- Epistemic/eaesthetic flaws
- “Just asking questions”
- Predict the contour of the conversation
- Ask questions, and force them to take a hard position.
- Diction: Big and small terms “BIG anything” “Deep state”
- Ask who the deep state is, force them to relate them to the topic at hand.
- Characterization - different tragic hero tropes, for instance. The creator of the conspiracy theory will often portray themselves in this way.
- Ask more and more questions about the person’s character.
- “Do it yourself” - stuff conveyed in newsletters, pamphlets, “man on the street” kind of vibe.
- Ask why they made the choices they did when it comes to presentation.
- Lots of “shape-talk”, charts and stuff, mapping
- ????
- “Just asking questions”
Nathan mentioned in the debate (paraphrasing): “if you are separating people who conveniently have a different race, and you give them less rights while they have a different race, that is apartheid.” You replied by saying it was about citizenship, not race; ergo, not apartheid.
A good analogy here is something Scott Alexander has written about: maybe negative impacts on black people are not because the criminal system is racist, but because it is biased against poor people. The problem with saying “it is racist because it disproportionately impacts black people” is that, while ostensibly close to the truth, it is very misleading. All of a sudden you don’t care as much about improving economic conditions and opportunities, or dealing with jury bias, but are distracted by things like implicit bias/racism training/caring about what the media will say in reaction to an arrest, etc.
I consider this a subtle use of the noncentral fallacy, which I know you hate.
- When taking notes during a debate, and responding to everything the other person, the other person rarely responds to all of my points. Instead of wiping my entire board, I should remind the person (and the audience) that they failed to respond to the points I’ve made.
- Need to call out people more who live in stories or anecdotes or unrelated examples/data.
- Restate when a person doesn’t answer a question and move on.
- Restate what the other person said and ask them if that was an answer to your question.