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I go into arguments with the goal of generating a diff of the logic trees in the participant's brains. In the best case, you find your assumptions are the same

I go into arguments with the goal of generating a diff of the logic trees in the participant's brains. In the best case, you find your assumptions are the same but that your reasoning differs -- these are often tractable. In the worst case, you find that you have irreconcilable fundamental assumptions. But even in such cases, the act of unveiling your assumptions allows you to gracefully "agree to disagree."

smabie 6y ago
Exactly. Logic is universal and self-evident, so the point of any argument is to dig into which fundamental assumptions you disagree about. And once you've reached this point, the argument is over. Though, it's possible to keep arguing after by challenging the internal consistency of the other person's assumptions. You can often win arguments by demonstrating that their set of assumptions leads to a illogical and contradictory result, or you can show how their assumptions prove something that they don't agree with.
- andi999 6y ago
  I agree by using the socratic method you can prove anybody wrong, but I believe there is no value in it.
crispyambulance 6y ago
"Diffing" on logic trees?? You are thinking of a very specific scenario of debate where knowledge is merely a set of observable/observed facts and everything in the discussion is fully described, strictly bounded and available for scrutiny. In such a "sandbox" of logical positivism, sure, one can see a debate as an unfolding of consequences from logical primitives. That's very far from what most actual real-world debates are like. There's typically a profound lack of facts, knowledge and experience. Deciding something like "how to proceed" with a business decision involves dabbling in a lot of uncertainty, subjectivity and emotional baggage from both sides. Subjectivity is often a dirty word amongst software developers but, outside of stackoverflow.com, it's fundamental to human experience and argument.

smabie 6y ago

Exactly. Logic is universal and self-evident, so the point of any argument is to dig into which fundamental assumptions you disagree about. And once you've reached this point, the argument is over. Though, it's possible to keep arguing after by challenging the internal consistency of the other person's assumptions. You can often win arguments by demonstrating that their set of assumptions leads to a illogical and contradictory result, or you can show how their assumptions prove something that they don't agree with.

andi999 6y ago
I agree by using the socratic method you can prove anybody wrong, but I believe there is no value in it.

crispyambulance 6y ago

"Diffing" on logic trees?? You are thinking of a very specific scenario of debate where knowledge is merely a set of observable/observed facts and everything in the discussion is fully described, strictly bounded and available for scrutiny. In such a "sandbox" of logical positivism, sure, one can see a debate as an unfolding of consequences from logical primitives. That's very far from what most actual real-world debates are like. There's typically a profound lack of facts, knowledge and experience. Deciding something like "how to proceed" with a business decision involves dabbling in a lot of uncertainty, subjectivity and emotional baggage from both sides. Subjectivity is often a dirty word amongst software developers but, outside of stackoverflow.com, it's fundamental to human experience and argument.