I used to do debate. You might be surprised by how often that was used as a response to me whilst I was in a heated “discussion” (Argument? Dialogue? I know, footnote1). Something along the lines of “well, you did debate, so…”.
The premise is “you are using your skills in debate, which I do not have” and the conclusion “this unfairly affects the course of the discussion, giving unearned weight to your points, characterisations, and mechanisations”. There is of course some merit to this: just because I can remember a historical anecdote does not mean I am more right. Just because I sometimes pull out some bigger words does not decide what is true. However, if there’s anything I would both want myself to embody, for others to see, and I think that more people should try and do, it’s: We should work together on this.
I’m going to sound somewhat pretentious and say: when discussing something with someone we should generally be trying to find the truth. Of course, we should always be considerate of others feelings (or our own), aware of our surroundings, how time might be better spent, and the value of whatever we are discussing, but if we are talking about something anyway then the goal should be to come to the truest conclusion. That involves accepting that oneself may be wrong, both in part or in whole.
Many people are willing to say that, “of course I can be wrong!”, but when was the last time you had a long discussion and realised you were, in fact, quite wrong? If its never, or nowhere near half, then you probably aren’t doing this well enough. Maybe you are indeed willing to be proved wrong, but somehow it never happens, and there are two main possible explanations: You are so incredibly smart and therefore so rarely wrong (unlikely), or everyone else needs to get better at trying to convince you. Well, it’s probably the second case and the solution is simple: help them. Picture that you are wrong, that they are here to help you, and ask what you can say to make them better at convincing you. Sounds weird but this mental model is helpful in so many ways and if you think about it, has no real costs.
Let’s get a bit more specific. The best way to march towards mutual understanding is to cooperate with the other person, and hope they cooperate in return. The same trust building techniques that sadly can be misused to convince someone of something (because trust can be misused) can also be used (and are much better served) to convince someone to work with you toward truth. Here are a few, in order of obvious to less so. I have included the reason these are hard to do:
- Admitting you’re wrong – “I see now that I was wrong” – People might think this is a concession that you are dumb
- Asking for clarification – “You used a big word and I don’t know what it means” – People might think this is a concession that you are dumb
- Correcting a misunderstanding of your own – “I didn’t understand what the point you were trying to make was until now” – People might think this is a concession that you are dumb
- Not responding to a point because it is at the limits of your knowledge – “I’ve never worked with that so I can’t say” – People might think this is a concession that you are dumb
- Admitting you have focused on the wrong point, moved goalposts, or used some other logical fallacy, essentially apologising for your discussion conduct – “I realise this thing we’ve been talking about, that I brought up, isn’t relevant to the original point” – People might think this is a concession that you’re dumb and that you may be debating in bad faith.2
- Earnestly agreeing with a point if you agree with it, rather than just saying “yes, but” – “Yeah that’s a good point and I even know an anecdote so-and-so that supports your point” – This one really shouldn’t be hard but I guess it just feels wrong to suddenly “be on the side” of someone who on the broader point you disagree with?
Except you are on their side! This is a colleague or a family member or a friend! Even if not, if they are the worst person ever, you must consider you are on the side of the future version of them that believes in all of the same obviously-important-and-correct things that you do!
Wait wait, what if I’m the one that’s wrong?
Well then, try and work out if that’s the case! The best way to do that is then for both of you to cooperate to change your view. The final target of who ends up changing their view in whole or in part has changed, the method has not.
The problem is that when a third or fourth or more party is present, this logic is, sadly, not nearly as important. Convincing many people of something can be a goal of it’s own, and if it’s convincing them of the truth, it could even be noble. Sadly I think this has created a sort of selection bias. The value of finding the truth (for yourself and your interlocutor) doesn’t change depending on the number of people watching. The “value” of convincing those watchers scales linearly with their number. This means that on average, the average discussion we see gears towards the latter (we watch people who have many viewers, so they are encouraged to convince those viewers), whereas the former is actually the situation you are most likely to be in yourself (most people don’t stream their thanksgiving arguments to thousands of netizens). That’s to say: we are more likely to see a style of discussion that isn’t relevant to most of the discussions we are likely to have.
As an interesting aside, what about this very post? It may have a few readers, presumably the “convincing people of the truth” applies? It does, and short of stream-of-consciousnessing this and every other piece, I just try my best to be intellectually honest. In my about, I have written “I write [so] I can stop thinking about [things] and think about something else”. My critic, discussion partner, co-debater, is myself and more than half of all my drafts die because some ways through I convince myself I’m wrong (and usually that means there isn’t much interesting to write about). It’s still edited though, where poorly worded or incorrect sentences are deleted before you could read them, saving me from having to apologise. Difficult questions are perhaps avoided, and easy ones made rhetorical. You, dear reader, I hope will still view them with healthy scepticism.
This has been a bit of a ramble but the core is this:
- You’re goal should be to have true beliefs in your own mind, it’s like the most important thing.
- Cooperating with others feels good, encourages them to do the same, and is the best way to convince yourself of something if you are indeed wrong.
- This has the fun side effect of also being the most good faith way of convincing people that they are wrong, if they are indeed wrong.
The first step to being right about everything is finding what things you’re wrong about. Other people can help you do that, if you cooperate with them.
- I like “discussion” because it feels the simplest and most neutral. Having a “chat” or conversation is something else, there’s clearly something being disagreed upon. “Debate” is too formal and just invites that “well yeah but I didn’t have formal training in this” response. Argument, dispute, disagreement, are all too negative and undermine the goal that I’d like to set, put forward with this post ↩︎
- If it isn’t obvious by now you need to stop worrying about if people think you are dumb. Reasons: 1. if making these concessions materially changes their view of you, they are hardly worth talking to anyways 2. This is a good way of building confidence in oneself. ↩︎