Cultures of Debate

Before sharing ideas in a community, figure out the social norms around engaging in discussion/debate.

This is something I learned the hard way by changing careers (from politics/activism to design/tech):

In activism circles, it's a given that if you have an opinion about strategy, you will passionately advocate for it. Not because you necessarily believe your idea is the best, but because every good idea deserves it's day in court, and you are serving as its momentary counsel.

It's also (usually) a given that you're on the same team as the people with whom you're debating, so you don't take counter-arguments personally. Ideally, differences in opinion lead to healthy debate so long as all parties remain open to being swayed (of course, it can turn ugly if people dig their heels in).

In tech circles, on the other hand, I've found that many people are suspicious of passionately argued opinions. In this community, decisions are supposed to be made on the basis of solid evidence/data, and everything prior to gathering that data should be phrased as a loosely-held hypothesis.

So when someone starts advocating for a particular strategy, it's assumed the person must be more focused on "winning the argument" than on choosing the right course of action.

I don't think that one approach is better than the other. I've come to really appreciate the humility and evidence-driven approach of the latter, while I still think there's a lot of benefit to the more intuitive and dialectical approach of the former.

I'm curious if other friends who bridge these (or similar) cultures have noticed this too, and if there are good ways to combine the approaches.