the key is neither the marketplace for ideas nor debate are good models for accomplishing anything productive. they do not encourage people to come to them ready to listen, but instead create an arena of professional wrestling in the format of “discussion.”

a better model is the idea that you have a big pot of soup. your soup is your idea. you invite people to add ingredients to the soup. as a group, any time someone brings a new ingredient to the soup (a new mode of promoting and participating with the idea) you have the opportunity to integrate that ingredient or to say it doesn’t go with the rest of what’s already in the soup.

your goal, with your idea soup, is to invite as many people as you can to add ingredients so that your pot of soup is as big as possible and can feed as many people as possible. that means when you reject ingredients, you have to explain clearly why those ingredients don’t belong with the rest of the soup