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[Update]

If I had to pick out one significant thing that I have learned from OSL, it would be this: "always separate the idea from the person." This plays out in two different ways depending on which side of the criticism you are on.

If you are criticizing, criticize the idea and not the person. As obvious as this might sound, it is not at all easy to practice. The ability to resist the temptation to criticize the person (and the temptation is almost always present) for proposing the idea does not come naturally to most and needs to be developed over time. That said, it is not all that hard either -- all it takes is careful thought before saying anything.

Never take criticism personally. If someone is criticizing your idea, it does not automatically translate to criticism of you, the person proposing the idea. This is an extremely difficult thing to do. Even after years of practicing it, I sometimes find myself hurt when one of my ideas is looked down upon. But this does no good; rather it only impedes you from openly suggesting ideas in the future.

These points assume a higher degree of importance as soon as you move the setting of the discussion to an online forum. People are capable of saying much worse things to each other online -- things that they would never say in a face-to-face discussion.

To deal with such situations, it is imperative that you are familiar with ad hominem [Wikipedia.org]. If ever a discussion goes in the direction of personal attack(s), just post "argumentum ad hominem" and stop it.

Update: Fixed the link.

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Just as any other skill like bicycling or swimming, good argumentation and debating skills have to be learned over time. And just as any other skill, practice makes perfection. We need to keep practicing argumentation and cogitation and not be bogged down by failures.

Here is a good site on logical fallacies: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

For long centuries, Indian society has placed social reality as the foundation of life, rather than physical reality as is done in Western cultures. That, I believe is one of the reasons why we are much more prone to a people-centric worldview than the West. We consider the Universe to be a super living being (in other words, an autonomous, self-sustaining entity), having humanoid characteristics like happiness, anger, bliss, etc. In contrast the Western society (post the age of reason) considers the Universe to be one big machine that is intricately made of several causal chains based on deep underlying principles, which we strive to discover as part of science.

Much of the Indian philosophical thought in the past have focused on the notion of "self" and "ego" and how it can be both a source of supreme energy in solving a problem and an impediment to our realization of truth. There are some interesting conversations between Ramana Maharshi and the French philosopher Romain Roland on this topic, which makes good reading.

Personally, I think both approaches have their place in life. While I would advocate rationality and dispassionate argumentation when it comes to professional life; I would advocate a very contrasting (not conflicting) worldview based on love, imagination and other such human characteristics, when it comes to running a home, bringing up children, taking care of the weak, etc.

PS: Here is a nice article on Online disinhibition: http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html

I have a couple of more theories to add to that list, but later..