I Changed My Mind about Error-Correcting Debate, Misogyny and More: Updates from a Former Student of David Deutsch — LessWrong

Comment by TristanTrim - I skimmed some of your writing on critical fallibilism and related topics. I like it. Maybe I'll try to find time to read more sometime : )

I forgot to mention I do have affection for the term "argument" as it is used in logic and proof. I also like incentivization structures that promote people who are not friendly towards one another to work towards shared goals. And I think competition can be useful both in incentivization structures, and can be intrinsically fun. But the things that "debate" normally points to in natural language doesn't seem worth trying to salvage. There might be some kind of hyperstition cascade thing going on with the word "debate", but it feels in some way more complex than a simple slur type cascade.

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I'd say you have to do a lot of work to have enough shared context to know that at least one of you is wrong. I like the "at least one" sentiment, since both people can be wrong, but both people can also be right and just using language differently and failing to really connect with one another. The parts doing all the work are sharing world models, synchronizing terminology, locating differences in world modelling, and looking at evidence. The debate framing doesn't seem to add much to that.