In a 2008 essay, computer scientist Paul Graham offered a hierarchy of verbal disagreement:

“The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read,” he wrote. “But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. … If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in [Name-Calling] than up in [Refuting the Central Point]. You don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make.”