Exploring the Idea of a Thread for Arguing

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on April 9, 2021, 4:20 pm

Quote from Stef on April 9, 2021, 7:00 am

yet I think we need a place in which we CAN DO personal attacks and nasty moves to practice how to protect from those, in the same way if you are learning karate you also need to be prepare for you opponent to bring a gun, throw sand in your eyes, try to gouge your eyes out and all kind of nasty behavior.

the problem is how to strike a balance between the practice being hardcore enough as to really be helpful to prepare you to deal with real life situation and not so hard as to hurt you just as bad as the real life threat!

Yeah, agreed.

To keep the analogy with the martial arts / fighting training, we actually have a major advantage here: there is a limit to how much dojos can really train street attacks and malicious intent, and that limit is quite low.

In our case, with an antifragile ego, the risk is lower.
Even if things go south, most people are still with a nickname here, and to be super honest: if you break rapport or will never manage again to be in good terms with someone, well... It's still a nickname on a forum you have an issue with -much better than a neighbor, a friend, a politician, a potential partner, or a colleague in real life-.

The only potential limit here is that when the discussion is staged, people might feel less personally and emotionally invested, and that might make the session less realistic and less helpful.
I believe that some ways of going around that issue are:

1. Debate positions you really believe in, rather than randomly assigned topics
2. Debate issues that really important to you, rather than something you don't feel strongly about

And finally, the last stage:

• Bring real personal issues to that topic: rather than going to the "feedback and clarification" to clear things out, purposefully escalate personal disagreement in that thread. Now with this one, you get the most realistic confrontation you can get.

This last stage might also include "bring personal dislikes" to that topic, where one can experience fully letting go of his anger and dark side -maybe we can experience this one as a different thread, sort of "why I hate X person", but let's not discuss this one here now-.
But let's not start with this one now.