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In 2008, Paul Graham wrote\\xa0How To Disagree Better, ranking arguments on a scale from name-calling to explicitly refuting the other person\\u2019s central point.

And that\\u2019s why, ever since 2008, Internet arguments have generally been civil and productive.

Graham\\u2019s hierarchy is useful for its intended purpose, but it isn\\u2019t really a hierarchy of\\xa0disagreements. It\\u2019s a hierarchy of types of response, within a disagreement. Sometimes things are refutations of other people\\u2019s points, but the points should never have been made at all, and refuting them doesn\\u2019t help. Sometimes it\\u2019s unclear how the argument even connects to the sorts of things that in principle could be proven or refuted.

If we were to classify disagreements themselves \\u2013 talk about what people are doing when they\\u2019re even having an argument \\u2013 I think it would look something like this:\\xa0

Most people are either meta-debating \\u2013 debating whether some parties in the debate are violating norms \\u2013 or they\\u2019re just shaming, trying to push one side of the debate outside the bounds of respectability.

If you can get past that level, you end up discussing facts (blue column on the left) and/or philosophizing about how the argument has to fit together before one side is \\u201cright\\u201d or \\u201cwrong\\u201d (red column on the right). Either of these can be anywhere from throwing out a one-line claim and adding \\u201cCheckmate, atheists\\u201d at the end of it, to cooperating with the other person to try to figure out exactly what considerations are relevant and which sources best resolve them.