It's not tough to do well if your aim is really to "discuss something rationally." Most of the time, people are not trying to discuss anything in particular, or understand anything better; they're just trying to socialize, and whatever they're arguing about is just a medium in which to play games of flag-waving and oneupmanship. (I know that sounds dismissive, but I'm not trying to crap on it; I do it too. It's just the way it is.)
It's silly to look at the result and say, well, you would communicate better if you did X, because that's not the goal.
Bad explanations drive good explanations away from conversation. Easy simple parrotable discourse will dominate the nuanced introspection needed to understand all the systems in play.
Conversations are better when you do some work to understand existing information first. If you don't know anything it's not a conversation, you're asking for spoon feeding.
It's acceptable to talk about when one is listening as well as talking.
When the conversation goes both ways, something is accomplished. When one is bringing up doubt without any intention of having that doubt assuaged, but only to spread that doubt to others, it's not good behavior.
Only you can ascertain your own motivations. But anyone can listen in and tell when valid answers are being ignored.
"While it can be easy to dismiss conversations around semantics, we need to keep in mind that communication is about influencing other people. If you use terms in an unexpected way, it will create a barrier making it harder or outright prevent you from influencing others and will likely add unnecessary frustration to all involved."
This. In many cases people dismiss key points in an argument because "it's just semantics". But sometimes the semantics can be the heart of the matter.
Imho, you cannot expect to have a conversation if you don't put the minimum amount of required effort to understand what it's being talked about.
Throwing in wild ideas maybe works when you know what you're talking about and want to get people to think ouside the box, but does not work when you don't have a clue and expect people to explain things to you and to find a solution to your wild ideas.
Re: removing tokenization. Tell me how you would remove tokenization and keep NN. Go ahead.
Why object to having a conversation? Sticking ones head in the sand is a sure way to stay ignorant, especially silly to do over objections to terminology.
Precisely this. Please don't read this and apply it to every conversation. If the other party is not particularly driven to learn about the topic, you'll turn them off completely.
I don’t like this notion that good conversation must somehow be dishonest. To my mind, the key is being sympathetic to your interlocutors—sympathetic in the old sense, meaning understanding and sharing their emotions.
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