Discussion Trees · Elliot Temple

Elliot Temple Philosopher Home Essays Debate Policy Philosophy Consulting Digital Products Other Websites: Critical Fallibilism Fallible Ideas Curiosity Blog Discussion Trees A discussion tree is a tool for illustrating and understanding discussions. It’s a tree diagram meant to outline/summarize the ideas and visually show the discussion structure (what is a reply to what, what wasn’t replied to, size of discussion branches). Trees help objectively figure out the current state of the debate/discussion and help reach a conclusion rationally. Explaining how discussion trees work also serves as a way of explaining how rational discussion works. All written or spoken discussion is externalized thought, and lots of internal thought is self-discussion (discussing with yourself). Consequently, understanding rational discussion is crucial to understanding rational thinking. Creating discussion trees involves breaking complex ideas into smaller parts and specifying relationships between ideas . These are essential parts of thinking. Terminology There are useful words for talking about trees. Each box in a discussion tree is called a node . A node can be e.g. a statement, claim, argument, explanation, question or comment. Lines indicate relationships between nodes. Nodes 2 and 5 are parent and child (2 is the parent, 5 is the child). Use child nodes to reply to the idea/argument in the parent. A descendant is a child, grandchild, great grandchild, and so on – any node linked by one or more child relationships. The opposite, a node linked by parent relationships, is an ancestor . Node 1 is the root (or head ) node because it has no parent. It’s the start. Nodes 4, 6, 7 and 8 are leaf nodes because they have no children. Leaves are the outside of the tree. They’re notable because they’re unanswered – there is no reply to a leaf. A subtree (or branch ) is a node and its descendants. It’s a tree starting with a different root. For large trees, it’s often useful to focus on understanding or discussing one branch at a time. A group of nodes is a partial subtree: some nodes of a subtree (and their descendants) can optionally be left out. The level of a node is its distance from the root. The root is the topic (level 0). Node 2 is at level 1 (a 1st response to the topic) and node 5 is at level 2 (a response to a response to the topic). In two person discussions, it’s common that one person says everything on an odd numbered level and the other person says everything on an even numbered level. A node is resolved – a conclusion about it has been reached – if the people in the discussion agree on whether it’s correct or incorrect. Mark resolutions on the tree. You can also resolve nodes according to your own opinion. You can mark on the tree the conclusions you’ve reached, the conclusions the other guy has reached, and also the conclusions you both agree on. Thinking In Parts Consider a sentence like “I think W because X, Y and Z.” This single sentence contains four ideas. A tree could represent it with four nodes. Trees encourage people to separate their ideas so they can look at each idea by itself. Trees also let people conveniently see how ideas relate to each other. E.g. W is an argument against another idea, V (its parent), and V has several parts (children) and is an argument against U (its parent). For breaking ideas into parts, try writing out the idea with simple sentences using no conjunctions or punctuation, then give a node to each sentence. Alternatively, write your ideas normally but then look for different parts. Conjunctions like “because”, “if”, “or”, “but” and “and” are indicators that there are multiple ideas put together. Writing (bullet) point form notes is another way to break ideas into parts. Conveniently, point form notes (with indenting for sub-points) can be imported into mind mapping apps and automatically converted to a tree. Multi-part ideas form a group. The head (root) of that group is the leader. It says the main point of the group, e.g. to claim W or argue against W. The other nodes in the group help support that purpose, e.g. by providing additional reasoning, info, details, explanation, answers to potential questions and links to sources (e.g. books or webpages with more info). Tip: If you don’t already know how to break a specific idea down into parts, that means there’s room for improvement in your understanding. Try figuring it out, e.g. by brainstorming some parts it might have. When you have a clear understanding of the parts of an idea, and breaking it down would be easy, then you’re in a position to judge whether including the parts in your tree would be useful or would be unnecessary detail. When you start understanding the parts your ideas are made of, it can be overwhelming at first. You’ll realize there’s lots of complexity in things you found “obvious”. It’ll take time and thought. But you’ll get more used to ...