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Staying more present in online debates


LovePrevails

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For those of you who occasionally still get sucked in here is a perspective and a device it would be interesting to hear you experiment with and let me know how it works for you.

 

Typically in online debates I can get quite impatient with dunning-kruger effect every day suspects because deep down part of me is thinking: "I know a lot more about this stuff than you do - and quite frankly you know a lot less than you think you do, so to be honest you should just stfu except to ask me some questions so that I can share what I know with you and you can get a f&%king education. I've been studying this s&%t for 10 years and you have some dumb ideas you picked up from smart people who didn't really know what they were talking about but made it sounds good."

 

(I'm sure you have had a similar experience at some point.)

 

A better way is just to remain curious and observe other peoples world-view so that you can update it but that takes a lot of willpower if you are impatient with ignorance as I have noticed many people are.

 

How to be more present in online debates is say what you want to say out loud first (the way I had the vulnerability to do above) in literally whatever fashion you would like to say it. Let your jackals out to play!

Then explain your point nicely. 

You win more flies with honey than vinegar.

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ask me some questions so that I can share what I know with you and you can get a f&%king education.

 

Working for free is such a drag. I used to have a similar experience with arguments, but eventually I decided I wasn't going to teach for free. If I manage to change a person's perspective is to make them doubt themselves, but I'm not a search engine.

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I was looking into debate techniques today and one skill competitive debaters are required to use is a switch-side debate. The idea is that it's really easy to argue for something you know a lot about and are really passionate about, but not so much the opposite. Not really practical in the real world I realize but one of the things they mentioned that stuck with me was it helped people be more empathic since the debater had argued similar points in the past and it helped them to better see where the other person was coming from. Another benefit I could see is it would help you to find and/or close up holes in your argument.

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