Logic is essentially a way to slow down thinking and check its accuracy and precision.

All people think very intuitively most of the time. We are not flipping logical AND and OR and NOT and XOR operators around in our heads. Well, not consciously. But internally? Yes, actually. We're doing tons and tons of that. And megatons. But our conscious control of the underlying logic is like a steering wheel and a gas pedal and a brake in a car. Open up the hood. Did you really think it was that simple and easy?

Admit it: you kind of did, didn't you?

Anyway, we have to get on the same page, here. Your thinking (which you suppose is so reliable) has only been made to APPEAR straightforward to you by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

In reality, that undeniably commonsense, straightforward thinking we do all the time is both complicated and fragile.

So be careful whenever you want to say "There's no two ways about it!" Even if your reasoning is correct, evidently the other person is finding it more complicated... which should be interesting, on some level, because, as we've just said, it usually is more complicated. So even if they're quite wrong, they're right about that bit.

When our commonsense or intuitive reasoning *is* reliable in some situation, we should thank our lucky stars. Even though that's common, we should recognize that we're lucky the steering wheel and gas pedal and brakes are working well for us underneath the hood. (The same goes for empathy, by the way, which, though we associate it heavily with emotion, and that makes sense, is also a form of reasoning that can be working well or poorly.)

The complication begins to come to the surface when we get into an argument with someone. We both think we've got it right, needless to say. And if the argument continues, we're probably both somewhat confused about how the other person could be such a dolt.

To fix this bug - and it is a sort of bug, a conversational bug - takes slowing down and examining the logic more closely.

Most people are, to be candid, unwilling to do this.

Or at least unwilling when they feel at all upset. And unfortunately that's when it's important. When it isn't important to them right now, they wave it off and think you must have too much time on your hands. Either way, they don't do what it would take to fix the conversational bug.

So they don't get too much practice fixing these.

It can be done. It isn't even very difficult at all. It's often very easy. But both people have to be willing to engage the disagreement on that level, or it won't work.