It should be noted that some of this was learned from either myself or others failing to actually live up to it and is therefore somewhat theoretical.
Rules of Engagement
- Don’t start an argument and then leave. If you don’t have potentially a few hours to spend on this, wait until you do.
- Don’t start an argument without telling the other person. If you just jump in guns a-blazin’ when the other person is just pos(i)ting their opinion and is not prepared for a full-on argument, it can come across as overly aggressive. You don’t have to both simultaneously recite “1-2-3-4 I declare an idea war” (though bonus points if you do) but you should make sure the other person is on the same page, context-wise.
- Are you arguing or just yelling? Don’t argue with someone who isn’t open to hearing your point of view. If you know them well enough you can probably figure out for yourself if that’s the case, otherwise you should seek explicite confirmation that they are actually willing to engage in an argument in good faith. If not, you’re both wasting your time and energy. Err on the side of not believing people on the Internet when they say they want to hear the opposing opinion, and don’t go into an argument angry (or argue with an angry person).
- Also, don’t leave an argument angry. If you’re angry at the end of an argument then that’s not the end of the argument (assuming you both are still arguing in good faith; see above). Either go further or, if you don’t think you can (you might need to cool off first), summarize what’s happened in a way that identifies the salient points of disagreement (and hopefully points of agreement) and makes it clear that, if nothing else, both parties were listened to. Leaving an argument angry is a great way to justify ignoring everything the other person said (which is not what we’re here to do, in case that wasn’t clear).
- Know when to move on. On any given point (not necessarily the subject as a whole) if you have more than 5 substantive exchanges (in meatspace you’ll likely have to approximate this number) without anyone changing their mind it’s probably best to agree to disagree and move on to the next point before things start to get too heated.
- Don’t call the other person Hitler. Just don’t.
- Don’t be afraid to agree. You can agree with someone’s position without agreeing with their argument (e.g. you reached the same conclusion but with different reasoning), and you can agree with someone’s argument without agreeing with their position (e.g. you can follow the same reasoning to reach a different conclusion). You can even agree with someone’s argument and position but disagree with them morally (e.g. their reason for making that argument and reaching that conclusion makes you kind of queasy and you’re pretty sure they’re secretly eugenicists). So long as you are clear as to the extent of your agreement, you shouldn’t be afraid to find common ground upon which to build the rest of the discussion. This is not an all-or-nothing process.
- There’s no I in “ideologically cohesive socio-political group.” If someone says “group A does/says/believes/etc…,” just because you personally do not do/say/believe/etc… does not mean that that statement is not true of the group as a whole. You cannot claim to be speaking for your group if what you’re saying goes against the widely held and publicized beliefs of that group. If it is the case that you differ from your group in this way, it is possible that you have found a point of compromise with the “other side,” and rather than righteously defending your position, you might build on that difference to add nuance and common ground (see above) to the argument. Likewise, when you encounter another person who seems to hold views that are different than those of the majority of their group, do not use that person’s views to argue against the rest of the group—except insofar as the rest of the group implicitly endorses those views (fill in the obvious example here).
- Just say no to logical fallacies. I’m not going to provide an exhaustive list here, but check out Idea Channel’s fallacy playlist for some of the biggies, or just go to Wikipedia. The one I will point out, because it’s easy to overlook as you’re arming yourself with all of these fallacies, is the fallacy fallacy: fallaciously assuming because an argument employs fallacious reasoning that the statement(s) it is trying to prove is(are) incorrect. Also (and this relates back to point 7),
- Exercise the principle of charity. The principle of charity directs us to use an interpretation of the other person’s argument that is as rational as possible. In other words, address the strongest version of the other person’s argument. In the simplest cases, this means not saying, “Well I don’t know who Brack Obama is but he sure sounds terrible, good thing Barack Obama is who we were talking about *smugface*.” In more complicated cases, it means actually restating the other person’s argument for them in a way that removes fallacies or inconsistencies, creating the strongest argument possible for what they’ve identified as their position. But also:
- Always restate the other person’s argument. This is a feature of formal debate where one side is not allowed to proceed with their own argument until they have stated the opposing side’s argument in a way the opposing side agrees with. This prevents making strawman arguments, and allows the other person to self-identify weaknesses or clear up any confusion, which can save a lot of time and energy down the road. It can sometimes feel a little clunky to do this in casual arguments, but it really is very helpful.
- Know when and how to admit defeat. Sometimes, shocking as it may be, the other person is right. At such times you should not only be able to admit it but also be able to do so in a way that doesn’t make the other person feel like a bully and doesn’t make you feel like an idiot.
12a. You can lose the battle but win the war…the idea war. Admitting the other person is right doesn’t just apply to the argument as a whole; conceding individual points is a good way to show you’re engaging in good faith, and you can do so in a way that helps relieve some of the tension that may have built up.
Know Your Enemy
- Arguing is a two-way street. Get the other person to state their position and their reasoning as clearly and thoroughly as possible, and ask clarifying questions to get the complete picture. Firstly, you want to avoid making a strawman argument, so knowing what they actually think is important. Secondly, you want to have as many angles of attack as possible, and that includes both the weak-points of their argument and knowing the more emotional/moral basis for their belief (we’ll come back to that), so you want as much detail as possible. Thirdly, when people state their own arguments in full, and especially when they’re asked to clarify certain points, they feel less defensive and are more likely to notice the flaws in their own argument. (Also: https://xkcd.com/1984/)
- Reframe your argument with their point of view. This one is possibly the most important strategy of all. Everyone has a moral framework underlying their positions. By putting your argument in terms of the other person’s moral framework, you make it much more palatable. The most obvious example of where this is often not done is in regard to environmental issues. “Save the Planet” is pretty much guaranteed to get you nowhere with anyone who doesn’t already agree with you (and for that matter it might put off people who do agree with you *coughlikemecough*). Conservatives’ moral framework focuses on purity, liberty, and security. So talk about maintaining the purity of our natural resources, talk about being energy self-sufficient so we don’t have to rely on foreign oil, talk about how not being embroiled in the places where said foreign oil comes from will make us safer, talk about the economic benefits, talk about how climate change is destroying our coffee supply, talk about literally anything but “the environment” and “the planet” and “Mother Earth.” Okay, I’m getting side-tracked ‘cause this a pet peeve of mine, but seriously, we’re not destroying the planet, we’re destroying our habitat. The planet will still be here long after we’ve wiped ourselves out. Also apparently the polio epidemic started because we had clean water. That’s not really relevant but it is interesting. Anyway, moving on.
- Fill in the gap. Let’s say you’ve worn someone down and you think they’re about convinced but something seems to be holding them back. If someone is putting this much effort in defending their position, that position is probably pretty important to them. If they find out they’re wrong, that could be a deeply unsettling epiphany, and they might rebel against it rather than face this brave new world. So make sure you’re giving them something to replace that position with—don’t just be anti- their thing, be pro- your thing. This connects to the point above in that it will likely be helpful to explain how this new position fits into their pre-existing framework.
- Belief ≠ Attitude. Studies have found that people who, for example, are anti-vaccines can in fact be convinced by the facts, and can come away believing that vaccines don’t, for example, cause autism. However, these same people will still say that they are not likely to vaccinate their child. This is yet another reason why accessing the other person’s moral framework is important, because you need to connect the facts to the underlying foundations on which the person’s beliefs are founded. Facts just aren’t enough. To which point:
- Don’t let your expertise get in the way of your empathy. You might be a nerd for urban planning, have written papers about aesthetics, or be the most wokestest of activists, but it’s easy to forget that you weren’t just told all this knowledge and then immediately became a new person. A lot of us fall into the trap of thinking that the only reason people don’t have the same beliefs as we do is that they don’t have all the facts. It’s called knowledge deficit theory and it is ironically difficult to get people to stop relying on it. When simply relating the facts fails to change someone’s mind, it’s possibly because you haven’t addressed what they see as the problem, which may be based on a misunderstanding of the facts or may just be from their own personal experience which all the facts in the world can’t refute. This issue comes up a lot in discussions of white privilege, since poor white people have a hard time identifying any sort of privilege in their own lives. In that case, facts alone aren’t going to cut it. You need to validate their personal experience (to some extent, but that’s a more complicated and specific discussion for another time) before you can explain to them why the facts are true despite their personal experience.
5a. “Ignorance: a hugely important thing in all life. It is the thing that happens before knowing things. It’s different from intolerance: ignorance. When you meet someone who just doesn’t know something yet, the way you’re gonna find out that they don’t know it yet is through their big flappy mouth. When we discourage that— That’s what kittens are doing when they’re attacking a paper ball on the floor. You don’t tell the kitten, ‘[K]nock it off! You can’t eat that! Get in your kitten hole! Be a more efficient kitten!’ We love experimentation and play—it is vital to us as a species.” — Dan Harmon, Harmontown ep. #130: “There’s Nothing To Be Ashamed of Except America”
I still really like this quote even if I sprinkle a few more grains of salt on it than I used to.
Technicalities
- ts;dcmm (too short; didn’t change my mind). Take the time to fully develop a thought so that your interlocutor can respond to your whole point and not just a piece. It shows you’ve thought a lot about the subject, giving you credibility, and it puts everyone on the same page. It also means you’re not constantly having to backtrack to add to something you said previously. Avoid flippant responses or easy jabs, and err on the side of explication rather than leaving a loaded statement up to interpretation (for example, don’t just say “It’s like episode 62 of Star Trek:TNG and therefore you’re wrong.” Explain why that is.) This is also a good way to make sure this is a good-faith argument—if the other person expresses antipathy toward the length of your response or ignores large chunks of what you’ve said, then you should get out (though also if someone’s been having a long argument where they’ve responded to everything and then you pop in and they’re like tl;dr, it probably means they have no response and are retreating to save face. So congrats, you won!).
- But outlines are better than novels. This is specific to text-based arguments, but formatting is a must—bullet points/numbering, bold font, italics, etc. Make your argument easy to track so the other person gets as much out of it as possible.
- Cite your sources. This is also more for non-meatspace arguments as most people aren’t walking around with the APA citation for that one study about GMOs or whatever. Where possible, link to a relevant source (or better yet, more than one) any time you state something as a fact. In meatspace, if you say you know something try to explain how you know it, and offer to send the person links/references as a follow-up. Also, always read the other person’s sources.
Speaking of Sources…
Many of these ideas were drawn from the You Are Not So Smart podcast. For more see episode 86, “Change My View,” episode 88, “Moral Arguments,” and the four-part series on the Backfire Effect, episodes 93, 94, 95, and (especially) 120—the first two parts are interesting but are somewhat contradicted by more recent findings, as discussed in part 4, while part 3 is about how to avoid triggering the Backfire Effect and should be interpreted in conjunction with the new findings. All of the information that I’ve drawn from those episodes for this document was filtered through my own interpretation (and memory), and simplified enough to be summed up in a pithy paragraph, so I highly recommend taking a listen for yourself.
Other parts of this document were stolen from previous things I’ve written, namely as part of the original Great Political Screed.
Thanks to the people who offered their thoughts on how to have a constructive argument when I asked them out of the blue if they had any. And to the people who happened to have just visited with their in-laws and happened to have a relevant anecdote without even having to be asked.
Also special thanks to everyone I’ve ever argued with or watched argue (I’m looking at you, Facebook comment threads).
And if you’ve read this far, thanks to you too.
And if you’ve read this far, no thanks for you, you’ve had enough.
And if you’ve read this far, comment below with questions, comments, or additional rules because you clearly have nothing better to do.
Certain of Eventual Failure 