Re: devil's advocate

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > As I explain in the article, people who are "playing devil's advocate"
  > > are not trying to help you make a good decision; they are imitating
  > > someone who is trying to fight you, to see what you would do under
  > > attack.

  > Such an imitation, if it's a good one, can be a valuable tool for
  > looking at my positions and decisions from a different perspective,
  > and for making my positions and ideas more clear and correct.

If you want to practice responding to enemies, people whose
goal isn't to be helpful, that could be a useful way to do it.

  > > That typically includes fallacies, mistaken assumptions, and
  > > distorted goals -- because your worst enemies would surely use
  > > those.

  > The art of discerning between truth and fallacies is an important
  > one.  How do I know that every one of my arguments and assumptions
  > is valid and isn't based on a fallacy?  Confronting those with the
  > ones provided by an opponent helps me make this distinction, and find
  > fallacies in my own opinions and ideas.

You don't need to encourage devil's advocates to get opportunities to
deal with errors.  Sincere people who are not our enemies do make
errors in reasoning.

In addition, sincere people may recognize your responses as valid --
whereas real enemies, and people mimicking enemies, will generally
cling stubbirnly to the erroneous attacks.

  > Their job is done when they succeed in
  > pointing out problematic assumptions and weak points in my decisions
  > or plans, which cause me to modify the plan, prepare plan B, etc.

It sounds like what you seek is sincere, thoughtful criticism.
An unscrupulous enemy, or someone mimicking an unscrupulous enemy,
will give you less of that.

If you appreciate arguing with enemies, would you please invite them
to do that with you personally?  This list is for trying to _help_ the
development of Emacs.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)