Confucius spent years advising rulers who ignored him, and he kept meticulous records of exactly where each argument failed. That practice — what the Analects calls 'zhengming,' or the rectification of names — was his answer to a problem we still run into constantly: most disagreements aren't really about facts or values. They're about two people using the same word to mean different things, neither of them noticing. When 'freedom' means one thing to a plaintiff and something entirely different to a juror, or when 'reasonable' sounds like a shared standard but isn't, the argument slides past the real disagreement without ever touching it. The practical move is almost embarrassingly simple: before you build a case, define the key terms — not formally, but specifically. Ask what the other person means, not just what they said. The gap between those two is usually where the argument lives.

Think of a recent disagreement that never got resolved — what word or concept were both sides using, but probably defining differently?

Drawing from Confucianism — Confucius (Analects, Book 13)