conversation. but i see the contrary in most debates. there's too much effort put in abstraction (even if it's based on a practical premise , like discussing how things would be done in some future scenario) and this drifts away from our main objective, which is to actually act upon the present situation. that's my general feeling for most of the political discussion.

yes i agree, and that just helps to make my point that knowing how to communicate better is more important than the actual ideas. to know how people's minds are structured will help on how to communicate with them. well, he meant, i think ( and that's what's tricky about debates because most of times people just assume they understand what the other people are saying, and don't try to ensure themselves), that a reaction of foreign powers against a libertarian movement would take place, and i think that's true. he wasn't saying that people would accept it. the point was that foreign powers would organize themselves to attack such a movement. and that has historical backing, you know, spanish revolution (1938-39) to cite one moment that happend. yes that's exactly what i mean. and i think that having a technical point of view of the debate helps you to avoid these impulses, and also help the other person if you can keep showing where the debate is going to them. basicaly that would be a guiding tool for the debaters. take your case: it would be much more dificult to your father to shift subjects if you constantly showed him that you were aware of this, thus not being manipulated. and maybe it would put some pressure on him to be coherent, otherwise he would just be embarassing himself in front of you. can you see what i mean? i think the point here realy is that people are more practical than moral. they won't be openly imoral but that is merely because it's not practical. this is a generalization of course, but when it comes to decision making in think people account more for practical eficiency than morals. from that point of view most effort made to moralize people is less effective in changing society than practical propositions. please note now that we have commented about a few different topics that came from my initial proposition of introducing debate analysis whithin debates themselves in order to organize them better. (this is an example)

i was having a conversation with some guys about the anarchist principles and activism and we came to debate about how could social organization be any different. well, first we were talking about why it should change and what would we want to see. but then we were talking about what we'd like to see based on what is possible or not to happen. we changed the direction from philosophical priciples to practical matters. so i realized that often people don't follow a very straight line when debating (informally), and end up going through a variety of subjects without much objectivity, not even realizing they are doing so for that matter, which is not very productive. anyway, I'm bringing this up because i think analysing debate itself is very illuminating because we can have clear view of where its heading. so we should address it directly. my main point: if we want to have good communication we have to be aware of how it's happening (to say, of course, we must study it). so, while we're at it, let's take the situation above. did you ever have simmilar experiences? do you think this change of subject in a debate is frequent? what makes a good debate and a bad one? P.S.: 1- i think that changing peoples minds relies much more on how we try to do it than the actual content our ideas 2- one of the guys said something like other countries wouldn't tolerate a stateless society, people wouldn't let that happen and i wasn't very sure how to respond to that. it's an abstraction of course (and i think it's a very misleading direction to take) but if you could help me out here with some posts/links suggestions so I can study that, i'd appreciate it

yes, but the thing is it's objective is not an explanation of reasoning itself, it just gives it an overview.. I wanted to say that educate and train people to be "high level" critics/thinkers is as essential to social change as propagating philosophy or discussing it. it seems to me that this fact is not very much addressed, even though it's so simple and so important. so i thought it was necessary to start a topic specifically addressing this matter isn't it helpful knowing this things? don't these sources give some insight on how to think using these "formal" content? i personaly find it helpful to study these things because you kinda know what to look out for... anyways, your statement seems weird to me because it sounds like "most sources don't teach you math, they teach you numbers" and we all know that learning math implies learning numbers

Hey I started a topic asking about whether Stefan had done any work on reasoning itself, argumentation etc. And since I've come across this related material I thought it would be nice to share it with the community. I've found it to be very, very helpful and I think we should give much more importance to how we reason, if we want to be good social critics/organizers.. If we want to educate and mobilize others, first we must do it to ourselves (the best we can) .. So if you have any related material or suggestion on thinking "improvement" please share it with us! And, of course, share these links too because we need to help EVERYBODY to be a better thinker! -foundation for critical thinking website - http://www.criticalthinking.org/ youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpyvWfo9diMIMi_wX5LUbSQ -website that "teaches" critical thinking http://www.criticalthinkeracademy.com/ -Very instructive channel https://www.youtube.com/user/PhilosophyFreak -very broad and detailled series of classes on critical thinking, taught at the Fayetteville State University I hope you enjoy and that we start a trend on this educational subject!

hey man, thanks a lot! I will catch up with the debates here after I finish my workout in the argumentation gym hahah!

i went on through the videos and podcasts and cant find something adressing specificaly logics and argumentation. i mean, some material on the actual study of logics and reasoning, you know, like what's an argument, a statement, a fallacy, what kinds of it are there and so on.. could you help me? i'm new here so i'm still kinda lost.. thanks!