What kind of meta discussion is good?

In the latest tutoring screencast (just before this point) between Elliot and Max, Elliot says something like: The old TCS list had anti-meta tradition designed to hide social rules.

i'm reminded of like 2 occasions where Elliot asked me something like *what type of meta discussion?* in response to me saying something like *do meta discussion*.

i think that each time I saw elliot's question, i misunderstood it. i'm not sure. anyway i want to fix that.

one thing i think his question exposes is that I didn't say what type of meta discussion should be done. so like i could have instead said *do meta discussion [purposed for solving problem X]*.

the kind of meta discussion that i think is good is meta discussion that is purposed for improving discussion methods. (this applies to multi-person discussion and self-discussion.)

examples:

• (self-discussion) if you're sad, do meta discussion about it. that means instead of thinking about what you're sad over (the object of your sadness), talk about sadness in general, how you deal with sadness in general, what methods you use when you notice you're sad, etc. So my advice is to do meta discussion instead of just doing things that (immediately and temporarily) get rid of the sadness.

• (multi-person discussion) if two people are having a discussion and one of them notices a stuck point in the discussion, he can do meta discussion as a way to make the object discussion become unstuck.