Conversation Upgrades

All conversations have a seed of something interesting, but not all reach their full potential. Some instead devolve into name calling ad hominem attack s, straw man arguments , motte-and-bailey doctrine etc. or contain logical errors, a lack of references to validate claims. Even when conversations are conducted in good faith they can often fail to define their terms and spend the whole conversations talking at cross purposes .

To inform the development of WikiSim.org I want to explore how we, individually and collectively, might have better conversations. The goal is to find where our existing culture, tools, data, platforms, paradigms , etc. are helping us and where they could be improved.

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting...

...instead the plan is:

list the attributes that I (currently) think are needed for a good conversation . ✅ Done.

replay and upgrade some promising conversations which got stuck, and hopefully get them closer to their full potential. ✅ In progress.

Conversation Upgrade #1 - GBP to EUR exchange rate around Brexit

see what we can learn to apply to existing or new digital mediums like WikiSim.org as well as non-medium related learnings like the importance of emotional regulation . ☐ TODO.

Alas leaflet.pub lost a big chunk of this article. I can't recall everything I had written but I had included something about intent of this series not being about "winning" arguments, or "proving others wrong". Yes we will be trying to figure out which claims were correct, incorrect, unsure or irrelevant. But these claims are not people, these claims are separate from the people who made them because the intention is about trying to undercover some conversations that, due to our culture, economic systems and digital tools/mediums, never stood a chance of growing into those stronger and more interesting conversations. The intent is to see if we can have better conversations individually and collectively, to make sense of our complex world.

Originally posted on ajamesphillips.com/blog/conversation-upgrades

Next in series → " Conversation upgrade #1 ".