Difference between dialogue, discussion, and debate

breck 2021-08-17 21:45:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My stove has many backburners.

On one of those backburners is an idea for a new restricted grammar that would force constructive debate.

Free form natural language text would be an error and not submittable. In other words, an automod programmed via a grammar.

You could only post things that would flush out the complexity and numeric tree of the issue at hand. So perhaps links, numbers, tables, simulations, et cetera. Perhaps the strictness of the grammar could increase with some indicator of the flaminess of the debate.

I think this could be a fun project. I have not taken a stab at it yet and would be interested in any prior art.

https://github.com/treenotation/research/issues/4

bwestergard 2021-08-17 22:19:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There is quite a lot of prior art. A good place to start would be by looking into the "Vienna Circle" of philosophers.

HPsquared 2021-08-17 22:25:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

One could restrict unparliamentary language:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unparliamentary_language

10000truths 2021-08-18 01:07:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Forcing people to use the term “terminological inexactitude” in lieu of “bullshit” just results in the term being used as a new synonym for “bullshit”. Don’t underestimate people’s creativity in evolving their language around whatever restrictions you place, e.g. people bypassing censors by using $ instead of s, or spamming the crouch button on a player’s corpse in an FPS game without saying a word, or spamming “What a save” as an insult in Rocket League, etc.

breck 2021-08-17 22:50:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ooh thank you. "Parliament" is also a good name for a new computer language.

loceng 2021-08-17 22:55:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Seems like gatekeeping and suppression has successfully made its way into our government discourse - preventing calling out people for lying being frowned upon is bullshit.

pc86 2021-08-18 00:01:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It didn't "make its way" anywhere, civility (insofar as parliamentary language, anyway) has been there since the very beginning.

AndrewDucker 2021-08-18 08:20:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Which merely makes it possible to lie in a civil manner, while not being able to point out the lie.

xtiansimon 2021-08-18 11:44:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

(“Who’s on first. What’s on second. I don’t know is on third.” + Liars Paradox)

Third base!

xcambar 2021-08-17 21:27:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

We must give credit to the aurhors for using silence as a metrics to determine which method of communication you're participating in / witnessing.

This is subtle and very enlightening.

Listening to and understanding the silence is very valuable to read the situation, understand the intentions of the participants and use it to redirect/reframe it.

I had never read anything about that worded explicitly and I'm glad I found this article on HN today.

satisfice 2021-08-17 21:50:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This does not frame debate effectively. Debate is a process of testing ideas, it is not necessarily competitive. What characterizes debate is your purpose (to discover problems with ideas) not your tactics.

dr_dshiv 2021-08-17 21:16:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What about dialectic or discourse?

throwawaysea 2021-08-17 21:35:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I love how concisely this frames the nuanced differences between these terms.

Also, tangentially related, a recent discussion titled "Against Persuasion": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27980578