While some group conversations are great (e.g., with close friends), a lot of group conversations are boring, the lowest common denominator, or hijacked by one talkative person. How can you make group conversations more interesting?
Here's what I've found to be useful:
1) Shrink the group
The best group conversations typically happen (I claim) in groups of 3 to 5. If your group is bigger than that, you can split it into smaller groups (e.g., by engaging with the people closest to you)....
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discussion
Idea-Inducing Questions
Struggling to come up with an idea for a blog post? Want to post ideas on social media but can't think of what to write about? Want to come up with interesting topics for an intellectual discussion or meetup?
Use my lists of "Idea-Inducing Questions" to generate nearly endless ideas to write about, think about, or discuss!
Questions about learning and truth-seeking
• Recently learned: what's a powerful idea, concept, or mental model that you've been learning about recently that you...
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Tips for Productive Disagreements
Typically when two people disagree, neither makes significant progress in convincing the other, and little or nothing is learned on either side.
It's tough to make real-life disagreements productive, but here are my favorite techniques for making it easier to do so. These help more if you are significantly motivated to use the disagreement to deepen mutual understanding of the issue.
I'm assuming here that you have control over your own behavior, but not over the other persons, because th...
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A Common Problem with Debates
Opposing parties in debates over commonly-raised questions often fail to focus their arguments on the same concept. These "ambiguous questions" are usually those that are fundamentally unresolvable until one disambiguation of the question is agreed upon. Until that disambiguation is reached, the debate often swirls in circles as different parties effectively argue about distinct topics, seemingly discussing the same thing.
Examples of common "ambiguous questions" include debates like:
Is ...
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