{"id":416,"date":"2026-04-04T00:15:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/?p=416"},"modified":"2026-04-04T00:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T00:15:23","slug":"constructive-conversations-in-challenging-circumstances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/2026\/04\/04\/constructive-conversations-in-challenging-circumstances\/","title":{"rendered":"Constructive conversations in challenging circumstances"},"content":{"rendered":"

N\u00fdlega var \u00e9g a\u00f0 r\u00e6\u00f0a vi\u00f0 einstakling \u00ed umr\u00e6\u00f0uh\u00f3pi um erfitt m\u00e1lefni \u00e1 samf\u00e9lagsmi\u00f0li. Vi\u00f0komandi s\u00e1 eitthva\u00f0 gagn \u00ed huglei\u00f0ingum m\u00ednum en var vi\u00f0 \u00fea\u00f0 a\u00f0 gefast upp \u00e1 umr\u00e6\u00f0unum \u00fev\u00ed \u00fe\u00e6r rak svo oft \u00ed strand, ef \u00fe\u00e6r komust nokkurt\u00edma yfir h\u00f6fu\u00f0 \u00e1 flot. \u00c9g t\u00f3k eftirfarandi saman \u00ed svari og set \u00fea\u00f0 h\u00e9r ef ske kynni a\u00f0 \u00fea\u00f0 geti veri\u00f0 gagnlegt a\u00f0 gr\u00edpa \u00ed \u00fea\u00f0 s\u00ed\u00f0ar.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a recent interaction in a group on a difficult political subject on social media, a person expressed despair over how unproductive discussions in the group were. Most people were just there to make a point and never really engaged deeply. I wrote the following as part of an answer and have saved it here in case it might be of use later.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you're interested in learning more about constructive conversations, there are several resources you might be interested in. You might want to look into Neil Mercers work on talk but he arranges talk into \u201ccumulative talk\u201d, \u201cdisputational talk\u201d and \u201cexploratory talk\u201d. Much of what we see here in this group is disputational and there is a real hurdle to pass into the realm of exploratory talk.<\/p>\n

There are a few ideas and techniques that can help us get there. The first is to keep in mind that \u201cunderstanding\u201d doesn't equate \u201caccepting\u201d. Harper Lee put it eloquently in her To Kill a Mockingbird: \u201cYou never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.\u201d Whether it is our purpose to critically examine our own views or affect change on others', we're not going to have much success without understanding where those we're interacting with are coming from; until we consider their views from their perspectives.<\/p>\n

The second would be to map out the premises that the person you're interacting with is basing their rational framework on. Even though they're not being strictly rational in their argumentation (in the formal-logic sense) it's important to gauge where you two differ, as that will help guide your conversation. Foundational here is to ask plenty of why-questions.[2]<\/p>\n

Coupled with this I'd thirdly recommend a technique that I learnt from Street Epistomology[3] which is to regularly rephrase what your conversation partner has stated and asking them wheter you're understanding them correctly. The idea is that we're often judging people through our motivated reasoning and confirmation bias which lead us to construct straw-men of arguments that run contrary to our currently held world-view.<\/p>\n

Fourthly, I think any community (especially on-line communities such as this group) benefits from the excellent principle used on many of the Wikimedia Foundation projects: Assume Good Faith[4]. It's hard when people with such fundamentally different world-views interact, but I think it's fundamental for any constructive discourse. The really hard part is that it takes both parties to engage in this at the same time.<\/p>\n

I hope this may have given you some food for thought as to under what circumstances we're able to have difficult conversations and how we can move in that direction.<\/p>\n

[1] There isn't really a good central source with an overview of Mercer's Three-Talk typology, but searching on-line will give you plenty of resources and the Wikipedia article on Mercer touches on the three types: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neil_Mercer
\n[2] You might want to look into the Five Whys method for one approach for root cause searching.
\n[3] I recommend checking them out: streetepistemology.com
\n[4] Assume Good Faith is an official guideline on several projects such as Wikipedia, and is in the Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct: https:\/\/foundation.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Policy:Universal_Code_of_Conduct<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N\u00fdlega var \u00e9g a\u00f0 r\u00e6\u00f0a vi\u00f0 einstakling \u00ed umr\u00e6\u00f0uh\u00f3pi um erfitt m\u00e1lefni \u00e1 samf\u00e9lagsmi\u00f0li. Vi\u00f0komandi s\u00e1 eitthva\u00f0 gagn \u00ed huglei\u00f0ingum m\u00ednum en var vi\u00f0 \u00fea\u00f0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1485,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[759],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oflokkad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uni.hi.is\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}