The fog of war—poor intelligence about the enemy—can frustrate even a well-prepared military force. Something similar can happen in intellectual debate. What I call the fog of debate is a useful metaphor for grappling with failures and dysfunctions of argumentative persuasion that stem from poor information about our opponents. It is distressingly easy to make mistakes about our opponents’ thinking, as well as to fail to comprehend their understanding of and reactions to our arguments. After describing the fog of debate and outlining its sources in cognition and communication, I consider a few policies we might adopt upon learning we are in this fog.

战争迷雾——关于敌人的情报不足——甚至会挫败准备充分的军队。类似的事情也可能发生在智力辩论中。我所说的辩论迷雾是一个有用的隐喻，可以用来应对因对手信息不足而导致的辩论说服的失败和功能障碍。我们很容易在对手的思想上犯错误，并且无法理解他们对我们论点的理解和反应，这是非常令人痛苦的。在描述了辩论的迷雾并概述了它在认知和交流中的来源之后，我考虑了一些我们在得知我们处于这种迷雾中时可能采取的政策。