Selective listening is a real problem. It's really hard to listen to someone when you think you already know what they’re going to say; the words get filtered through our biases and expectations, and sometimes those filters remove the important bits. I want to talk about a specific way I've seen this happen. I don't know if there's a name for it already, so I'm going to call it the counterargument collapse until someone suggests a better term.

The pattern I’m talking about is three levels of progression through an argument, followed by a misunderstanding that collapses the discussion in an unpleasant way.

Level 1: A naive but widely accepted statement (“Eat less fat if you want to lose weight”.)

Level 2: A more sophisticated counterargument (“That's a myth, fat doesn’t actually make you fat, it's eating too many calories that makes you gain weight”.)

Level 3: A counter-counterargument. [...]

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First published:
March 26th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nShiQoq2KfMGRMm9M/avoid-the-counterargument-collapse

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“Avoid the Counterargument Collapse” by marknm 06:35 Share

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“Avoid the Counterargument Collapse” by marknm