alt Hacker News> I think we agree?
That is such a crazy way to start a response to someone trying to argue with you. I should try this. That's amazing. I know you didn't mean it as a trick, at least I'm pretty sure you meant it sincerely, but I'm just struck by the power of it to defuse and redirect the conversation. And this was a very low-grade example, but I could imagine this being useful in much more heated contexts.
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OTOH I have often witnessed people agreeing without realizing it. I‘ve been able to defuse a bunch of arguments by pointing that out.
Yeah, more valuable than the comments I came to read (even if those are interesting too!)
Usually people are taught these techniques at the management courses. If you're at a BigCorp where they push managers through such courses - you can hear a lot of that stuff in your manager's speech if you pay attention to it.
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I think in general stripping away the parts you agree with from the argument works great, because it strips away a whole lot of potential for ending up indirectly arguing over things that aren't in contention, and it often also defuses the rest when it turns out the core of the argument perhaps is much smaller than people are willing to get invested in.