So recently I have been thinking about when it is wise to try to discuss an issue with someone and when it is unwise. I have devised the following general breakdown of potential debators based upon personality type and topical knowledge. While it is a limited scale that only defines character in terms of a few extremes, I feel that this is a necessary evil in order to maintain a relatively simple model; a more complicated model, while potentially more accurate in specific sittuations, might lose out to the following simpler classification system in terms of usefullness:
ignorant
unopinionated
opinionated
informed
intellectually honest
unreasonable
stubborn
open-minded
reasonable
stubborn
open-minded
intellectually dishonest
As you can see, I have first broken down the population into two general groups--the ignorant and the informed. It is quite true that a given individual can be informed about one issue and totally ignorant of another; consequently this is not intended to categorize individuals into tiny little boxes (that likely would be a bad fit)--but an attempt to categorize an individual's mindset on a
particular issue. As you can see, there are 7 possible approaches to take depending on the various combinations of the criteria above. Certain characteristics (found in one or in all parties participating in a debate) will lead to a productive discussion while other characteristics will prove less fruitful. Based upon my experience, my opinion of how these 7 states are to be regarded are summarized below; each possible state is given a score from plus 3 (useful) to minus 3 (useless) in terms of its utility in a discussion:
informed, intellectually dishonest (-3)
ignorant, opinionated (-2)
informed, intellectually honest, unreasonable, stubborn (-1)
ignorant, unopinionated (0)
informed, intellectually honest, unreasonable, open-minded (1)
informed, intellectually honest, reasonable, stubborn (2)
informed, intellectually honest, reasonable, open-minded (3)
the first two types, which I regard as representing the worst offenses that can be made in a debate, both involve some form of intellectual failure (either through misleading statements when one knows better, or by regarding one's own opinion too highly when one doesn't know any better). I justify their positions in the above scale as the worst because both will quickly obscure information, drive debate away from the intended issue, and mislead casual readers/listeners. The other five represent increasing levels of intellectual success. The third through fifth entries above, I think, are reasonably self-explanatory. The last two, however, require further comment. An argument can be made that someone who is "informed, intellectually honest, reasonable" is justified in being stubborn because the first four qualifiers in these categories should insure that whatever opinion he/she is expressing is sound. Thus I feel the best reason for providing the distinction I have above between the open-mindend and stubborn versions of this category is that an argument is more effective if the other person involved does not feel that there is almost or exactly a zero percent chance that the the stubborn person will seriously question his/her own beliefs. That is, it is okay for such people to be a little stubborn--and only those who lack a shred of open-mindedness should be classified in the stubborn category.
Using the above scheme, each statement made by each person on non-personal and non-subjective matters can be graded in terms of usefullness and rhetorical effectiveness. If one keeps track of particular people in this fashion over a long period of time, an aggregate score for each individual can be found and will provide a measure of whether the expectation value of the debate quality with that individual will greater than or less than zero. A good policy, depending on one's own patience, might be to set a limit on the minimum value for a pundit who is worth debating. Zero might be a good lower limit, unless--and this thought frightens me--it is too high a value and will exclude too large a fraction of the population.
I realize that other methods of grading individuals exist in many online forums; the method described here differs from most that I know of since this one offers a more objective method by which to assign a score. This feature will help alleviate the problem of the "echo chamber" which plagues groups of people with similiar ideologies and which might inflate scores of those who share commonly-held beliefs rather than those who are effective thinkers and debators.
This method also differs as it is intended for individuals to personally track other individuals, rather than a poll by many on one person. An interesting possibility then is to compile everyone's resultant personal scores for each individual and use them to derive the aggregate "community" rating in this manner. After the first calculation of each individual's community rating, the process can be iterated by assigning more weight to the opinions of those who scored highly, by community standards, in the first round. In this manner, the problem of "fools rating fools highly" and "fools rating 'plus-threes' lowly" can be minimized in its impact. I believe this is the same sort of process that google uses to sort search hits in a very reasonable order of significance.