A cheatsheet on Discourse.
The three gates of speech: Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates.
- At the first gate, ask yourself, is it true.
- At the second gate ask, is it necessary.
- At the third gate ask, is it kind.
You should attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."
—Rapoport's First Rule
How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
—Kevin Kelly
Kings speak for the realm, governors for the state, popes for the church. Indeed, the titled, as titled, cannot speak with anyone.
—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
The arguments rankings are taken from Scott Alexander, and the responses rankings are taken from Paul Graham. This page originally written and collected by Devine Lu Linvega
arguments
- Ad baculum: Argument relying on an appeal to fear or a threat.
- Ad ignorantiam: Argument relying on people's ignorance.
- Ad populum: Argument relying on sentimental weakness.
- Ad verecundiam: Argument relying on the the words of an "expert", or authority.
- Ex silentio: Argument relying on ignorance.
- Ex nihilo: An argument that bears no relation to the previous topic of discussion.
- Non sequitur: An inference that does not follow from established premises or evidence.
responses
- Akrasia: State of acting against one's better judgment.
- Connotation: Emotional association with a word.
- Intransigence: Refusal to change one's views or to agree about something.
- Inferential distance: Gap between the background knowledge and epistemology of a person trying to explain an idea, and the background knowledge and epistemology of the person trying to understand it.
- Straw man: Creating a false or made up scenario and then attacking it. Painting your opponent with false colors only deflects the purpose of the argument.
- Steel man: To steelman is to address the strongest possible variant or the most charitable interpretation of an idea, rather than the most available phrasings.
- Red herring: A diversion from the active topic.
- Rationalization: Starts from a conclusion, and then works backward to arrive at arguments apparently favouring that conclusion. Rationalization argues for a side already selected.
- Dogpiling: A disagreement wherein one person says something wrong or offensive, and a large number of people comment in response to tell them how wrong they are, and continue to disparage the original commenter beyond any reasonable time limit.
- Grandstanding: An action that is intended to make people notice and admire you, behaving in a way that makes people pay attention to you instead of thinking about more important matters.
- Whataboutism: An attempt to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument.
beliefs
- Belief: The mental state in which an individual holds a proposition to be true.
- Priors: The beliefs an agent holds regarding a fact, hypothesis or consequence, before being presented with evidence.
- Alief: An independent source of emotional reaction which can coexist with a contradictory belief. Example The fear felt when a monster jumps out of the darkness in a scary movie is based on the alief that the monster is about to attack you, even though you believe that it cannot.
- Proper belief: Requires observations, gets updated upon encountering new evidence, and provides practical benefit in anticipated experience.
- Improper belief: Is a belief that isn't concerned with describing the territory. Note that the fact that a belief just happens to be true doesn't mean you're right to have it. If you buy a lottery ticket, certain that it's a winning ticket (for no reason), and it happens to be, believing that was still a mistake.
- Belief in belief: Where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it. Were you to really believe and not just believe in belief, the consequences of error would be much more severe. When someone makes up excuses in advance, it would seem to require that belief, and belief in belief, have become unsynchronized.
- A Priori: Knowledge which we can be sure of without any empirical evidence(evidence from our senses). So, knowledge that you could realize if you were just a mind floating in a void unconnected to a body.