Tips for Debate, part 2

These are the rest of my tips for debating controversial questions well.

6. Be charitable.

a. You are flawed too.

Other people are very often biased, under-informed, or otherwise mistaken about politics. But almost certainly, so are you. So the current disagreement might not be due to their error. Even if it is, cut them some slack.

b. Your “opponents” are probably not lying about their beliefs and reasons.

E.g., if they say they oppose drug prohibition because they think it violates people’s rights, assume that’s what they really think; do not assume that they really just want to get high.

c. They probably do not reject your fundamental values.

Assume they value things like freedom, prosperity, happiness, etc. It’s not the case that they don’t care about children, or they want people to be shot, or they want the poor to get sick and die.

d. They probably are not completely irrational.

People make many mistakes in politics. But if you can’t even see any prima facie logic to someone’s position, then you probably haven’t understood it.

e. They are not paid shills.

People are not just pretending to disagree with you because a rich person paid them off. They really are not convinced by your reasons. E.g., people are not pretending to believe in gun rights because the gun industry paid them off, or to believe in capitalism because the Koch brothers paid them off, or to believe in socialism because George Soros paid them off.

f. Don’t assume your opponent doesn’t know anything you don’t.

You don’t know anything close to all the relevant information about the issue. I can say that, because basically no one comes close to knowing all the relevant information about any of the major controversial political issues. It is very likely that the person who disagrees with you knows some information or arguments that you don’t.

g. Don’t straw-man.

Assume your opponent holds the most reasonable view that could plausibly explain his words, not the stupidest one. If someone says, “Guns kill people,” he probably does not mean that guns kill people all on their own, without any person doing anything; so don’t waste time attacking that view. If someone says that blacks commit more crimes than whites, he probably does not mean that every black person is a criminal or that no white person is, so don’t waste time attacking that.

h. Don’t weak-man.

When defending a position, don’t just address the least reasonable opponents. Address the most plausible, most interesting, and/or most common opposing positions. (See http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/.)

i. Check your understanding of their view

If you’re not sure what someone is saying, or they seem to be saying something incredibly stupid, ask them for further explanation before responding. If they say that they didn’t mean the incredibly stupid thing, accept that.

7. Don’t confuse issues.

a. Don’t let your central position dictate every other answer.

When other issues come up in the conversation, do not just adopt whatever position on every other question you have to adopt in order to defend your original position. Rather, think about what is an independently plausible answer to each question.

If you’re afraid to do that, that means that you’re afraid that your original position isn’t true.

b. Don’t change the subject.

When you’re talking to someone about issue X, do not insert your opinions about other controversial issues. Doing so derails the conversation and guarantees that no progress will be made. Example: Someone criticizes the current President for raising the budget deficit. Do not respond by complaining that some other President raised the deficit. That is irrelevant. Also do not allude to your views about the minimum wage, racial discrimination, education, health care, etc.

c. Don’t raise ten different issues at once.

If you want to have a purposeful discussion with someone, pick one issue to discuss. On that one issue, do not make arguments that depend on your controversial views on multiple other issues. E.g., to defend your controversial position on health care, don’t rely on your controversial views about race, and the minimum wage, and capitalism, and education, and . . . Doing so guarantees that no one will be persuaded and no progress will occur.

8. Don’t be tribal.

a. Don’t argue about whose group is superior.

Do not carry on debates about whether Democrats are better than Republicans, or atheists are better than Christians, etc. These “debate topics” are too vague and open-ended for anything to be accomplished, and they mainly just provoke tribal emotions and invite unedifying personal attacks. No one will ever be convinced to give up their religion by, e.g., someone arguing that atheists are better than religious people.

Corollary: if someone points to a bad thing that a politician did, don’t try to defend it by saying that some politician on the “other side” did something else bad. If someone criticizes a policy, don’t respond by attacking some other policy promoted by “the other side”. Those responses are irrelevant and just invite tribalism.

b. Members of your group are sometimes wrong.

Don’t refuse to admit that someone did something wrong just because they’re from your group.

c. Members of the other group are sometimes right.

Do not refuse to recognize good points just because they were stated by someone from another group. The truth of a statement should be evaluated on its merits, not by which group the speaker belongs to.

d. And sometimes show moral virtues.

People on the other side of you politically are typically normal people. Some are even good people. You’re not being disloyal to your group if you praise something about someone in the other group. You’re being decent.

9. Have modest aims.

a. Accept the possibility of continuing disagreement.

The other person will not drastically change their mind on an issue during a single conversation. They may not ever change their mind even with multiple conversations. If you really need people to agree with you, don’t talk about controversial issues.

b. Try to attain mutual understanding.

Given (a), the most realistic goal for a conversation about politics is that you and the other person or people come to better understand each other’s views and why you hold them.

c. Recognize issues that could not reasonably be expected to be resolved.

Some issues are obviously not going to be resolved, so try to work around them. E.g., if you’re discussing education policy, and it turns out that the other person is of a different religion from you, don’t try to first convert them to your religion (or non-religion) before addressing education. Try to see what can be said about education without resolving which religion is correct.

10. Don’t waste time.

Whether this is an in-person conversation or a written exchange, you and your interlocutor have limited time. It’s surprising how quickly the available time will get used up without your having accomplished anything. To avoid this:

a. Do not cavil about hypothetical examples.

Accept examples as intended. Don’t complain that the case is unlikely to occur in real life, don’t misinterpret the example in a way that makes it obviously irrelevant to the point the person was trying to make, don’t try to modify the example so that it becomes irrelevant, and don’t quibble about minor details. Don’t raise complaints whose only expectable effect is to make the person waste time modifying the example in increasingly elaborate ways.

b. Let the person finish their point.

Don’t interrupt people to ask irrelevant questions or raise irrelevant objections that prevent the other person from getting to their point. How do you know if an objection is relevant? Well, you don’t know until they finish their point!

c. Answer questions honestly.

When someone asks you a question in the course of discussion, don’t refuse to answer, or make minor or irrelevant complaints about the question, or give an answer solely designed to prevent them from making their point. When you answer, think about what they were getting at and address that; do not seize the opportunity to reiterate whatever point you were thinking of.

d. Don’t ask questions unnecessarily.

The Socratic method does not work. The only reason it “works” in Plato’s dialogues is that Plato made up people’s answers so that they would support the arguments Plato wanted to give. It never works in reality. No one ever gives the answers that you want them to give. Usually, they just use the opportunity to derail the conversation. So don’t try to make an argument through questions. Just state your argument.

e. Don’t demand definitions of common terms.

Do not, e.g., tell people to define “justice”, or “good”. That, again, just derails the conversation. In the history of philosophy, no one has ever successfully defined any interesting term. Don’t talk about definitions or word meanings unless you think the other person is using a word outside its normal sense, or the word is genuinely ambiguous. In the latter case, just ask them to specify which of two or more senses they had in mind; still do not demand that they give a precise set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

Also, by the way, if asked for a definition, do not try to build your conclusion into the “definition”. E.g., don’t try to define “capitalism” as “a system of oppression in which the strong exploit and enslave the weak.”

f. Don’t complain about irrelevant details.

If you have problems with some aspect of something the other person said, do not raise that problem unless it actually makes a difference to their final conclusion. If your objection could be met by the other person making a minor rephrasing, or by saying, “Okay, disregard that statement”, don’t raise it.

11. Don’t misinterpret people.

a. If what they said sounds stupid or irrelevant, you probably misunderstood it.

b. In examples, assume all conditions are normal, unless otherwise specified.

Say you’re given an example in which a runaway trolley is about to hit 5 people, and you can switch it onto another track where it will hit only one. Do not say, “Is the one on the other track Adolf Hitler?” or “What if the one person is Hitler?” The one person is not Hitler. Obviously. You don’t have to ask that, because if that were the case, it would defeat the entire point of the example. More generally, assume the people in the example are all normal, average people. Assume everything else is normal, unless there is some reason to think otherwise.

c. Interpret the example in light of the point it was supposed to make. Do not change it.

E.g., don’t say, “If the five people on the track are Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Atilla the Hun, and Ghengis Khan, then I would not switch the trolley.” That is obviously not addressing the intended example.