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Did this get posted in here? The Ten Commandments of Rational Debat
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Author: u/Limro *
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Score: 2
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Created: 2015-03-09T21:45:26
Post:
Comments:
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+4] Champion of Justice and Reason (an hour later)
Lol.
They forgot a rule or two.
Rule 11: Thou shall not continue the debate after there are no supporting arguments left to make that have not already been stated clearly. (don't waste others' time)
Rule 12: Thou shall clearly state your arguments as coherent, comprehensible, specific, testable hypotheses. (must be falsifiable to be debatable)
It seems unlikely that they'd be able to come up with ALL the rules of rational debate AND that they just happen to be the same number of rules as the bible's ten commandments? I think whoever wrote this might have stopped looking for possible rules of rational debate the moment they reached ten.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (7 hours later)
I think it would have been better to have some "thou shalts" in there as well / instead. For example instead of #2 "thou shalt not straw man" I would have had "thou shalt steel man".
u/None [+1] (a day later)
"Steelman" is not common parlance outside the LWsphere, and I assume the writer of this... text... is a Traditional Rationalist, so that particular oversight is understandable.
u/DCarrier [+3] (2 days later)
Rule 0: Your goal is not to modify your opponent's beliefs to match your own. Your goal is not to modify both of your beliefs to match each other. You goal is to modify your beliefs to match the world. Only then can you modify the world to match your desires.
u/VaqueroGalactico [+2] (42 minutes later)
I take issue with #3 (and the fact that this is an image and not text, but that's another battle).
Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the whole.
Given proper statistical constraints, it is perfectly reasonable to use small numbers to represent the whole.
u/Limro [+0] (an hour later)
With the amount of extensions I have in Chrome, it doesn't even bother telling me it's just text - it just shows me the image...
Sorry about that.
... Can I fix it when it has been posted?
u/VaqueroGalactico [+2] (an hour later)
Yeah, I also just see the image... it's just annoying to me that it's an image and not just plain text. I couldn't copy-paste it, and everyone knows there's nothing more important than my brief moment of annoyance.
I don't think there's a way to change it, now that it's posted, but I'm not 100% sure.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+2] (4 hours later)
6: Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities.
Of any coherent proposition, you can say it is either true or false. There are no exceptions to that rule.
You will not disallow the use of the law of the excluded middle in argument, for that is deranged.
u/eltegid [+4] (10 hours later)
Obviously, that is excluded from the fallacy of false dichotomy. But a discussion usually isn't about wether something is true or false. In those cases there may be 2 options or there may be more.
Rather than reduce the argument to 2 possibilities, I would say that you shouldn't state/think/defend a position must be accepted as true just because an incompatible one is accepted as false.
u/None [+1] (7 hours later)
[removed]
u/IWantUsToMerge [+1] (8 hours later)
Commandment #20. You shall not waste time debating subjective propositions, or attempting to use them in debates.
u/None [+1] (6 hours later)
Rational people debate stuff?
u/Limro [+2] (14 hours later)
Point taken - it's not "debating", it's stating views.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (2 days later)
#4 seems poorly phrased - you're supposed to assume that your premises are true; that's what premises are for.
The problem is if you surreptitiously sneak in your conclusion as a premise/assumption.