I cordially invite all interested readers to engage in a conversation about the issues raised on this blog.

[Note (2008-11-10): Comments have been deactivated for now. The conversation continues in private, feel free to email me.]

In this article I first explain my motivations for the invitation. Secondly, I identify some potential pitfalls in collective communication that we must seek to avoid. And finally I provide a flow-chart for a rational discourse that serves as a clear and binding guarantee / commitment that all participants will be civil, rational, impersonal and detached.

Motivation

The ideas that are expressed on this blog are NOT presented as part of a manipulative propaganda exercise but are presented so that they can be rigorously tested in a rational manner. I believe that they are potentially very accurate and very important ideas. If you agree or disagree then please explain why and we can test their accuracy and importance.

Whilst I will be gracious in regards to statements of opinion, these add nothing of real value to the conversation. Unlike many people I am not trying to build a 'following'. I do not present the ideas as “my ideas” to which the ego is personally attached, but as ideas that need to be tested in an impersonal, detached and rational manner, by as many people and from as many perspectives as possible.

My hope is that many diverse perspectives can come together in an impersonal, detached and rational manner to engage in civil conversation that systematically explores and tests the ideas themselves and their relevance to issues of contemporary importance.

I am passionate about the clarity and integrity of ideas and if egos try to play manipulative games (including my own ego) then I will endeavour to set them straight. This stems from a love of truth and reality, whatever it may be. Through clarity and integrity of ideas we may come to better know truth and reality.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Overcoming the manipulative agendas of ones own and other people's egos is of primary concern. The ego is a delusional tyrant that resists the realisation of Truth. When one's own ego is manipulating one's mind it is difficult to discern for oneself. Honest and direct feedback from others can help one liberate oneself from egoic oppression.

If we are to communicate in effective ways we need to understand the situation. Below I paraphrase remarks from the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team to illustrate some of the pitfalls to watch out for. They are conjectured to be the fundamental causes of organizational politics and team failure. The five primary dysfunctions are:

(1)Absence of Trust: which stems from people's unwillingness to be vulnerable within the conversation. People who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.

(2)Fear of Conflict: Failure to build trust is damaging because it results in fear of conflict. Conversations that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.

(3)Lack of Commitment: Fear of conflict ensures a lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, people rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions or realisations, though they may feign agreement during the conversation.

(4)Avoidance of Accountability: Lack of real commitment ensures an avoidance of accountability. Without committing to decisions or realisations, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviours that seem counter-productive to the good of the conversation.

(5)Inattention to Results: Failure to hold one another accountable ensures inattention to results, which occurs when people put their individual needs (such as ego, opinions, unquestioned beliefs or reputation) above the collective goal of impersonal, detached and rational testing of ideas that may potentially be of great importance to the survival of humanity.

The list of known cognitive biases is very long and most people assume that they are unbiased, which leads to great confusion and frustration for them. One particularly disruptive type of bias is ego defence mechanisms, which are unconscious processes that seek to cling to cherished opinions regardless of how confused and arbitrary they may be, and to unconsciously use all manner of devious tactics to defend these opinions against any form of enquiry or possible revision. This bias is incompatible with rational discourse or clarity or intellectual integrity.

Flow-Chart for a Rational Discourse

It is only within conversational contexts that encourage the ego to “play the game of rational truth seeker” that effective reasoning is possible. In light of this I have drawn up a flow-chart. Think of it as a game board upon which we can play the game of rational truth seeker. The structure of the board is not set in stone and is open to discussion and revision, but it serves as a basic guide to help us create an impersonal, detached and rational conversation. Note that because this is a 'game' that does not make it meaningless and trivial. It may become very important and involve intense clashes of ideas, but it will remain within the scope of rational truth seeking and will not devolve into ego battles and propaganda war.

The flow-chart also serves as a common contract. If you enter the conversation you must abide by this contract and you can also expect other participants to abide by it as well. Hence it is a guarantee that you will receive civil, rational treatment and that there isn't some ego maniac lurking in the forum that will try to bight your head off as soon as you say something controversial.

The core features of a rational discourse, according to the above 'game' are: All participants make a commitment to the rational testing of ideas without personal attachment. They agree to abide by scepticism (open-minded enquiry), to mutual respect, to clear rational discourse and to a common agreement to avoid disruptive ego defence mechanisms such as cynicism, denial, personal attacks, etc. All participants in the discourse must also commit to engage in a primary-conversation as well as a meta-conversation about the primary-conversation to help clarify it and resolve issues that arise, not as part of the subject of the primary-conversation, but due to its form or conduct. If any participant perceives that another participant is engaging in cynicism or disruptive ego defence mechanisms within the primary-conversation then it is their duty to raise this in the meta-conversation where it can be clarified. Of course, if a person feels that they have been wrongly accused of such behaviour this can be addressed in the meta-conversation. If the disruptions continue in the meta-conversation the disruptive participant will be barred from the conversation until they calm down enough to re-engage with it. If the disruptions cannot be avoided then the conversation must relocate to a more favourable forum. Any disruptive and uncivil behaviour will NOT be tolerated and will be brought up in a meta-conversation to be dealt with.

These are core requirements but it is also desirable that people have some understanding of what knowledge is (epistemology), what logic is, what a rational argument is, what naïve realism is and also some understanding of facts, evidence, proof, etc. (see What is Knowledge, Science and Reasoning? for more information)

If you just wish to state an opinion these will be accepted graciously, but any uncivil behaviour will not be tolerated. A rational forum is not a place to vent anger and frustration; all such comments will be brought up in a meta-conversation and if the participant does not revise their comments into a more civil form they will be deleted.

If you simply wish to ask a question or provide some information then you will be met with a civil response.

The structure of the game will reside in the background whilst ever the conversation is flowing in a civil and rational manner. However its structure can be called upon by any participant whenever required. For example, someone enters the conversation ranting their opinions in an uncivil manner and is defensive toward any approach. Another participant can declare that the conversation should now move from state (16 to 19), I.e. a statement of opinion expressed in an uncivil manner that should be dealt with in a meta-conversation. This will either result in the statements being revised into a more civil form (19 to 17) or being deleted (19 to 18).

Another aspect, not obvious from the flow-chart, is that if a conversational stream gets locked into a loop there is a mechanism for breaking the loop. For example, say that someone is being civil but they present an incoherent, irrational or irrelevant argument, which then goes to a meta-discourse (4 to 14) in which they are required to explain or modify their argument (14 to 13) which is then reconsidered (13 to 4). This may need to loop several times, but if the person is simply unable or unwilling to present a coherent, rational and relevant argument but they keep persisting, then we could potentially get locked into the loop. Hence when we pass through a loop several times without any meaningful gain it will be questioned whether or not the loop is to continue. This does not result in expulsion, like with uncivil disruptions, but merely in the termination of the loop, whereupon the submitted 'argument' is reclassified as an 'opinion' and simply held on the record.

Note that if you are not an NCN member and are commenting via the public interface you will be required to provide a valid email address or a URL to your personal website. Anonymous or unverifiable comments will be deleted unless they make a meaningful contribution that stands on its own merits. This is to protect the conversation and its participants from anonymous, cynical disruption.

Given that on the game board persistent 'uncivil' behaviour results in expulsion from the conversation, I will clarify what I mean by 'uncivil'. It is applied in both an interpersonal context as well as an intellectual context. If a person is abusive, cynical, defensive to the point of interpreting any critique as an attack, a victim of their own ego defence mechanisms to a degree that makes them unable to engage in a rational dialogue or is otherwise disruptive and recalcitrant in a manner that creates a serious obstacle to open, direct, impersonal, detached, rational debate, then their behaviour will be considered uncivil. Other more subtle manifestations of uncivil behaviour are twisting other peoples words in order to misrepresent them, ignoring key arguments that one finds challenging whilst obsessing over others in order to avoid the key arguments, heaping irrelevant issues into the conversation in an attempt to complicate and confuse the issue and so on. If the charge of uncivil behaviour is made against someone they have every right to defend themselves in the meta-conversation but only in a civil manner.

The manner in which I use the term 'civil' is any behaviour that is conducive to open, direct, impersonal, detached, rational debate. It involves being reasonably polite, willing to give other's space in which to formulate their arguments without trying to 'stomp' on them, encouraging collective enquiry rather than factional dispute, willingness to enquire into arguments rather than just acting from one's own conditioned perceptions and trying to force the argument to fit into those, and actually thinking about what is being said rather than just poking around to find things to object to whilst not having any clear idea what the conversation is actually about.

It is my hope that people will be able to manage the game play in an autonomous manner, however as the 'moderator' I reserve final judgement in cases where this does not occur.

So please, feel free to be open and direct, there is no need for “veiled discussions and guarded comments” on this particular blog, indeed such things would be enquired into until they were openly and directly understood. You can play casually or play hard-ball, but only about the ideas. Be civil to the other participants! Enjoy the game!