There is a tone people adopt in debates that tells you the outcome before a word is spoken. It is the voice of victory math, not inquiry. I have used it myself and regretted it every time. The better posture is neighborly: assume you’ll see this person again and will want to borrow their ladder.
Rule one is Orwell’s: prefer short words to long ones. When you strip jargon, you also strip a certain performance anxiety. Rule two is Austen’s: let particulars do the work. Don’t accuse; describe the scene. “When the meeting ran past the hour, we lost the person who builds the thing.” No one can quarrel with a clock.
sequenceDiagram
participant A as You
participant B as Neighbor
A->>B: Clarify terms (5 min)
A->>B: Trade concrete examples
B*/}>A: Name constraints
A->>B: Propose smallest test
Note over A,B: End with a receipt, not a slogan
Obama taught me cadence matters. You can slow down when you’re inviting someone into a room. You can pause to let a point land. Anthony Bourdain taught me to eat with my hosts. If you can’t break bread, at least trade stories. The best arguments are built on a foundation of ordinary, good‑faith facts about the day.
Practicalities help. Agree on vocabulary before airtime. One person speaks for two uninterrupted minutes. Then the other repeats their argument to their satisfaction. Only then does the counterpoint start. This is not a parlor game; it is a factory for shared models of reality.
Cats are better than we are at this. Mine argues by moving to the doorway, glancing back, and waiting. If I follow, he knows we share attention and the conversation can continue. If not, he shrugs and naps. No grudges, just a tiny, testable invitation.
There is an old Roman habit I admire: when the stakes were high, they wrote decisions in public. You can borrow that without marble. End a debate with a one‑paragraph note: what we tried, what we observed, what we’ll do next. The note frees you to disagree next time without relitigating memory.
Debating like neighbors doesn’t make conflict soft. It makes it productive. The output is not the win; it is a small receipt you can spend later, together.