Taboo is one of my favorite techniques. I find taboo extremely useful at resolving confusing problems.
The idea of taboo is as follows:
- Often, two people discussing concept X will have some disagreements.
- Both parties might say seemingly reasonable things about X, which are contradictory.
- Often, the source of confusion is that the two parties were actually using X to point to distinct concepts Y, Z!
- In order to resolve such issues, it often suffices to explain what the two people actually mean by X, without referencing X.
- This often results in realizing that what was really being discussed was Y, Z.
For instance, suppose you were discussing judgement.
A hypothetical conversation:
JJ: It’s bad to judge people, because it makes you have negative feelings towards them and betrays your values of loving and helping other people.
ST: No, it’s good to judge people, because it helps you learn what actions you want to avoid, and it also allows you to help other people course-correct when they are doing bad things.
Resolution
JJ: Oh, now that we’re using taboo, I guess what I really meant was that it’s bad to label people, because this results in you being negatively oriented towards them, harming both parties.
ST: Oh I see. And what I meant was actually that it’s useful to appraise people’s actions and learn — personally and for others — what actions to seek and avoid.
JJ: I’m glad we used taboo to see that we actually didn’t have differing viewpoints, we just were talking about different things. It would’ve been rather confusing if we had instead tried to convince the other person that we were right without being on the same page about the concept we were discussing.