To have a productive discussion, you need a method of discussing. What is step 1 in a discussion? What is step 2? What is step 3?

If you don't know, or don't have it in writing, why would you think you're ready for an intellectual discussion? That means you will follow a unknown or unclear method. In that case, if the method has any flaws, then you will have a hard time in the discussion (due to using a flawed method) and have a hard time understanding why the discussion isn't working well.

If your discussion method hasn't been analyzed with conscious, critical thinking, you should expect it to have lots of flaws. And if it isn't specified in writing, you should expect to change it mid-discussion according to your biases.

Suppose you try to have a discussion with someone and you use one method (one approch to how to discuss – what to say, when, how to organize it, etc.) and he uses a different method. What happens? Chaos. Your step 1 and his step 1 don't match. Your step 2 and his step 2 don't match. From your perspective, he keeps doing the wrong things. From his perspective, you keep doing the wrong things.

So it's important to communicate about your discussion method and take an interest in the discussion methods of others.

If you can't self-evaluate what you're doing, it's too hard and you're overreaching. You're lost, confused, and making tons of errors with no effective way to recognize them. Stop and work on something that you can already self-evaluate with high success rate and confidence, or something incrementally one step beyond that.

To have a productive discussion, you need a goal. What outcomes would qualify as success? If you don't know what you're aiming for, achieving success is unrealistic.

And you ought to have some idea of the other person's goals so you can aim for mutual success.

Part of having a goal is recognizing what outcomes would not be success. You have to specify what would be a failure and risk having a failure happen that you acutally recognize/acknowledge/admit.

And part of achieving goals is having some idea about how to achieve them – a plan.

As Karl Popper taught us, there's more than one way to approach the truth.

This doesn't prevent topics from having prerequisites (you need to learn X before Z – Z builds on X). It sometimes gives you options about prerequisites (you could use X or Y as a prerequisite for Z, there are two known approaches to Z, one using X and one using Y.)

Prerequisites relate to different ways to organize knowledge. There are options for that but for many issues only a small number of known options are good, effective and efficient. One day we might learn some new, good approaches to a topic. At that point you could perhaps use W as a prerequisite for Z instead of X or Y. But today people don't know about that option.

Look at currently existing approaches to a topic, look at their prerequisites, choose one of the approaches, and learn the prerequisites for it. Don't try to skip prerequisites on the basis that there's more than one valid approach to a topic.

What some people do is basically say "There is an approach where X isn't needed, so I won't learn X, and there is also an approach where Y isn't needed, so I won't learn Y." You need to pick some particular approach, see what knowledge is needed for it, and get the knowledge.

People often refuse on the basis that some alleged prerequisites are unnecessary. That people sometimes make mistakes in identifying prerequisites doesn't invalidate the whole concept. If you like, give specific arguments about why something is or isn't a prerequisite to a specific topic using a specific approach to that topic.

How can you figure out prerequisites you need? Look at your project plan. What steps are you planning to do? For each step, consider what skills and resources you need to accomplish it. Don't rely on getting lucky. Be reasonable.

For example, if a step is to build a log cabin, you should know how to do that. That means e.g. knowing cabin design and some woodworking skills. You'll also want a chainsaw and nearby trees. If a step is to trap wild animals and sell the furs, you should know what sort of traps to use, what animals are in the area, how to set the traps up, how often to check them, etc. If your plan is to spread ideas, you should know what the ideas say and why, why the ideas are superior to alternative ideas, and the answers to attempted criticisms of the ideas you're spreading.

What if you plan to learn as you go along? Knowing how to set a trap is a prerequisite for setting a trap. But you could do it in an earlier project step instead of before the project starts. That's often unwise because learning doesn't always go smoothly and it's hard to plan projects based around skills you don't yet understand (will you even like doing it?). Anyway, putting prerequisites earlier in the same project doesn't invalidate the concept of prerequisites.

It's also possible to divide a step into sub-steps and mix in learning prerequisites. You can split building a cabin into 20 steps, then watch a YouTube tutorial about the first of those steps, then do it, then watch a YouTube tutorial about the second of those steps, then do it, and so on. This is generally only a good idea with pretty simple, easy projects where success isn't very hard to come by and delays aren't a big deal (it especially works well with practice projects where learning is the main goal).

Learning to think rationally precedes learning to have rational discussions.

Discussion basically uses two skills: thinking and dealing with other people.

Language is part of thinking well. It'd be useful even if you were stuck on a desert island alone for the rest of your life. You should have practice and success using language in your thinking before trying to use language in discussions.

Looking at many sides of an issue is part of thinking well. You should be doing that alone. So discussion shouldn't be a big change where things go from one-sided to two-sided (or more). Discussion should involve people doing the many-sided thinking they would have done alone.

Needing prerequisites for projects doesn't usually mean more school.

Schools broadly fail to teach much. They don't work anyway. And they teach a lot of the wrong things.

Let's take an example. You want to write a novel. What are some of the prerequisites?

You'll need to be literate and able to type (already done, no worries). You should be better at grammar. You also need to know about plotting, character development, and what existing novels are like (what are some good things that your novel should have? what are some flaws in prior novels that you want to improve on?). You'll also need some project management skills. You're going to spend maybe a year writing the novel (or maybe five years while working a day job?). How do you schedule and budget your time? How do you organize your efforts over many different days and months, so it all comes together into a completed project? How do you finish the project instead of stopping in the middle? How can you know in advance what projects you'll still want to do six months from now? I suggest you start with smaller projects and shorter writing before a whole novel.

So anyway, do you need school to learn grammar? You already went to school and still get lots of commas wrong! Lots of schools don't even bother trying to teach grammar. When they do teach it, it's often a bunch of memorizing arbitrary-seeming rules and teaching to the test (just like how they screw up teaching math).

It is important for a novelist to know how commas work. But the default, standard approach to learning that should be using books and the internet. Look there first before looking for a course let alone going back to school. Try to educate yourself and consider getting education from others (which usually doesn't work well at all) as a second option if self-education isn't working. (BTW, if you can't educate yourself, I don't know why you think some teacher is going to fix your problem for you and somehow make your learning work well.)

Also, schools pretty much don't even teach novel writing skills or project management skills until college. 13 years of K-12 education isn't enough to fit it in, apparently. Novel writing isn't a skill everyone needs so it makes sense not to teach it to everyone, but do people really need to wait until age 18 to start learning it?

And with project management the assumption seems to be that you don't need to know it because there will be a boss who knows it and you'll just follow orders. That's the life they are preparing you for by only even trying to teach project management at business school for people preparing to be bosses. And keep all your hobby projects small and short since you never learned how to manage a larger project! Project management is something pretty much everyone should know a bit about, but it's left out of general education at schools!

Project management is important for projects you do alone. Some people maybe think it's just for team projects. But by yourself it's still useful to have some idea of what tasks go into a project, estimate how long they'll take, estimate resource costs per task (e.g. how much money you'll have to spend), etc. Then you can look at your schedule and budget and see how long it'll take to get the project finished. And then you can consider: is it worth it compared to alternative projects?

A project merely means doing multiple activities/tasks over time which are meant to work together to achieve one or more goals. That's something people do alone or in informal, non-business settings. And it's something that can go wrong. There are plenty of ways to be disorganized and screw it up. So people have developed ways to better plan, evaluate and organize projects. But most people aren't taught them in school and don't go find out for themselves either, which makes their projects unnecessarily difficult and risky.

(In my opinion, the best project management author is Eliyahu Goldratt.)

School success does not imply being smart, wise or knowledgeable.

Failing your school classes or hating school does not imply lacking brainpower or lacking learning capacity.

Hating school doesn't mean you hate learning.

Enjoying school of getting A's does not mean you like learning or understand the topics covered in your classes.

These things aren't significant hints or clues. There isn't a strong correlation. You can't judge people by their relationship to school.

On the high end, if you're really great, that clashes with the conformity and obedience that school asks for. But being great can make up for it. If learning the material is easy for you, that advantage can lead to school success even if, e.g., you don't respect your teachers. It doesn't have to lead to good grades but it can; the result can go either way.

On the low end, if you're bad at thinking, that can lead to pretty good grades if you just do as you're told, make a visible effort, and have low starting points to improve from (teachers often give good grades for improvement instead of just for actual results).

If you fail a bunch of classes, it could be because you disliked them (with cause) and skipped classes or didn't pay attention. This can happen if you're smart or dumb or in the middle. There's stuff to dislike about class for everyone.

If you get bad grades, it could be because you saw how pointless it was to memorize things for a test and still not understand them. Maybe you didn't learn the material but at least you knew you didn't understand. Most people who pass don't understand the topics either, they're just e.g. more willing to pretend their confusions are successful learning.

If you get pretty good grades, you could be a stupid, obedient conformist. Or you could have seen lots of flaws in the system but been under extreme pressure from your parents to find a way to get pretty good grades anyway. Or many other things.

Don't judge people by how they did in school.

And especially don't judge yourself by how you did in school.