Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument

http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-never-work-64910/

by JoshTv • 13 years ago

97 61 13 years ago

tehwalrus• 13 years ago

Politics is the art of persuading people they already agree with you. Subtler arguments are much better than brazen ones for doing this, and getting people to change their mind - and good politicians exploit this fact whenever they're in a setting that lets them.

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.)

sitkack• 13 years ago

Or if you want to have a population with a dogmatic rigid attitude then you make everything a symbol for "who they are and what they believe in." I have been to countries that are more nationalistic than the USA and many minds are closed when it comes to even realizing that questions can be asked. The sphere of what is the truth is so large it obscures all vision.

dsego• 13 years ago

Funny to read knee-jerk reactions in the comment section. Many commenters missed the point completely.

ChikkaChiChi• 13 years ago

'Winning an argument' is a magic bullet that doesn't exist. Otherwise it would be called 'teaching'

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.

tomjen32• 13 years ago

There are two issues that I can see with that style of debate: you assume that the other doesn't have empathy for your point of view and that he would agree with you if he had.

You leave out the possibility that you were wrong.

rjprins• 13 years ago

The best insight here is that self-worth and fear of shaming are the main motivators for not agreeing.

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).

euroclydon• 13 years ago

Great point! So many comments on HN need to start off with one such sentence. I think this is called etiquette.

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

Absolutely.

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."

DanHulton• 13 years ago

This feels a lot like John Cleese's advice on creativity within teams: You need to be surrounded by people who will build on ideas with you, not people who will lead with "no". The moment you have a person in the room with you who will shoot you down on an idea, trust falters and creativity dies.

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.

aray• 13 years ago

Also not making a discussion into an argument between adversaries.

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.

ds92• 13 years ago

"The best insight here is that self-worth and fear of shaming are the main motivators for not agreeing."

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.

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

Could it be that the tendency to preserve the coherence of one's views goes beyond self-worth? E.g., most people, I think, would try to avoid holding in their minds ideas which don't agree with each other. So, if your previously acquired ideas are already leaning this way, they may tend to oppose new ideas that are leaning that way.

Buttons840• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance -- I believe this idea is called "cognitive dissonance", and has been demonstrated in some interesting studies.

As I read about it, I could remember several instances in my life where I have behaved exactly as described.

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

For me, the key way of thinking is that if I want someone to agree with me, my argument needs to make sense to them from within their own internal perspective. So to be effective I need to understand their perspective first, then see if what I want can be fit into it respectfully.

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.

Kequc• 13 years ago

My take away here is that we need to educate people in such a way they view ones' ability to change their position given new evidence as a positive. Like scientists do.

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.

slurry• 13 years ago

I have a couple of older relatives who were gentleman's-C athlete types at an Ivy League school. Majored in History or something. Both very successful in banking.

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.

wpietri• 13 years ago

Because arguments often end up being proxy battles for social status, and we're hardwired for those.

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.

mistercow2• 13 years ago

The amount of education that requires is, unfortunately, tremendous. Learning to overcome instinctive thought patterns is difficult and requires dedication, and even at the end of all of that, you'll sometimes fail. Education can show people the way, but it can't force them to put in the practice.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

I have also said we should talk more about first principles and less about the policy arguments at first.

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.

tomjen32• 13 years ago

I am not sure about your point two. Abortion isn't nearly as split along party lines as you may think, except among the leaders of the parties and a few extremists.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

I said political lines, not party lines.

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.

jpwagner• 13 years ago

I couldn't agree more with your "first principle" approach.

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."

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

Actually I kind of agree with you. I noted it mostly because it occurred to me that this was odd, and that's an indication that there is something that can be talked about, questioned, and discussed there.

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.

nathan_long• 13 years ago

Agreed about "first principles". This is how I'd frame the abortion debate:

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.

jpadkins• 13 years ago

My thoughts on this topic have also followed this same line of reasoning. My conclusion was to use the existing standard we already accepted for legal death. There is an established standard for when a doctor can declare someone 'legally dead' (absence of heartbeat and brainwaves). We should use the inverse for a legal definition of life. If a doctor can detect a heartbeat and certain brainwaves, then a second is involved and all laws applying to humans are in effect.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

Given these principles, at what point in existence does one qualify as having human rights and on what basis do we identify that point?

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.

mikeash2• 13 years ago

I rather disagree. In my opinion, principles exist as a fallback when you don't have enough information, time, or intelligence to reason something fully. 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.

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?"

nitid_name• 13 years ago

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.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

In my opinion, principles exist as a fallback when you don't have enough information, time, or intelligence to reason something fully.

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?

snowwrestler2• 13 years ago

As the article implies, this is exactly the type of argument that goes nowhere in politics, because the questions are too big.

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."

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

I don't think that at all for a couple reasons.

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.

ds92• 13 years ago

Those are the relevant first principles according to you. As the linked writer indicates, others believe the relevant principle is something like "whatever policy will produce the best outcome, according to statistics such as firearm deaths, is the right one".

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.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

Those are the relevant first principles according to you. As the linked writer indicates, others believe the relevant principle is something like "whatever policy will produce the best outcome, according to statistics such as firearm deaths, is the right one".

But that is based on an idea that life is more important than liberty, right? That statement follows from it.

nateabele• 13 years ago

1. Is life more important than liberty or vice versa? (ooh this reverses vs. the abortion issue regarding political lines)

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...

[1] http://people.duke.edu/~gnsmith/articles/myths.htm

mistercow2• 13 years ago

The problem is that people almost never apply the same reasoning to political issues as they do to non-political questions of fact. There are too many tribal issues in the way, and constructing believable arguments is often more advantageous in a tribal society than being right. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

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.

einhverfr10• 13 years ago

It doesn't have to be a consensus. The point though is that with some common ground we can talk about issues and over time this can help people evolve their beliefs on both sides.

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.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

A mentor explained this to me as, "If you want someone to do something, you have to let them save face. If someone screws something up and you want them to fix it, you can't humiliate them in the process."

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.)

tocomment2• 13 years ago

Would you mind providing some examples? I can't really picture what you're talking about?

mathattack2• 13 years ago

Example: I recommend a client to hire a specific 3rd party consulting firm that will work side by side with my team from the product vendor. The firm's salesman agrees to my methodology and deliverables. The project starts, and their project team starts making up their own methodology, and staffs it with underskilled resources. I raise this to the salesman, who raises it to the PM, who digs in. So I gather an email chain of all the mistakes his team has made. And their PM digs in even more. The client is getting antsy about missed deadlines all around. So I get an extremely detailed report on every failure their team has made, and send it to the PM, the salesman, the senior partner responsible for the client and senior partner responsible for the practice area. The PM has to save face, so all he can say is, "You're not there day to day to understand." The client meanwhile gets hosed.

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.

chrismealy• 13 years ago

This is true in the short run, but in the long run you can wear people down and get through to them. Nobody said politics was easy.

AndrewKemendo• 13 years ago

And if you’re wrong about a bunch of things, you’re obviously not as smart or as good or as worthwhile a person as you previously believed.

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 .

IvyMike• 13 years ago

Once upon a time, I learned to play the game Go.

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.)

hackula1• 13 years ago

Risk has this same dynamic. Going head to head on main choke does nothing but let the other players come in and mop the floor with you and your opponent.

janson0• 13 years ago

I agree. This also shows up in Stratego on some levels, with the interesting twist that you can't understand the size of the force in each area.

dwaltrip• 13 years ago

Go is an awesome game and, dare I say, strategically superior to chess ;)

tocomment2• 13 years ago

I've always found it interesting that most people have really strong opinions on complex political questions to begin with.

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.

nhaehnle2• 13 years ago

Based on Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, I would suggest that it is a case of substitution: We (often unconsciously) substitute a hard question for an easier question. In your examples, that might be: Did you have good experiences with immigrants? How do you feel about war more generally?

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.

rdtsc2• 13 years ago

I use another tactic sometimes, somewhat related.

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"?

bad_user• 13 years ago

This works well and it's called shifting the overton window: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

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.

rdtsc2• 13 years ago

Yes, thank you. I knew it has to have a name.

adamzochowski• 13 years ago

Looks like a variant of Poe's Law.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

pbreit• 13 years ago

I would have liked to have seen some examples or research affirming the assertion. The research all seemed to deny the other-way-around.

Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument

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