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This is a whole chapter in "How to win friends and influence people."

Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.

Someone says something you disagree with? Evaluate if the inevitable unresolved and probably heated argument that will happen when you make it an issue is worth the time, effort, and awkwardness for everyone else present.

Someone says something exceptionally disagreeable? Just fucking leave it be and disengage as soon as possible. The fight isn't worth the time.

This is life advice - print it and hang it.

As someone who did high school debate competitively for four years and still judges competitions nearly every weekend... I really don't think this tracks in reality. It really sounds like you're describing a caricature, and maybe it's based on someone you know, but I don't think it's really the normal outcome for people who debate.

There are surely former debaters who still feel the need to prove themselves to their friends and colleagues and will go out of their way to seek an argument. It is a competitive activity and so it attracts competitive types. But part of the process of becoming a well-adjusted adult, and yes, debaters all go through that process too in time, is recognizing where and when their skills are welcome.

Most people love to win, that includes arguments.

What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.

> What a lot of people failed to learn from debates club, is that a formal "win" is a net loss of a relationship.

In US competitive debate, debaters learn very quickly that whether you "win" or "lose" is not decided by themselves or their opponent but by the judge. You don't measure your success by whether being argumentative made you feel good or whether you felt like you won but by whether the judge evaluated what you said and what the other person said and signed a ballot in your favor. That actually involves a lot of "reading the room" and self-awareness about how other people will hear you when you talk. Good debaters solicit feedback from their judges and coaches to ask them how they can do better. And good judges look past the bluster, penalize debaters who use bad faith tactics, and reward debaters who succeed on substance. Judges are accountable for their decisions too - they have to explain to the debaters why they voted the way they did, which encourages judges to evaluate debaters carefully and give good feedback.

Again I think it is a caricature to say that a person who does debate structures their personality around it and tries to turn everything into an argument. I concede as a high schooler I went through a phase like this; then I went through college, matured a bit, got other hobbies and priorities and came to understand how to use the skills I learned as a debater in a positive-sum way.

That whole wall of text completely ignoring my point. Not only that, I now have a very negative opinion of you... simply because you completely ignored what I wrote.

What I learned from your response, is that debates in US teach you - ignore the principles of the argument, fail to follow up and say(or write) a lot of words. (to "win")

Funny, that to me you've become the caricature that you're complaining about.

The irony of someone arguing about high school debate being bad and then making piss poor arguments of zero substance is not at all lost upon me although it looks like it whizzed past you. I think someone like you would've benefited more debate than anyone else.

And yet here you come. Replying to my comment, using the same exact techniques created specifically "to win".

Literally evoking the feeling of being attack, by introducing thinly veiled insults into your comment.

What do you think would result from such a retort? (specifically after you called my perspective "piss poor")

PS: I have debated many times at school and afterwards. Your condescension is poorly hidden

I wrote what I wrote because I thought you had some sense of curiosity about the people you complained about and I thought this was an appropriate space to talk about each other's beliefs and experiences. I did not expect your hostility!

What do you talk about if not these issues? What is a conversation to you? It feels like you've successfully eliminated any disagreement from your conversations. Or is that just relevant to "shooting the shit with the lads down the pub once or twice a year"? When can we have discussions that might show disagreement?

It's entirely possible to have a conversation about all those topics but gets increasingly difficult when your friends fall in the cliche 80/20 category. 80% great people 20% not so much. I think parent poster has more of a problem with those types. You can chill and have fun but certain taboos open a can of worms that nobody wants to deal with especially when you just wanna decompress and have a few beers.

There's a time and place for everything and friendship dynamics get...complicated.

It feels to me that's the crux of it. Friendship dynamics are not universal even within a friendship group. It might be the desire not to "debate" makes the GP author the 20% outlier. It feels a bit like "well that's just like your opinion man".

There is still usually some disagreement, but in many social settings (eg, having a few pints at the pub with people you rarely see), topics of discussion usually are what people have been up to, and other "light topics".

In most social situations "heavy" discussion or "debating" is entirely unwarranted and brings the overall mood down.

There are plenty of discussion groups and meetups if you want to hotly debate politics or suchlike!

There are also "third ways", so to speak, ways to have people feel comfortable without resorting only to least-common-denominator "harmless" topics.

I have been a regular at several places (sometimes coffee shops) across the country where I can sense very real substantive conversations. Sometimes people just need a little nudge to get out of their comfort zone.

Such interactions can help bring people even closer. It takes intention and some experimentation.

one can disagree in open mode (socrates) and disagree in closed mode (Ben Shapiro). If both people are looking forward to learning from the disagreement I find that a lot more fun than if both people are looking forward to appearing smarter than the other person.

There's disagreement and there's verbal battle. Those are not the same.

And another favorite sign of the debating idiocy: the "this-is-a-fallacy" corrector, using fallacy lists to point "logical errors" in discussions...

I enjoy watching the occasional political twitch/youtube streamer or speaker. I couldn't tell you why; I don't feel that most of them leave me feeling any wiser after the conversations end. But the times I come across positions that I haven't traditionally considered or agreed with being well-stated and expounded upon is really enjoyable and usually makes it worth the minutes or hours burned having it playing lightly in the background. Very much in the spirit of this post, like the author I too enjoy being "wrong" or losing debates. The rush of new insight is thrilling. Vaush and Douglas Murray come to mind as some of the recent ones that have said things I find very compelling.

Not long ago as I was exploring those circles I kept hearing this name repeated. A streamer named Destiny. So I started consuming some of his material. And it was absolutely insufferable. This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood. No matter how infinitesmal or semantical the focal point of discussion was it was torn apart to shreds. There was no intent to learn, no hoping for new perspectives. It was solely a sport about feeling correct. It was awful to listen to.

I was shocked to see how popular this person is (given their streams and subscribers). Not only because I felt that overall they were a garbage person to have a parasocial relationship with but because if I found him as awful to listen to as I did, surely a large amount of others would feel the same. And while no doubt others feel like me about him, on the other hand I must be neglecting something. There must be a cadre of people that find (arguably) well defended positions thrilling and almost narcotic. I do not associate with many of those types of people in meatspace and I suppose I had slowly forgotten that there's a significant number of them out there.

But yeah, I'm right there with you. I'm here to learn, and there's others that aren't and will knowingly or otherwise prey upon that willingness by digging their heels in on the most miniscule of points. Makes no sense to me. If the only purpose served by me opening my mouth was to convince the world of my correctness, I would just assume everyone else was as obsinate as myself and wouldn't bother to open my mouth in the first place. Save the calories.

Totally agree re. Destiny. Between him, Vaush, Hasan (ugh), and the rest of them, I feel like we’re intellectually stunting an entire generation of teenagers.

I had a friend in NYC who used to read a tonne load of books but now just watches the 3h Hasan stream every day and then parrots every take the video game streamer says as if it’s gospel. I ended up cutting him out of my life because he just grew so tiring to be around; any conversation had to be directed to how idiotic the other side (code for republicans) is. As a non-American, it grew really old hearing rant about how stupid 40% of their fellow countrymen are.

Listening to someone pretend to get angry and punching down on people less educated isn’t intellectually nourishing, it’s reddit prison slop.

What's interesting to me is how I've started to really dislike people in that mindset/space even when they offer points that I agree with. Take Hasan for example. He says a number of things I agree with when I hear them. But the delivery of them is awful, to the point that it corrodes the foundation on which he stands. It's hard for me to accept that you promote a position of shared empowerment and broad equality when you reject a large contingency of people (based solely on their beliefs no less) as borderline sub-human. Those two things don't mesh. I, like him, am often left bewildered by the positions his opponents sometimes take. But that bewilderment is a sign that I'm lacking information and context, not a sign that I'm dealing with a person who isn't to be treated with at least a modicum of respect.

It reminds me of an exchange between Neil Degrasee Tyson and Richard Dawkins in which Neil tells Dawkins that, while he makes good points, perhaps he should soften his delivery? Because it's hard for the realm of science to pull in new defenders when their staunchest proponents are telling its detractors they are imbeciles. And dawkins fires back with [...]"Science is interesting, and if you don't like it, you can fuck off". EDIT: This exchange must have been in the mid 00's? The birth of the Four-Horsemen-of-Atheism era. The absolutist cultural debate position has a rich history.

There's a time and place to cut ties and not waste time interacting with people that disagree with you. Sometimes the right move is to reject an ideology or group outright. But it seems like the modern concept of that time and place is very skewed.

Reads like these streamers are the left-wing equivalent of conservative AM radio and about half of Fox News' air time. Interesting. I didn't know we had those sorts on "our" side (Maddow and such are a bit similar, but the tone's still not quite like a Shapiro or a Levin or even a Limbaugh). But then, I've spent a grand total of maybe 15 minutes on Twitch, ever. I didn't even know there was political commentary on there.

Since those folks (the AM radio / unhinged Fox News guys) have been wildly successful at getting people to vote a certain way and swing rhetoric hard in the direction they promote, I'm torn on whether or not to be upset about this. If it eventually gets us a developed-world healthcare system and typical-in-most-of-the-rest-of-the-OECD worker protections and benefits, I guess I don't care if shitty psychological manipulation is what does it, if the alternative is that we continue not to manage to achieve those for several more decades. It'd be cool if my elementary-aged kids could have some nice things before they're middle-aged—I've only got 30-40 years left, probably, so have given up hope on any of this happening before I'm ancient, but maybe my kids' kids will fully reap the benefits, on the back half of this century.

> This person treated every single statement as a drawn battle line that is to be defended by every last ounce of mustered anger and blood.

I left a FOSS project that I liked a lot hacking on, because of a person like that. It was painful, but better for my mental health overall.

This is quite interesting, because I find Vaush to be a perfect match for your description: absolutely insufferable debate bro and a hypocrite (the whole "living your values" discussion was very showing).

And Destiny to be a fairly reasonable mostly good-faith debater.

I don't hate debaters, but there is a particular dismissive type that doesn't want to give you an inch or agree to disagree and theirs has to be the last word.

I have an aunt who seems to have a need to disagree at all times. The most amusing example was while she was talking politics with my father and he said “I completely agree with everything you just said.” Her response - “Well you must not have understood me.”

I have your aunt's problem. Speculations like oppositional-defiance disorder and Narcissism have been thrown at me as possible explanations.

I'd argue (heh) that what this behavior boils down to is: I'm restating what you're saying, only in terms I can understand, which makes me come across as argumentative. You're "wrong" only in that what you're saying doesn't compute with me-- I'm really shouting down my own lack of comprehension, which presents as me arguing with you (if that makes any sense). Her response "Well you must not have understood me" is classic Me, but in reality that's textbook projection, which backs me into into a corner I try to get out of...with more arguing!

Even knowing I do this, I can't ever catch myself doing it early enough to stop it; dopamine rush from outrage trumps my ability to dial it back. So I just avoid in-person debates altogether. I'm not aiming to offend anybody and can express my position more clearly in written form.

I have the same issue with understanding code other people write. I don't "get" larger architectures unless I wrote the entire stack myself (again, understanding someone else's concept by reinventing it myself). If I didn't write every goddamn class in the framework, I don't remember they exist or how they work together. Once I realized this I pivoted away from software development; nobody has time or need for another TempleOS.

Unfortunately this behavior is commonly found on the #mentalhealthawareness Narcissistic personality disorder checklists so everyone calls it out as malicious. I suspect autism though, since (for me) this always stems from information-processing difficulties. Make of it what you will.

This describes passivity not social skills. I can't really say that doing nothing or walking away in the face of an unpleasant situation while privately declaring the other people involved "cringe" and "dickheads" and "weenies" really demonstrates great social skills honestly.

It might originate from brain physiology. Daniel Amen had done 5000 brain scans 20 years ago, no idea how many until now. From one of his books i learned that contrarian behaviour can come from a disfunction in the Cingulate cortex.

Whatever i say, the first thing my mother says 95% of the time is "No" or another dismissal. It was astounding to see my son acting the same way, answering "No, thats wrong" to things he doesn't even know!

I have been really contrarian for most part of my life. But i realized how annoying that behaviour is and made an active effort to change it. Through repetition it became a habit to respond positively or neutral.

there's a talk on persuasion - I believe Chris Voss is the presenter - where one of the techniques is to phrase your question so that the answer you want is 'no'. E.g. rather than say 'would you like to go to the movies' you'd say 'is there anything you'd rather do than go to the movies'. It's interesting that this works - he said that saying 'no' is a defensive mechanism that enforces boundaries, maybe more so with some people than others. Then again, his background was hostage negotiation so he probably trained on a skewed sample.

Voss' stuff would usually be pretty shitty to use on people you're friendly with (and I found a lot of the anecdotes in his book... strained credulity, let's say, to be polite) but in this case might actually be great for breaking those "nobody can decide what to do" sorts of situations. Make people actively choose what they'd rather do than what you suggested. Could work.

Awful lot of projection goin on here, mate.

You're not wrong but I think you're overstating things. Honestly if you're that miffed about these conversations maybe it's you.

> Its entirely possible to unlearn these behaviours. The first thing is to realize you don't always have to respond.

> Someone says something wrong in passing? Ignore it, move on.

This is a skill I've worked on for years. Not every conversation needs to be a teaching moment or life or death. Most are just people bullshitting around with each other. Constantly correcting or arguing doesn't help anyone.

Debate clubs have you argue points that you don't necessarily agree with, they compete in rhetorics, not proving they are right.

A wise man argues not to prove he's right, he's arguing to become right.

Assuming (or at least allowing) your "opponent" knows something you don't is about all it takes to take a casual debate from a nuisance to learning experience.

- the one that compulsively comments on formatting without discussing the actual topic ;)

- agreed, though, that these are all flavours of trying to ‘win’ rather than actually contributing meaningfully