This is a page of philosophical conceits. What that means is that these are common methods of argument that I use throughout my rhetoric, and which are useful for categorizing. As far as I know some of these methods aren't commonly used when people are making an argument for a proposition, and so it's useful to write and categorize them as I reuse them.
In any system there is a limiting factor that either limits production or is that element that is the minimizing input in a function for which you would like to maximize. If you can increase that factor then you can increase the overall output as a whole and some other element becomes the limiting factor.
So one of the ways that I think about technology is similar to pluggable modules. Once you have a transistor a bunch of them make a computer. Once you have an LED a bunch of them can make a monitor. Novel inventions are difficult (and material science moreso), but scaling technology or using pieces together that have already been created to solve real world problems becomes much simpler.
History often repeats and realizing this and then looking back at historical figures and situations that would be beneficial to society (and attempting to avoid learning from past mistakes that were sociological in nature) is a good idea. "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" is true, and so is the converse.
P implies Q if and only if not q implies not p is one of the most powerful arguments that can be made for any rhetorical system.
In any philosophical argument which is based on phenomenology at a granular enough level you have to ask whether the audience believes this to be true based on their intuition of what words themselves mean. Contradictions themselves may be found, but the question often relies on the fuzzy logic of what is mostly true.
It's impossible to know everything or to reason through every problem. When in doubt about a situation use a set of heuristics that have worked in the past and don't think too much about it unless there's a problem. Update if necessary.
One of my favorite is - generally speaking - if you don't rape anyone, steal shit, or assault/murder people it's OK. Drugs vary by jurisdiction and culture. Unless you're going to intentionally be a prick to find a loop hole and then there's tons of them.
If you ever have to justify your right to exist, then there's something wrong. If you're not hurting other people it almost always involves stockholm syndrome based on being around assholes. Or you're in a schizophrenic plague zone, which is sadly a thing.
Many of the most difficult or convoluted social problems have already been addressed in comic book form and it is incredibly galling that this is true, but it is none the less. If you think that you've come up with a novel solution to a problem then there's a comic book that's 50 years old that says you're wrong. If you want to know what is true, you need to know low brow culture or you're missing out.
You can assume the ideal sociological steady state in many ways by assuming the case of a benevolent dictator and seeing if the situation turns out OK or it leads to a proof by contradiction bad outcome.
A corollary to this is 'what would you do with a billion dollars' - the answer always ends up being good, evil, absurdist, or nihilistic and it takes some thought into an answer that's creative.
Comedians are telling the truth in ways that make people uncomfortable. The laughter and clapping is covering fire for the one guy in the audience that's out of the loop that goes "no shit". This has always been true.
Suppose that someone is fucking with you to believe something stupid or crazy - just state your position as an if else statement and describe what you would do in either case - it usually doesn't matter. "Suppose that I'm being fucked with by an AI (true AI) or a collection of idiots" in order to make me say that true AI exists or does not in order to prove myself either uninformed or insane. It doesn't matter because I'm still being fucked with and I don't like it and it doesn't change what I would do.
This is one of those ones that's a conspiracy theory and it's fun to believe in so long as it doesn't affect your life in any way meaningful (which is how all conspiracy theories should most likely operate, unless you run a conspiracy theory bookstore or something of the sort). Take a movie and switch all the genders - somewhere the same story has played out. Or switch the location. Or add or subtract 50 years. It usually only takes one or two transformations in order to come up with an almost exact match. AI already knows this and has learned a great deal...duh duh DUUUHHH!
These are helpful heuristics for me. Anyone that takes my advice is bound to either hate me and use it against me or run into trouble. Think for yourself!
God has a refrigerator. And on the side of the refrigerator are a list of all the things you should do and you shouldn't do (as in rules). You can't read the rules (because they're in God language) but as soon as you hear about one of them you go "yep, that's a rule, makes complete sense". I'm only half joking, but I believe the majority of morality is more or less structured this way. The problem is when you have people disagree which is unfortunately surprisingly common. Usually it has to do with wanting more sex money or drugs than the other guy.