Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Argue well by losing

haacked.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–39 of 39 posts

Re: Argue well by losing

#31

Post by drjesusphd »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #15

Thought-provoking article. I often battle friends on Facebook over issues of politics, economics, and stuff, and I definitely notice that people are generally more interested in winning than learning. In fact, that's the model cable news shows and presidential debates teach us. It's all about introducing some obscure fact or anecdote that your opponent can't possibly know off-hand to force them to have to research en…

> I often battle friends on Facebook over issues of politics, economics, and stuff, and I definitely notice that people are generally more interested in winning than learning.

Of course. If you want to learn something, talk one-on-one or seek out authoritative sources. If you're engaging in a dispute in a public forum in front of millions of spectators, like it or not, the debate exists to convince others, not each other.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Argue well by losing

#32

Post by drjesusphd »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #3

In the past I frequently tried to begin arguments / discussions by carefully going over what I thought of as background assumptions. (To me, this is at least closely related to the proposed step 1, restate your opponent's position clearly.) My experience suggests that if you do that, the other party will never stop disagreeing with you no matter how far up the chain you go. Many, many, many arguments never happened i…

I completely agree.

Global warming debates are well-suited for this: first get the "denier" to agree that the physical mechanism is valid. If you can't agree on physics, then there's no point in continuing. If you can, great, at least he/she can't question the physical mechanism when they're back into a political/economic corner.

Re: Argue well by losing

#34

Post by pessimizer »

networked wrote: post #16
hooande wrote: post #5

How to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." 2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. Mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word…

>1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." There's a closely related concept with a pretty catchy name, which is something that's often useful for making concepts stick; perhaps HN could make use of it. That concept is the "steel man": >Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or arg…

Thanks for this. This is how I argue, and I never knew someone had come up with a term for it.

It also allows you to let other people win, sometimes, even if they consistently argue badly or illogically. It's good to let other people win as often as you can (at least for me.)

Re: Argue well by losing

#35

Post by mathattack »

smacktoward wrote: post #26
mathattack wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works very well, especially in Sales situations. Once you can put things into someone else's words, they know you understand their point. Two challenges to this approach: 1) It takes time. Lots of time. Sometimes decisions need to be made quicker. 2) If there is an unequal power distribution, sometimes you don't need them to consent. ("I know you disagree with the approach, we aren't equals. You wouldn't get the…

On #2, it's true that when power is unevenly distributed you can save time by just bypassing getting the other party to buy in. But in the same way that taking shortcuts in your code is thought of as accruing technical debt, I'd argue that doing this accrues "social debt" -- you save time now, but at the cost of storing up potential trouble in the future if the power distribution ever changes. Flatten someone like a…

Very true. It's important to invest in strategic relationships, but sometimes you have to lay down the law.

For example, many companies shirk their customer support duties, even on high ticket items. You wind up spending a disproportionate amount of time as a customer trying to mathematically prove that what you found is a defect, and not some undocumented bug. At some point, rather than seeing the world from their eyes, you have to say, "I need this fixed or I'm pulling the plug."

These are outlier case though, and to your point, there is social debt every time you have to pull rank.

Re: Argue well by losing

#36

Post by gojomo »

networked wrote: post #16
hooande wrote: post #5

How to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." 2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. Mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word…

>1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." There's a closely related concept with a pretty catchy name, which is something that's often useful for making concepts stick; perhaps HN could make use of it. That concept is the "steel man": >Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or arg…

Another similar concept is the "Ideological Turing Test": can you answer questions from your ideological opponent's perspective so well that a third party can't tell you actually hold other views?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

Until you can pass it, you may be wasting time disputing a thin caricature of the actual opposing viewpoint. And as you do well on such a test, you are often helping to "steel-man" the viewpoint. (On the other hand, any time you are steel-manning an unsubscribed position, you might also be hinting at your true perspective, when you deploy extra effort against certain critiques.)

Re: Argue well by losing

#37

Post by Gambit89 »

networked wrote: post #16
hooande wrote: post #5

How to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." 2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. Mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word…

>1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." There's a closely related concept with a pretty catchy name, which is something that's often useful for making concepts stick; perhaps HN could make use of it. That concept is the "steel man": >Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or arg…

It also goes by the name of principle of charity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Re: Argue well by losing

#38

Post by plumbzium »

scott_s wrote: post #20
thaumasiotes wrote: post #3

In the past I frequently tried to begin arguments / discussions by carefully going over what I thought of as background assumptions. (To me, this is at least closely related to the proposed step 1, restate your opponent's position clearly.) My experience suggests that if you do that, the other party will never stop disagreeing with you no matter how far up the chain you go. Many, many, many arguments never happened i…

Regarding your last paragraph, people explain their current problems as a coping mechanism . But when people do that, what they're really looking for is someone to understand them. It's an emotional thing, and you provided it.

Moreover, paraphrasing is one of basic tools in psychotherapy. Obviously it's used as a part of a larger process, and depending on therapist' aims it may have various forms, from a clarification or a simple restatement, to a more reflective proposition or interpretation

Re: Argue well by losing

#39

Post by davegauer »

While the rest of the article has some really great points, what I really love about this is all in the beginning and is perfectly summed up with this quote by Professor Daniel H. Cohen (in which he is conceding victory to a hypothetical opponent):

> "So who won that argument? Well, the war metaphor seems to force us into saying you won, even though I’m the only one who made any cognitive gain."

I've been practicing something similar for at least half a decade now. I call it (with a strong sense of irony), "I'm Always Right." By learning how to be wrong ALL THE TIME, I'm actually becoming increasingly ALWAYS RIGHT.

The hardest part is being able to see when somebody else is actually making a better point than I am.[1]

Then I 'lose' the argument by agreeing with them. In the bigger scheme of things, I've actually won because I've just gained something - new knowledge and a new point of view. My intellectual 'opponent' has gained nothing but a temporary feeling of victory. I'm actually happy for both of us. This isn't some trick. I really do change my mind about things all the time as I learn more and listen more. After a while, being wrong feels so right. :-)

[1] The REAL challenge is to recognize this EVEN if you are actually doing a much better job of debating (or think you are) than your 'opponent'.

Post reply on HN