Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument
psmag.com
psmag.com
A weaker argument, that is less threatening to self-worth is one way of preventing that your discussion partner goes on the defense.
Another way is to make him feel safer in the sense that he can trust that you will not hurt his feelings. This can be done by affirming that you are on the same page with him, that you and him share the same goal. You can also do this by denying what the other person might be afraid of, such as "I don't think your opinion is stupid" or "I don't want to abolish guns for hunting purposes". These methods come from "Crucial Conversations", it goes in depth on the underlying emotional motivations of conversations. Great book.
Another, cheaper tactic is to acknowledge positive characteristics of the other, making that person feel better about himself. This way, their self-worth is less vulnerable and they are more open to arguments (although this frequently fails because people distrust compliments from people that pose a threat).
I would even go so far as to say that it's not about making a "weaker" argument; it's about making a more socially nuanced argument. Context counts. Subtext counts. They count especially when there's an audience to the argument (real or perceived). When someone feels his face, or dignity, or credibility is on the line, he feels intense pressure to stick to his guns -- and to keep his guns blazing.
Conversational softeners ("You make some great points, but...," or "I agree about X, but have you considered...") are not necessarily about weakening your own argument. They're about lowering psychological defensiveness to your argument. They increase the chances you might actually wind up with a productive dialogue, and after all, results matter more than absolute correctness. IMO, an effective argument is one that makes some headway -- ergo, this isn't really "weakening."
Honestly, I've thought a lot lately about how I argue, and I find I get a lot more accomplished when I lead with "Yes, and". I feel like I should have taken drama instead of band when I was younger and I'd have reached this point sooner.
I took drama lessons when I was a kid and have never regretted it. It's helped me in interviewing, meeting and greeting customers, giving presentations, providing training, all sorts. It's always hard to consider hypotheticals like how would I have fared without the drama training, but I have no doubt it has been a huge help. I'm encouraging my kids to do the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_theatre#Applyi...
Basically you must accept the reality your scene partners put forth and build on it. Otherwise you end up with a confused, amorphous environment with no clear direction.
Improv theatre still needs tension and conflict to emerge. This comes out of the structure of the scene spontaneously. It could be some kind of repetition, pattern, contradiction, physical motion, etc. Ideally, the players don't just rehash old games but are eager to make a new, unusual play.
"Unusual" in this sense relates to the context of the world you're playing in. In a scene, it's not unusual for a coven of witches to kidnap children and boil them in a brew. But it could be unusual for a scientist to discover that brew has miraculous healing properties and to publish the results in Nature. This could be humorous to an audience, because normally there's absolutely no legitimate utilitarian imperative to mix children into a brew.
There are more interesting ideas in improv that relate to politics/business. I recommend anyone interested check out Impro For Storytellers by Keith Johnstone.
http://appliedimprov.ning.com/profiles/blogs/7-keith-johnsto...
> The arguments that are most threatening to opponents are viewed as the strongest and cited most often. Liberals are baby-killers while conservatives won’t let women control their own body. [[examples from the article]]
Both of these are not only threatening, they're over-generalizing to the point of being wrong, and demeaning to the point of being insulting.
This is often true, but it is not always true. One person forms opinions on topic X based on reason and evidence, another based on ideology. It is only the latter who feels threatened by new facts or arguments, precisely because his rational foundation is shaky.
Thus there seems to be a fallacy - I'm not clear whether it is from the linked writer or the researchers he refers to - of assuming in the first place that the opinions being talked about are necessarily based on emotion more than on reason and facts.
Put another way, it's rather presumptuous to say, in essence, this new argument of mine is so strong that if others reject it, it must be due to their irrational ideology rather than the merits.
Edit: I don't mean to disparage the idea of making one's statements more diplomatically rather than contentiously - that is certainly a good thing, but that is a separate issue from presuming the reasons for people's views prior to finding out the actual reasons.
As I read about it, I could remember several instances in my life where I have behaved exactly as described.
The big exception to this is if a third party is adjudicating the argument--like in a debate or trial. In that case, hammering the foe can help establish a perception of confidence and credibility with the 3rd party.
Regarding gun control, the first principles at issue are these:
1. Is life more important than liberty or vice versa? (ooh this reverses vs. the abortion issue regarding political lines)
2. Do we trust the government to fully monopolize force? Do we trust the police? the army? Should the government be there primarily to protect us?
3. What are the implications of one interpretatin of the 2nd Amendment on federal power or another?
(I won't go over my view here, except to say it is not a partisan view.)
The reason is that very often we can find common ground over first principles, and this helps with discussing others without putting the other side on the defensive or shaming.
My point is that people IME who are more likely to see liberty as the winning interest in abortion are more likely to see life as the winning interest in gun control and vice versa.
The whole issue arises because liberty in the abstract cannot have a full victory, because different kinds of liberty collide.
So then you have those who think society's interest in population growth trumps the woman's interest in self-control, and those who think the opposite.
Something similar is true in gun control. If the liberty of gun ownership ends up severely restricting certain people's liberties - after all, you can't really exercise any form of liberty when you're dead - then gun control debate isn't really about liberty in the abstract.
Of course, that doesn't prevent people from phrasing it as such as a matter of rhetorics.
However with regards to "...this reverses vs. the abortion issue regarding political lines", I'll just gently suggest that you reconsider what your first principle question is (without trying to make this a political debate). Is it possible that your assumption that the political lines are illogical is invalid?
A thought: coming up with the right questions is really hard and maybe arguing about the questions will fall along "political lines."
Any organic view of the world will have areas of self-contradiction and these are healthy because they represent points from which change can come. A perfectly consistent view of the world would be a very dismal thing, stagnant and detached from the complexities of life.
1. Nearly everyone agrees that a normal adult has a rights over his/her own body. Eg, a tumor cell has no right to life and the host has every right to kill it. 2. Nearly everyone agrees that the parent of a toddler may not kill the toddler for any reason.
Given these principles, at what point in existence does one qualify as having human rights and on what basis do we identify that point?
Possible criteria include unique DNA (eg, from conception), heartbeat, ability to feel pain, a particular level of cognitive ability, etc.
If a zygote is essentially like a tumor - not yet a human life - then abortion at that stage would be no different morally than having a tooth removed.
If a fetus at 38 weeks is essentially like a newborn, then abortion at that stage would be no different morally than infanticide.
In establishing the criteria for human life, we should consider as many implications as possible. Eg, if humanity is determined by cognitive development, do intelligent people get more right to life than average or impaired people?
If we agreed on these principles and criteria, we could have consistent law. Currently we (in the US) have a hodgepodge; eg, abortion by punch to the abdomen is murder but by scalpel and consent at the same stage of development is just an elective procedure.
That's an important piece of the argument. Is personhood innate (in which case it must begin at conception, sicne there are no other bright lines in development that make universal sense across culture and time)? Or is it a social construct (in which case we have no right to see abortion as different from Roman infanticide)?
In other words, is personhood and human rights innate, in which case you must be a pro-life extremist if you are willing to seriously argue that? Or is personhood socially recognized and constructed, in which case you must accept that abortion is infanticide but also that infanticide is ok if the culture says so? The thing is both of these are relatively extreme viewpoints. Very few on the right want abortion to be punished the same as infanticide, and very few on the left are willing to acknowledge that if abortion is ok, then infanticide must be too (but there are some, see NARAL and Planned Parenthood's defence of killing fetuses born alive after failed late-term abortions).
> In establishing the criteria for human life, we should consider as many implications as possible.
Doesn't that mean we should leave it up to local cultures to sort this out for themselves? If Rome wants to mandate infanticide in the case of severe birth defects, bully for them.
The right answer to all of your questions is, "it depends". For example, a society where everyone is completely free but dies at the age of 5 is not really worth living in, nor is a society where everyone lives to 100 as a slave. Thus there is no one answer to "Is life more important than liberty?"
I think you're missing the point.
The followup question to "It depends" is "On what?" The answer to that question is where commonality begins to form. We might not agree on the exchange rate between freedom and life expectancy, but we will likely agree that there is one.
It reminds me of an old joke:
A man asks a woman if she'd sleep with him for a million dollars. She looks him up and down, smiles, and says "sure." He then asks her if she'd do it for a dollar. She slaps him, asking what sort of girl he thinks she is. He replies she already told him what sort of girl she is and now they're just haggling.
OTOH, in Heisenberg's viewpoint, scientific theories are projections of first principles onto data.
> This is because the world is not black-and-white, while principles are, so they will let you down if you rely on them too heavily.
So what about these two principles:
1. Whoever has the responsibility should have the power that goes with it.
2. Since knowledge is local, power should devolve as far as possible towards local households, neighborhoods, and communities.
Do those fit with your critique or are they something else?
You're right that if we could all agree on these things, political compromise would be easy, or even unnecessary. The problem is, we can't all agree on these things.
Politics works better at the practical level. Not so much "what do you believe," as "what are you prepared to live with" or "what will you give me if I give you something you want."
First the article talks about the need to save honor and avoid shame.
Also full agreement is not needed, just seeking common ground would be helpful.
The problem with political arguments, to be honest, is that our parties, which don't represent our interests, have convinced everyone that they are good and the other guys are evil. I think exploring the common ground in the first principles will help people come together across political lines and clarify where we agree and where we disagree so that the narrow political consensus is not what the big bankers say it is but what the people say it is.
I agree that we would be better off eliciting these sorts of underlying assumptions, and acknowledging them openly, and trying to discuss them - instead of stating value-judgment conclusions on the basis of unstated assumptions about principles.
In other words, people talk past each other, failing to address one another's real concerns. Taking gun control again, the "liberal" thinks the statistics (which may or may not be valid, etc.) are dispositive, while the "conservative" sees instead an issue of basic rights, to which the stats are hardly relevant. There is no progress unless each is willing to directly address the premises the other relies on.
But that is based on an idea that life is more important than liberty, right? That statement follows from it.
The trouble here is that, especially compared to loss of life, liberty is an abstraction, and the effects of removing it are difficult to quantify.
For example, how much violence is prevented by armed citizens, which studies indicate are a major deterrent? (Keep in mind, police are rarely able to do anything more than identify bodies after-the-fact). [0][1]
Or, to put it to the express purpose of the 2nd Amendment, what impact would total gun control have on the probability of the US eventually becoming a tyrannical state?
Reasoning from first principles is definitely a good start. For example, no pro-choice advocate likes the idea of dead fetuses/babies (whichever term makes you feel more comfortable), just as no conservative likes the idea of sick grandmothers dying in their homes or poor people starving.
There's still plenty of disagreement about how to get there, and a lot of it depends on how you define your terms, and how deeply you consider the indirect consequences of each side's proposed solution.
[0] http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/nov/16/burglars-fear-resid...
So you might be able to arrive at a consensus on first principles, but that doesn't mean anybody will update their beliefs. They'll just come up with new reasons to believe them.
The problem with the political tribalism is that since we believe we have very little in common we ally ourselves with those who do not share our interests on the basis of manufactured agreement. I think it is only once one can attack that process that we can come together to update beliefs.
I consider myself fairly far right of center (not in a tea-party way, in a Distributist way). One of the most useful things i have found is that if I start off with a critique of the right, I can often get the left to listen to me on the rest.
I guess I always felt people didn't value this trait but I needed to have it spelled out for me in this article. Why in the world would any person value themselves more having been right all along. Why wouldn't they care about educating themselves every day.
Some things they have in common are: they're both very slow to form an opinion, seldom have an opinion on anything they don't need to have an opinion about, very interested to hear new evidence or arguments about something they do have an interest in, and very gracious about letting you down gently if they do have to win an argument (even if they can be colossal dicks in many other respects). Uninformed people think they're dumb.
tl;dr Roger Sterling is the smartest person on Mad Men.
The book that really opened my eyes on this was de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics. And, perhaps just as importantly, a book about acting: Johnstone's Impro.
One of the key insights I took away was that if you directly attacked an enemy in a weak area, the enemy would defend in that area, making him strong there. Almost always you would end up with an impenetrable wall on both sides.
There's an art to pressing your advantage in an area without making it an 'attack'.
(In the end, I never really got that good and haven't played for years, so actual good Go players may find my insight pretty naive.)
24/7 media, and national coverage when somebody "flip-flops," might have contributed to politicians doing this less often, but I'm not sure.
And don't forget that a political debate isn't supposed to end with either politician changing their mind; it's supposed to end up with the spectators making up their mind about the politicians (which is why in those sorts of debates, you're supposed to use arguments that appeal mostly to your own supporters, assuming you have enough of them.)
I'm not trying to change the person's mind when I enter into a debate, I'm trying to plant a seed of empathy for them to see things from another perspective so that their own brain begins to work against their existing bias.
I also tend to be one of those crazy people that believe their are a lot of grey areas when science isn't involved.
You leave out the possibility that you were wrong.
I used to get very frustrated with shoddy work from subcontractors. I found that the more I directly documented the quality of the work, the worse they'd harden their position. I learned there are better ways to operate. (And if they still don't fix things when presented softly, it's better to fire than to try and convince someone who can't learn.)
In hindsight, once I humiliated the PM, he couldn't turn things around. I should have set it up that they were reporting to me, and pushed them with a "Here's how you can succeed in making the client love you guys" message rather than being confrontational. If they didn't react to that, I could have then replaced them.
I make a stronger and radically (more inflammatory if you wish) than the person I am talking to. It has to be just inflammatory enough for them to start defending the weaker more moderate position, basically leaning towards the direction you'd want to persuade them originally. For example, I have some hard core Fox News watching Republicans in my extended family. So sometimes when they bring health care and how it distributes wealth to the lazy and it is not free market and such. I bring grandma so and so and how she is just mooching off our government with the medicare. She never paid all that in her life and she is part of the socialist communist system that is robbing the country. Then they usually start to backpedal -- well...you see this is different and they argue for how the country should take care of the elderly and so on...
Anyway I do it more for fun and amusement if someone makes the mistake of bringing the topic up, rather than hoping to actually convince them.
And maybe this is well studies and has a name I just don't know what it is called. "Act crazier than the crazies"?
It has been used by politicians quite successfully. Like for example if a party wants to make abortions illegal after 3 months of pregnancy, it's better if they start from an outrageous position, like criminalizing all abortions, after which their real target starts being seen as a reasonable compromise. This also works the other way too. Many people that are anti abortions have had abortions themselves or have family members that did - throwing jail time into the conversation or other outrageous positions like criminalizing pregnancies without a license, does wonders, but of course, politicians have to be more careful otherwise they risk losing votes.
If you pay attention, this happens all the time.
> without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism
For example, as a programmer, how do I know what the correct immigration level should be? How should I know if we should intervene in Syria?
Even if I follow the news, a few articles and news clips really aren't going to give me enough information to make an educated decision.
Those judgments aren't necessarily bad in themselves. For example, as a pacifist, I might be happy to err on the side of non-interventionism as long as the situation is sufficiently unclear.
These substitutions only really become problematic when we close ourselves to new data that might change our mind.
These are all true statements. Most people are not as smart or good or worthwhile as they believe, myself included. That makes true rational implementation of policy extremely unlikely .