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liamrosen

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I don't really think any of the tips and strategies in this article are helpful unless both (or all) parties go in to it with this same mindset.

You'd be surprised. If there's a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is "devoted follower of the Beginner's Guide to Arguing Constructively", I think it's possible to have a decent constructive argument with people who are about 30-40 and up. I've certainly done so myself.

If you lead by example, many people will conform the standards of the debate to your tenor. Not all, of course, but that's when you have to know when to quit.

Which means that, for example, I believe it is simply impossible to have these kind of "constructive arguments" on, say, Twitter, for example.

That was mentioned in the guide :)

everyone argues from an emotional perspective.

Certainly you'd agree that there's a scale? It's not black and white. I will edit this part to make that more clear.

Paul Graham's Post "How to Disagree", as well as many other resources, have progressed by debate style from "destroy the other person and claim victory" to "calmly work to find common truths and update beliefs".

I often try and guide friends to this form of debate, but found that there was no one resource that summarized the mindset, knowledge and techniques needed to get there, so I wrote one.

Alternative title: the antidote to the first 2020 Presidential Debate