[Fake Nous] Tips for Political Debate

this is pretty good. From a new blog

http://fakenous.net/?p=46

Tips for Political Debate, part 1


I’ve noticed that political debates seem more heated and bitter than usual of late. It seems that many people don’t argue very well. Here, to argue well does not mean to argue cleverly or in such a way as to stump your “opponent”. To argue well is to argue in such a way that progress could reasonably be expected if we all argue in that way. I’ve written these tips for arguing well about politics.

1. Guiding principle: Your goal is to make progress toward understanding, if not agreement.
It is not to “score points”, express emotions, prove your moral or intellectual superiority, humiliate the other party, or otherwise cause harm. (If this isn’t true, then you shouldn’t be engaged in discussion at all; you’re part of society’s problem.) Everything else follows from this.

2. Do not beg the question.
Do not assume what needs to be argued for. This includes:

a. Do not give ideologically slanted examples.
Ex.: Suppose that, to make a point, you need to give an example of a crime. Don’t use “a welfare queen defrauding the state” or “a right-wing b*stard committing a hate crime against an oppressed minority.” By doing that, you’re derailing the conversation and pushing the other party farther away from you. Use a normal crime, like bank robbery, or a mafia boss ordering a hit.

b. Do not just assert things that your opponent couldn’t reasonably be expected to accept.
c. Don’t presuppose the rest of your ideology.
Illustrating (b)-(c): if you’re arguing with a conservative, do not presuppose that America is an oppressive patriarchy, that capitalism is unjust, or that religion is the opiate of the masses. You won’t be persuasive; you’ll just further alienate the other party. If you can’t make your point without assuming that sort of thing, then you don’t have a good argument.

3. Don’t be emotional.
If you are angry, offended, or otherwise emotional, then you are unlikely to argue well. If you feel yourself starting to get angry, pause and take a breath (quietly – not a loud, exasperated breath). Do not respond until you feel calm. If you can’t suppress your anger, then you shouldn’t discuss politics.

4. Don’t make it personal.
A major way in which political discussions fail is that they degenerate into personal attacks. To avoid this:

a. Do not discuss your interlocutor’s personal traits.
Do not make remarks about the other party’s character. Do not speculate about their motives or discuss their level of knowledge or intelligence. Don’t do it directly, and don’t do it by implication. Do not, for example, say “I thought that a compassionate person would say . . .” or “Everyone knows that . . .” (followed by something the other person disagrees with) or “You seem to be ill-informed”. Do not needlessly make claims that in any way imply that your interlocutor has acted immorally, stupidly, etc.

b. This includes statements about people your interlocutor identifies with or admires.
If you’re talking to a Catholic, do not make disparaging remarks about Catholics, or the Pope, or Jesus. If you’re talking to a liberal elite, do not make disparaging remarks about liberal elites, or professors, or journalists. Do not needlessly attack the character or motives of politicians that your interlocutor probably voted for (or would have voted for), either.

c. Exception: if the negative remarks are the actual issue.
None of the above is to suggest that you may not say what is necessary to defend your view on the actual issue. Example: if you’re debating whether gay marriage should be allowed, and your view is that it shouldn’t be allowed because homosexuality is wrong, then you can say that – even if, for example, your interlocutor is gay. Or, if you’re debating whom one should vote for in the election, and your view is that Trump should not be elected because of his bad moral character, you can say that, even if your interlocutor loves Trump. But do not go an inch beyond what is necessary to make your point on the issue. (E.g., don’t discuss how Trump’s supporters are idiots.)

d. There is no place for sarcasm.
If your interlocutor advocates open borders, your objection cannot be, “Yeah, because everyone knows that the rest of the world is totally friendly and no one would ever want to hurt us.” Let R = [the rest of the world is totally friendly and no one would ever want to hurt us]. By saying that sarcastically, you are implying (1) that R is so stupid that when you assert it, your audience can infer that you’re actually denying it, but also (2) your interlocutor nevertheless believes R, and (3) it’s so obvious that R follows from what he said that you don’t have to explain how it follows or even state that it does. You’re not showing any of this; you’re just presupposing it.

The appropriate statement of the objection would be this: “I don’t believe we should have open borders, because there are too many people in the rest of the world who would wish to harm us.” This leaves room for dialogue.

e. Do not be amazed by their view.
Don’t tell your interlocutor that you are surprised that anyone holds his view. This carries the subtext, “You are more benighted than my previous estimate of the most benighted person in the world.”

f. Don’t needlessly take things personally.
If your interlocutor has not done anything insulting other than defending his view on the issue under discussion, do not take offense, and do not state that you are offended. Doing so converts a discussion of the issue into a personal contest. Example: if the issue is “Why are there fewer female than male mathematicians?”, and your opponent’s view is that the reason is that there are fewer women than men who are good enough at math to be mathematicians, then he can state that view. Do not say, “I’m offended as a woman.” Doing so will more likely strengthen rather than weaken his belief that he’s right.

g. Don’t allow insults.
If someone appears to be insulting you, do not respond in kind. If it’s not explicit, you can ask them (matter-of-factly, not angrily) if they meant the insulting thing that they apparently implied. If they make the insult explicit, or they can’t stop implicitly insulting you, stop talking to them. By doing so, you’re improving public discourse.

5. Don’t be dogmatic.
a. Most controversies have more than one side.
If you’re debating a controversial issue, then there are probably reasons and evidence on both sides. If it doesn’t seem to you now that most controversial issues are more than one-sided, then the best explanation is that you are biased, and you should stop being so.

b. Don’t assume that others agree with you.
About moral, political, and philosophical questions, people share our opinions a lot less than we would naturally think. So you can’t assume, when you give an example, that other people will have the same intuitions about it. If you presuppose certain premises that seem obvious to you, other people will very often not follow your argument. And even when people appear to agree with you, they often disagree at a deeper level. E.g., if someone agrees with you that the current President is no good, it very often turns out that the reason they think this is that they want the President to do more of the things that you object to, or different things that you would object to, etc. Similarly, if someone “agrees with you” in rejecting some policy, you can’t assume that you are overall in agreement on that issue (and you usually are not).

c. Don’t always bite the bullet.
If someone points out counterintuitive consequences of your views, you should sometimes be prepared to change them. You should not always just embrace whatever follows from your initial positions.

d. Recognize empirical questions.
Recognize when a question you are discussing is empirical (depends on evidence from observation). E.g., the effects of gun laws on crime, the effectiveness of drug laws, the effectiveness of government stimulus, etc. Admit when you don’t actually have the empirical evidence. And don’t simply assume empirical facts. E.g., don’t assume that there are more homicides than suicides just because that seems to you to make sense.

e. Permit falsification.
Unless your view is an a priori necessary truth, there should be something that would convince you that it was false; if you can’t think of anything, then you are probably being dogmatic. When someone presents evidence against your view, and you explain the evidence away, ask yourself how you would have reacted if the evidence had been the opposite of what it is. If you would have claimed E as evidence for your view, then you must recognize the opposite of E as evidence against your view.

f. Seek falsification.
After identifying what evidence would convince you that your view was false, try to actually find that evidence in the world.

I have many more suggestions, but that’s enough for now.
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Part 2 is at http://fakenous.net/?p=54

Tips for Political Debate, part 2


These are the rest of my tips for political debate.

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, etc.

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 spend 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 spend 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.

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 . . . 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” also did something 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 politics.

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.

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Part 2 conclusion

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 example is unlikely to occur, 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.



PUBLISHED BY

Michael Huemer
Michael Huemer is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy, as well as six amazing books that you should immediately buy. View all posts by Michael Huemer

Posted on November 23, 2018 Author Michael Huemer Categories Rationality & Argumentation​

 

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