Something I found when cleaning my old "to read" queue, that people could find interesting. This submission is a bit meta, but it talks about things that are recurring topics on HN too. The thing that interested me most was the generalized form of the titular term, "conceptual landmines". It gave a name and provided a description of a discussion dynamic that I could never quite put into focus in my mind myself.
I've long understood that if you want to get a point across, you need to express it as clearly as possible, and avoid flamebait or words that you fully expect someone will take issue with. But, as the article highlights, there are words and phrases that can be mundane, inoffensive, and a perfect match for what you want to say, and yet saying them will predictably derail the conversation into rehashing tired tangents, so you need to talk around such word to have a productive conversation (and, conversely, avoid fixating on them).
Hindsight is 20/20, so now that I have a clearer understanding of this dynamic, I can immediately think of several such conceptual landmines regularly stepped on by HNers (myself included) :). I'll do my best to avoid them in the future.
There are several other, deeper, dynamics at play that the article doesn't seem to deal with but that are still important. The situation is not as damaging as the author might believe (although it is very disruptive to complex arguments).
1) Synthesising other's words into a personal perspective is a slow process that takes days to a week. Part of the thought-process-shuts-down aspect of difficult conversations is new ideas hitting at a pace too fast to be absorbed at the time of the conversation.
The rational strategy for a person who finds themselves in such a situation is the just throw out all their talking points to see what happens - even if it doesn't quite make sense - then go away and mull on what the responses were. It is productive even if the conversation often looks stupid in hindsight.
2) The functioning of large groups is such that most people don't participate in the conversation. The large quiet majority doesn't have a mechanism to coordinate their opinion apart from instinct, so they will use arguments modelled in robust political debates by the vocal minorities because that is really all the majority has to work with. It is thus important for a rational actor, in normal political discussions, to make sure their arguments are represented for the lurkers to to digest even if in theory everyone in talking already knows them.
In practice, that looks like literally the same chain of comments playing out again and again. That is pretty much useless for the debaters themselves - but it is probably a very useful instinct to help the people not talking to work out what they believe.
When two vocal people both incorrectly believe incoherent (and usually bad) ideas are the correct model arguments then situation gets useless and unhelpful very quickly, and there is no way the situation will quiet down without intervention. But rehashing the same situation again and again is purposeful.
I've long understood that if you want to get a point across, you need to express it as clearly as possible, and avoid flamebait or words that you fully expect someone will take issue with. But, as the article highlights, there are words and phrases that can be mundane, inoffensive, and a perfect match for what you want to say, and yet saying them will predictably derail the conversation into rehashing tired tangents, so you need to talk around such word to have a productive conversation (and, conversely, avoid fixating on them).
Hindsight is 20/20, so now that I have a clearer understanding of this dynamic, I can immediately think of several such conceptual landmines regularly stepped on by HNers (myself included) :). I'll do my best to avoid them in the future.