A Tip For Your Future Debates
One simple idea to improve the way you argue
Hello there,
It’s fair to say that most of us get into debates all the time, which is possibly a by-product of our tendency to gossip all day long.
When our discussions move beyond who’s sleeping with the new gym instructor and who got a 20% raise despite working from Kasol all year, we tend to talk about things where our opinions start taking sharp turns just like the Ola driver from last evening.
These debates, ranging from which political party deserves a 100-year reign or which actor was involved in some sex scandal, may not reveal much about our understanding of the world (which is usually downright pathetic). But what they clearly reveal is how badly we suck when it comes to making rational arguments.
We were never really taught how to debate in school, and college debate societies were mostly crowded with hippies without any room for the average joe, who’d find solace in joining the Nature Club and whiling away her precious existence.
I’ve been part of many debates with friends, colleagues, and strangers on the Internet who wanted to rip my thorax off and feed it to a stray goat. While I’ve demonstrated my fair share of imbecilities, I’ve tried to make an active effort to improve the way I argue.
It’s an important skill, because the more you meet new people, the more you’ll get into these tussles. And not all debates are about the prime minister’s chest size- many of them have implications that actually affect your life. That makes good debating an important skill we must hone.
Over the course of many discussions, I’ve examined all kinds of thinking traps people fall in.
Today’s piece is about those mistakes and how to avoid them, and not just about how hopelessly dumb we all are, even if that’s a reasonable conjecture. The goal is for you to walk off having a simple framework in mind the next time you and your buddies get into an argument over the meaning of life or the ethics of stealing cutlery from a SpiceJet flight.
I don’t guarantee that you’ll transform into some genius debater. But you’ll certainly start sounding less stupid.
Initially, this piece was going to be about 5 odd points on the art of having good debates. But I removed most of the stuff (classic minimalism) and boiled it down to just one important idea, which is to be clear about why you’re arguing in the first place.
One must know the end goal of the argument: is it to seek out and get closer to the truth or just win the brawl? Knowing that and acting in service of this goal radically changes how one argues.
If the goal is to truly use the debate as a means to challenge your own thinking, find valid counter-points, and know what’s really true, you’d not succumb to all the logical fallacies that come up when you solely want to win.
It leads to a genuine kind of openness, where Googling the data is fair vs getting tagged as a “cheater” for doing so. When one does the latter, it implies that the objective is to win a contest of knowledge or facts that one can recall and use in the discussion rather than finding out what’s really true.
In addition, counterarguments are carefully considered and behavior is unlike what’s observed in 9 PM news channel debates. There isn’t a single soul on the planet who hasn’t seen a debate getting too heated and people resorting to mother-sister pleasantries. Some even progress to higher levels of maturity with the good ole’ fist swing at the chin.
Truth-seeking also changes the rules of the game- both parties win if they end up learning something new, as against identifying the one who cracked the most insulting jokes and got identified as the “winner” by a crowd of onlookers- usually, other friends who are least interested in the discussion and purely excited about the prospects of shooting a viral reel in case the verbal contest escalates to a fatal bloodbath.
Do you see what the effect of an audience is? When you ignore the objective of truth-seeking and make it a contest that is to be won based on audience feedback, you’re not exercising your logic and rationality. Forget all about that, you’re rather putting up a performance- a show of wits to gain brownie points, not unlike the caustic tomfoolery observed in reality TV.
It’s an elaborate mix of making fun of the other person, using jokes to divert attention when glaring loopholes are observed in your own logic, using a loud voice and passion to deceive everyone (including, most importantly, your own self), and convincing everyone that what you’re saying is the word of God. We’re all emotional animals, and mistaking passion for authenticity is a flaw we can only hope to escape.
So the first thing to do when someone utters statements that are setting the stage up for a ferocious debate (and potentially some verbal barbarity) is to ask yourself: am I entering this slugfest to get closer to the truth? Or is it just to put on a show for the kicks and hopefully emerge as a winner to feed my (possibly) fragile ego?
If it’s the former, you know how your approach to the debate will change.
And even if it’s the latter, go right ahead and have a blast. Just ensure you have health insurance before diving in.
Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoyed today’s piece, share it with a bro who argues like a kid and always resorts to violence. And if you haven’t signed up for the weekly newsletter, get on the list and become a smarter version of yourself:
A debate is not a debate if it's not an argument.