
Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument - JoshTv
http://www.psmag.com/politics/why-even-your-best-arguments-never-work-64910/
======
rjprins
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).

~~~
jonnathanson
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
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.

~~~
oscilloscope
"Yes, and" refers to one of the techniques of improvisational theatre.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_theatre#Applyi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_theatre#Applying_improv_principles_in_life)

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...](http://appliedimprov.ning.com/profiles/blogs/7-keith-johnstone-
theories)

------
einhverfr
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.

~~~
nathan_long
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
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.

~~~
PavlovsCat
But doesn't the direction matter? Not having a heartbeat because the heart is
still forming seems different from not having a heartbeat because, well, the
heart isn't beating anymore.

------
Kequc
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
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.

------
IvyMike
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
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
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.

------
tehwalrus
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.)

------
ChikkaChiChi
'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.

~~~
tomjen3
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.

------
mathattack
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.)

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

~~~
mathattack
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.

------
sitkack
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.

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

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

------
tocomment
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.

~~~
nhaehnle
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.

------
AndrewKemendo
>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 .

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

------
chrismealy
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.

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

