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Every smart person knows you should be “open to discussion”. If there are better ideas than yours, you should learn them and change your mind. If you won’t reconsider your ideas, you’re irrational.
How can you tell which ideas are better in an objective way? I hope I’ll find that out by going through this mini-project.
It’s important to be open to discussion so that your ideas can be questioned and refined, and so you can learn new things. You shouldn’t avoid criticism or innovative new ideas. It’s worth considering if your idea is mistaken or there’s a better idea.
I like the tone of this section. I think it’s hard to replicate this kind of tone in a discussion.
A limit on discussion is irrational if it blocks a path forward.
I think this means that limits on discussion are rational as long as they don’t block paths forward. I like how this gives an objective criteria to whether or not a limit is irrational.
It seems like paths forward helps to solve the problem of keeping your ideas open to criticism in a rational way.
A path forward is a good way that a problem, issue or disagreement can be solved, allowing the discussion to move forward. (The concept even works with self-discussions in your own mind.) They’re ways mistakes can be fixed. They’re ways progress happens and you learn, rather than getting stuck.
How can we tell whether a way forward is good or not? Is it whether it fixes a mistake? What if one person thinks a particular way forward is good, while the other thinks it’s bad?
Paths forward depend not just on your ideas about an issue, but also your methods of thinking. How do you handle discussions? How do you handle disagreements? Are you blocking any ways for mistakes to be found or corrected?
This is an interesting aspect of Paths Forward that I hadn’t thought enough about before. I can definitely think of times when I’ve gotten frustrated or defensive during a discussion. I think having a debate policy could help me remain objective when I’m dealing with an idea that I find frustrating or threatening.
Paths forward are individual. You should personally have paths forward for all of your ideas, and take responsibility for their quality.
I’d like to keep a list of ideas that I endorse. Ideally, with reference links which explain the ideas in more detail. I think the list of ideas that I would endorse is a lot smaller than it used to be. Listing them all with references shouldn’t be too impractical. I wouldn’t list every idea that I believe in, just the ideas that I thought needed to be spread. For example, I believe that humans can do math, but I wouldn’t list and endorse that idea because it doesn’t need any help spreading.
There are also bad paths forward. For example, if you try to think of everything yourself, that could theoretically succeed. You might figure everything out yourself. But that isn’t realistic, and would be unnecessarily difficult. The technical possibility that it could work doesn’t make it rational.
I find the idea of a bad path forward confusing. Earlier, it said:
A path forward is a good way that a problem, issue or disagreement can be solved, allowing the discussion to move forward.
If a path forward is a good way to solve a problem, does it make sense to say we could have a bad path forward? How can it be both good and bad? I think that the example of trying to think of everything yourself is not a path forward. I don’t think it’s a bad path forward.
Also, earlier the article said:
A limit on discussion is irrational if it blocks a path forward.
It doesn’t say the limit is irrational only if it blocks a good path forward. Blocking a bad path forward would still be blocking a path forward. So is blocking a bad path forward irrational?
It’s important to always keep a good path forward.
I feel like this is redundant? The word good was already used in the path forward definition:
A path forward is a good way that a problem, issue or disagreement can be solved, allowing the discussion to move forward.
If we replace the phrase path forward with good way that a problem, issue, or disagreement can be solved, then good path forward becomes good good way that a problem, issue or disagreement can be solved.
If someone has a point which you haven’t answered, and you refuse to listen for any reason, then you’re irrational.
I like this.
(note that I haven’t gone through the whole article. I will reply with another comment as I continue to read through it)