The Art of Manliness - How to Make a Good Argument

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast whenever you get

00:00:11.560 into an argument whether you're discussing politics with a colleague or the distribution

00:00:14.580 of chores with your spouse you likely feel like you're floundering you feel worked up but you

00:00:18.360 don't feel like you're getting your point across much less convincing the other person of it and

00:00:21.760 the conversation simply goes in circles you can feel like a rank amateur at arguing maybe what

00:00:26.400 you need are some pro tips from someone who spent his life arguing competitively enter my guest bo so

00:00:32.020 bo is a two-time world champion debater a former coach of the australian national debating team in

00:00:36.420 the harvard college debating union and the author of good arguments how debate teaches us to listen

00:00:40.800 and be heard today on the show bone i discuss why learning the art of rhetoric and debate was once

00:00:44.840 an integral part of education in the west why the subject disappeared from schools and the loss this

00:00:49.240 has represented for society we then turn the lessons bo's taken from his debating career that

00:00:53.700 you can apply to your own everyday arguments whether big or small bo explains why it's important

00:00:58.280 to establish what an argument is really about before you start into it and shares a rubric for

00:01:01.880 homing in on which of the three types of disagreements may be at the core of a conflict he then explains

00:01:06.260 two things a strong argument has to do and four questions to ask yourself to see if you've met these

00:01:10.520 requirements bo also impacts his three p's for creating persuasive rhetoric and how to effectively

00:01:14.920 rebut someone else's claims we end our conversation with how to determine whether it's worth getting into a

00:01:19.480 particular argument and when it's better to walk away after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:23.620 awim.is argument bo so welcome to the show g'day brett thanks so much for having me on so you are a

00:01:46.200 two-time world champion debater you also served as the debate coach for the australian national team

00:01:51.700 and you got a new book out called good arguments how debate teaches us to listen and be heard now i

00:01:58.560 think a lot of people listening to this podcast they probably had a debate team at their high school

00:02:03.600 and they might have had a friend or two that was on the debate team but they probably haven't seen

00:02:09.440 a competitive debate in action so for those of us who don't know what this is like walk us through

00:02:15.400 what is a competitive debate like because the way you describe in the book it sounds really intense so

00:02:19.700 like like what's involved how long do they last how do you keep score give us the introduce us to the

00:02:25.800 world of competitive debate sounds good and i do think it's a good thing for people to know because

00:02:31.740 otherwise you have these kids in ill-fitting suits in your high school walking around looking very

00:02:38.360 serious and you don't know what they're up to a debate round is pretty simple really it's between two

00:02:44.000 sides and on each side there's a team of kind of between one to three people depending on the format

00:02:50.920 of the debate and one side argues in favor of a topic the other side argues against them so if the

00:02:58.940 topic is that we should introduce an inheritance tax one team is saying yes we should the other is

00:03:05.880 arguing against and it goes from the affirmative to the negative affirmative negative affirmative negative

00:03:12.320 until all the speakers have spoken and an independent adjudicator who's watching them

00:03:18.000 comes to a decision about which team was more persuasive and so depending on the format of the

00:03:26.320 debate you either have some period of time a couple of weeks to you know one week to prepare or a few

00:03:33.720 days to prepare for the topic in other formats you get between 15 minutes to an hour and the debate

00:03:40.280 itself takes about an hour as well and then you get the adjudication so it takes on average probably

00:03:47.140 two hours to do a debate round and in a debate competition in a typical tournament you would have

00:03:54.880 two to three of those per day and you would do that probably for a weekend and at some point

00:04:01.960 it'll get to a knockout stage until one team in the competition is named the winner

00:04:08.740 okay so that's and so i one question i had i had i had a friend in debate now i always saw him

00:04:14.600 carrying like that tub of so is that just like the prep like the prep materials is that what that is

00:04:21.420 yeah it is it is and so that's the format of debate where you get to do advanced preparation

00:04:27.420 and it's usually articles that they're flagged or bits of research and and they're big tubs aren't

00:04:34.180 they yeah and people are called two tubber or three tubber based on how many tubs they've got 0.97

00:04:39.940 carrying around and it becomes a bit of an arms race at that point of who can do more research and

00:04:45.440 come up with more stuff and when the the adjudicator is determining who's more persuasive like what are

00:04:51.420 they what factors are they looking at they're asked to consider three things for the most part

00:04:57.540 the first is manner the the way in which someone presents the material the matter which is the

00:05:05.100 arguments and the evidence that they present so it's what they say and method or strategy which is

00:05:12.280 usually how they respond to the other side and how they prioritize arguments so it's more about

00:05:20.020 the overall strategy they employ in the debate so those are the three main factors they consider

00:05:26.080 manner method and matter but in the end for the ultimate decision they have to just consult their

00:05:35.560 conscience on one question only which is which of the two sides persuaded them and what's interesting

00:05:43.460 you're from australia and this seems like debates are really it's a big thing down there and also if

00:05:48.980 you look at throughout all of you know countries that derive from the united kingdom so you had the

00:05:53.840 commonwealth countries canada united kingdom australia and then even countries that were part of the

00:05:58.800 british empire uh america debate that used to be like it competitive debate it played an integral part

00:06:05.740 of the education in 18th and in the 19th centuries what was going on there why did schools have young

00:06:12.940 people debate each other what was the purpose of that yeah i love that brett there's an older

00:06:19.800 origin story here which stretches back to antiquity actually and the ancient greeks had an idea that

00:06:28.600 to be a citizen meant to possess the skills of persuasion of being able to talk to your fellow citizens

00:06:36.440 and to make your case in front of them and that this was integral to self-governance which is what

00:06:45.000 democracy really is and there are eastern counterparts and obviously the talmudic tradition

00:06:52.460 is really rich in debate and that's a different kind of a heritage so it is a kind of a long history and

00:07:00.780 one that is common across a lot of different cultures the more immediate background for the kind of

00:07:07.940 debate i was engaged in as you note comes from the uk and i think this is actually a misconception about

00:07:15.340 debate that it comes out only out of the chambers of parliament but in fact where the kind of competitive

00:07:24.720 debate i was engaged in comes from is next to the parliament there were pubs and coffee houses

00:07:31.360 where people would mimic some of the structures of parliamentary debate and and take what was on

00:07:39.180 the agenda and have these kind of raucous public discussions about the issues of the day and so

00:07:45.540 there is a kind of a real grassroots communal fun rambunctious kind of tradition that it grows out of

00:07:53.960 and the way it came to this country the united states is the founding fathers were themselves

00:08:03.320 debaters they often started the first debating societies at the university level in the united

00:08:10.180 states and you know one of the things that struck me when i came to the u.s for college

00:08:15.680 and i went to philly is that the place that's credited as the birthplace of this nation which is

00:08:24.640 independence hall isn't like the seat of a monarch or even a battlefield or a shrine to a deity it's a

00:08:34.680 debating chamber and for much of the early years of this republic and of many parliamentary democracies

00:08:43.580 around the world it was a feature of the school system that you would learn rhetoric and that as

00:08:50.580 part of a well-rounded education you would engage in they had different names like disputations and

00:08:57.940 and debates but they were essentially opportunities to argue your case before an audience before an

00:09:05.260 opponent whose task it was to disagree with you and to handle yourself in that kind of exchange

00:09:11.080 and when did that started to go away because like i didn't take debate in high school like a debate

00:09:17.440 was like elective it's like an extracurricular activity when did it stop being a required part

00:09:21.860 of education yeah that's a good question it came i think i charted in the book to sort of the rise of

00:09:30.600 the written writing requirement at universities and this was sort of in the 1800s and there were probably

00:09:39.560 lots of different reasons for it one of it was the universities themselves becoming much larger

00:09:46.380 there being this trend towards standardization in the education system there might have been an

00:09:52.900 impulse to take politics away from the education system too and the idea of learning being kind of

00:09:59.960 less political a little bit more kind of pure skills based being able to apply across lots of

00:10:08.640 different contexts so for some of these reasons the the practice of speech making and of argument

00:10:17.460 kind of declined over time and i think maybe the the other reason for it is there's always been a

00:10:24.820 kind of a suspicion of rhetoric and for as long as there has been arguments in favor of it there has been

00:10:32.660 opposition to it and i think probably a number of different factors converged that made the argument

00:10:41.820 against rhetoric win out so that nowadays when we talk about rhetoric we we kind of mean it in a

00:10:47.420 pejorative sense and what do you think have been the consequences of the decline of rhetoric in america

00:10:53.320 and in other western countries that's a big question one of the things that i'm very interested in in with

00:11:01.240 the book is what i perceive to be the loss of a shared set of skills that we used to possess and that's the

00:11:10.920 skill of making an argument for yourself but also being able to discern it when it's presented by other

00:11:17.760 people and i think the consequence of that has been that first of all many people don't feel like

00:11:27.500 they're communicating in a way that's getting through to people and on the receiving end i think we've

00:11:35.520 become less sensitive to what we would have then understood as you know manipulations of rhetoric being

00:11:43.460 able to discern good arguments from bad arguments and the atrophying of that skill set both of

00:11:50.600 expression on one hand but also being able to discern and listen and critically judge i think that the

00:11:57.940 consequence of those two things has been a kind of a degradation of the quality of our public

00:12:03.940 conversation yeah without without those shared skills i think people resort to just yelling at each

00:12:09.320 other because that's well yeah exactly yeah exactly well let's let's talk about how we can

00:12:13.980 revise some of these skills um so in your book you lay out you extract lessons from your career in

00:12:19.700 competitive debate this goes all the way back when you were in middle school you extract these lessons

00:12:23.940 that can be applied to everyday disagreements that we have and even big even the big disagreements

00:12:28.500 we have and the first lesson from competitive date that we can all take is to figure out what the

00:12:35.980 debate is actually about and this is actually harder than you think it would be you think it'd be easy

00:12:42.020 when you're yelling at someone you know what you're yelling about but typically most people aren't very good

00:12:47.640 at sticking to a topic rather you say that people have a tendency to talk topically than sticking to

00:12:54.660 the topic what do you mean by talking topically yeah i love that i mean you know so we're talking about

00:13:01.080 climate change and you make some some point about needing to take greater action on it and i say

00:13:07.780 but you drive a hammer you know and both are kind of topics both are comments related generally to the

00:13:17.400 to environmental issues i guess but there's not really any real sense in which those two claims are

00:13:23.720 talking to one another right and and you see this a lot in in discussions where

00:13:30.020 there's an attempt by both sides to rest the debate onto more favorable terrain and you know you

00:13:39.600 can't i guess begrudge people for for wanting to eke out an advantage that way but the consequence is

00:13:45.140 that you don't end up meeting on shared ground at all and so one of the first insights that i start

00:13:52.960 the book with is that every disagreement has to begin with an act of agreement and that is an agreement

00:13:59.420 about what the discussion is actually about so we are just talking about your ideas for responding

00:14:06.780 to climate change not about your car or what you said in the past or your personality those can be

00:14:13.420 conversations we have later maybe but for the moment this is what we're talking about and being able to

00:14:20.220 agree to a topic of conversation and by extension being able to say some things are irrelevant for the

00:14:28.380 purposes of this discussion i think that's one of the ways in which we can keep our discussions on

00:14:33.340 track and you provide this really useful rubric i thought this was a this was a it's so simple but

00:14:39.580 once you see it you can't unsee it you make the case that when you're in any debate or argument

00:14:45.140 people can disagree about three types of things they can disagree about facts they can disagree about

00:14:51.580 judgments and they can disagree about prescriptions tell us like what is the difference between like how can

00:14:57.200 people disagree on facts judgments and prescriptions yeah thanks for pointing that out so the key thing

00:15:04.200 is these these three types of debates tend to they tend to be alive even when we in what we consider to

00:15:13.300 be one argument so let me give you an example so let's imagine two parents are having an argument about

00:15:20.600 whether to send their kids to the local public school and you might start by saying oh that seems

00:15:27.800 to be a debate about prescription which is a debate about what we should do namely whether we should send the

00:15:33.600 kids to the school or not but you might find in actually having the conversation there's also a descriptive

00:15:40.840 disagreement which is a disagreement about the facts just about the way things are so one parent might believe this

00:15:47.600 this school does have adequate sporting facilities whereas the other parent might not believe that

00:15:55.100 so that's not a debate about what they should do and whether they should send their kids there

00:15:59.560 it's just a disagreement about the facts and it has a pretty simple fix or a simpler fix probably than the

00:16:06.740 prescriptive debate because it just involves going to the school or giving them a call or looking up the

00:16:12.340 information then in having the discussion further they might find they also disagree about

00:16:18.700 in their normative views which is a kind of sort of a disagreement about judgment disagreement about

00:16:26.980 what's morally right what's morally required and that might be a normative disagreement about what their

00:16:33.800 obligations as citizens might be so one parent might think as a citizen as a resident in this community as a

00:16:41.440 neighbor we have an obligation to participate in this public education system to do what we can to

00:16:50.040 improve it the other person might think actually our main obligation as a parent is just to get the best

00:16:57.320 possible education for our child and again that's not straightforwardly a prescriptive debate about

00:17:05.200 what we should do it's more about the beliefs that we have about the way things should be and and how we

00:17:11.420 should behave and so within this one disagreement which just looks like a decision about where we

00:17:17.600 send the kids there's a prescriptive debate that appears on the face of it but there's also descriptive

00:17:24.300 debates and there's normative debates and being able to identify which of those is at the core of the

00:17:31.420 dispute i think is a really good first step to making some progress on it all right so yeah before you even

00:17:38.380 get into the debate figure out what you're actually debating is it a debate of fact judgment prescription

00:17:43.000 and i think that can solve a lot of problems just taking that five ten minutes to do that

00:17:48.340 yeah exactly and i like the and i like how you how how you put a fine point on that i mean it's five to ten

00:17:54.800 minutes slightly awkward talking about the talking rather than doing the talking but um as any anybody who's been in a

00:18:02.380 contentious disagreement knows i mean it can stretch for hours right so it is a time saver to have that

00:18:09.400 kind of preliminary agreement we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:18:14.000 and now back to the show okay let's say you've honed in on the the point of disagreement let's say it's

00:18:25.460 just a point of prescription like you've agreed on facts you agreed on judgment now you have this point

00:18:29.980 like i want i think this should be the thing yeah how do you go about forming a strong argument or a

00:18:37.200 strong logical argument yeah so the starting place is knowing what we want our arguments to do and i

00:18:46.840 think at the moment just the general perception of what an argument is is just anything that vaguely

00:18:53.360 supports your case or that expresses your point of view which is not really what an argument is

00:18:59.560 an argument has to do two things the first is it has to show that the main claim that it's making

00:19:06.280 is in fact true and the other is that it is important which means it supports the conclusion

00:19:13.600 that you're advocating for so let's say you're arguing that we should send the kids to the local

00:19:21.020 public school because they'll get a great academic education there let's say so the first is you you need

00:19:29.500 to show that that is in fact true right that they're going to have a good academic experience and you

00:19:35.740 might give some reasons why you might say something about the local curriculum seems really rigorous

00:19:41.740 to you or you might marshal some evidence of how the school has performed in the past of the kinds of

00:19:48.480 classmates they would be learning alongside so all that is to show that it is in fact true they're

00:19:54.880 going to get a good academic experience and then the second which i think people often neglect is

00:20:00.320 it's not enough to just show that what you're saying is true you have to actually explain how that gets

00:20:07.220 you to home base right of of being able to prove what you're trying to prove which is we should send

00:20:12.400 our kids there so why is them having an academic experience so important as to justify us making this decision

00:20:21.380 as opposed to all the other things we might care about like them having good sporting facilities or other

00:20:27.520 things that that you might get if you sent them to a private school for example so there's an argument

00:20:34.400 about truth that you have to prosecute and then you have to flip and say here's why that then means we have to do

00:20:43.220 what i'm arguing we should and this yeah this requires knowing your audience right like you could you have

00:20:49.000 this great arguments like yeah it's true but like your audience is like yeah no whatever okay it's true so what

00:20:54.320 i love that i love that it's about i mean you know the aim of any argument is you're trying to get a person

00:21:01.400 from point a to point b right and point b is just somewhere that's probably not point a

00:21:07.960 and i think people usually have a pretty clear sense of the destination which is where they want

00:21:14.600 the person to be at the end of the discussion but they often ignore or overlook where that person is

00:21:21.700 starting from and you you do as you say brett want to be really attentive to what the person who's

00:21:28.480 listening where that person is at and what they care about and at least two of the most basic desires

00:21:36.380 that i think we have when we're responding to an argument is to know that it's true and to know that

00:21:41.640 it justifies the conclusion that you're um trying to persuade me of and uh you use you have this rubric

00:21:48.700 when you're constructing an argument or a point i think is really useful it's the four w's what are the

00:21:54.180 four w's yeah so this is a kind of a quick shorthand to make sure you're meeting the two

00:22:00.620 burdens that i've just described the first is being clear about what the point you're actually

00:22:06.500 making is so what is the point the second question is why is it true the third is when has it happened

00:22:14.080 before so that's a kind of a an invitation to give an example or a case study or some evidence that

00:22:21.400 supports your claim and then the last point is who cares right so again who cares whether the kids are

00:22:28.620 getting a good academic experience why is that important why does that justify the main the main

00:22:33.980 claim that you're making so what's the point why is it true when has it happened before and who cares

00:22:39.500 okay yeah i think the big takeaway from that chat that i got it was like make sure don't overlook

00:22:43.820 importance yeah in your argument because i think that's happened to a lot of people you feel like you

00:22:48.280 really got this strong argument and just falls on deaf ears uh and i feel that way too yeah i feel

00:22:53.240 that way yeah it's because you didn't think about well is this how is this important to the to the

00:22:56.580 listener so let's talk about how do we we want it we want the argument to feel like it's important to

00:23:00.320 someone so how do you form an argument so that it hits home with people like where they they start

00:23:05.280 listening like yeah this is important that's a good that's a really good question and it's obviously

00:23:11.560 very it's going to be very situation specific right and i think again this is the point about

00:23:19.540 getting to some agreement before we get into disagreement i think sometimes you know when

00:23:25.120 you're in the heat of a disagreement you can get so caught up with the sound of your own voice and

00:23:31.220 and so you know burning with conviction you just try and steamroll over the other side whereas

00:23:37.540 i think there is a probably a moment to pause and even ask questions right of what well what is it

00:23:45.440 that you care about what is it that you're hoping to achieve what is it that you want for our kids in

00:23:51.100 that example that we had before and by listening to the other side and sometimes by asking them

00:24:00.800 what is it that most moves them that they're most interested in i think that's probably where we can

00:24:08.700 tailor our argument to respond to that question of why is this important so the truth is you know

00:24:15.900 probably less um reliant on the other side because it's it's the truth and you're trying to prove it

00:24:21.120 but that that importance point um which i agree with you brett is kind of where what a lot of people

00:24:28.480 overlook that's the point where you're inviting the other side into a conversation and where you're

00:24:34.300 making them a kind of a collaborator and a and a co-author to your ideas and this is where rhetoric can

00:24:43.900 come in like aristotle in his uh work the rhetoric he he talked about in any argument you have you have

00:24:49.500 to appeal to someone's logos what's the pathos there's what's the emotion what's ethos ethos so

00:24:55.900 that's the personality yeah and so uh this is when you when you're constructing an argument using

00:25:01.320 rhetoric like you want it this is like when this is the opportunity to figure out how can i really

00:25:05.440 reach and touch this person emotionally yeah i love that so they can connect and you're right and so far

00:25:12.840 we've been kind of on the on the straight and narrow of trying to come up with logical arguments and

00:25:18.640 that's important but in debate the truth of your argument and its persuasiveness are two separate

00:25:25.520 skills that you have to kind of develop and as you say the logic part of it the rational part of

00:25:32.160 it is one important puzzle but another is i think debate doesn't shy away from the fact that

00:25:37.840 we are people who are emotional are passionate are personally invested in our arguments and in the quality

00:25:50.140 of our conversations and in that instance how we use words how we put together sentences the order of

00:25:57.800 our paragraphs how we say something that tends to be really important so you got your art your logical

00:26:05.140 argument down pat it's just you get the evidence but now you're thinking how am i going to deliver

00:26:08.880 this in a way so that it connects with people are there any i don't know i'm gonna call them hacks or

00:26:13.740 tricks or just heuristics that you that you use when you're when you're constructing that yeah there's a

00:26:18.500 number and i go through word by word sentence by sentence paragraph paragraph in the book but maybe

00:26:24.460 the easiest thing for me to just communicate briefly is this principle that i call the three p's in the

00:26:33.400 book the first is proportionality so one of the ways in which our rhetoric feels kind of weird and

00:26:41.040 difficult to listen to is when it's like grossly overselling or underselling the argument so

00:26:47.340 the way in which you're speaking the language you're using the gesture the tone the the stance that

00:26:53.620 you're taking has to roughly fit with what you're saying the second p is personality and this is that

00:27:01.560 that aristotelian triangle that you were talking about before brett people are pretty you know we don't

00:27:07.820 know everything about everything you know and we don't know about the particular evidence that's

00:27:16.880 being presented sometimes the particulars of the argument that is being presented sometimes but we

00:27:22.640 have a we're pretty good judges of character most people because we have to do it every day and so

00:27:28.620 get putting yourself into the argument a little bit explaining how you went through the journey of

00:27:35.800 becoming convinced of your point and using it as an opportunity to acknowledge that you are kind of

00:27:41.460 one perspective not a sort of a voice of god omniscient all-seeing kind of person but you're just you and

00:27:49.200 and you're you're trying to make this argument best you can i think can often be humanizing and can

00:27:55.000 lead to connection and then the third principle of rhetoric that i put forward is called panache which is

00:28:01.580 you know i think one way to elevate the quality of our discourse is to invest in rhetoric again to

00:28:08.600 put aside some time to thinking about you know what's the combination of words that's going to most

00:28:14.500 effectively get across this argument and in debate we call it the applause line it's the kind of short

00:28:20.400 snappy encapsulation that you could imagine the audience clapping to and there's something a bit

00:28:27.460 you know self-important about that but viewed a bit more charitably

00:28:32.000 it shows a kind of an attention to the audience that you've put together this rhetorical passage this

00:28:40.400 line to be able to move them and to cut through in a world where there's a whole lot of noise to be able

00:28:47.180 to cut through that and to and to make your mark so the three p's of proportionality personality and panache

00:28:54.160 panache are kind of one one set of ideas to to think about with that panache part and find the

00:29:00.040 the applause line i know winston churchill when he wrote his speeches out yeah he'd actually find

00:29:04.400 moments like right pause here because this is when this is when people are going to be like huzzahing

00:29:08.360 yeah exactly exactly and and you know again like it takes a bit of thick skin to do that you know

00:29:15.580 because you know the world might look down on that and and even in debating one of the things that

00:29:21.520 was said about me was that he's obsessed with talking pretty you know and there's kind of a

00:29:26.900 set of assumptions about that and and a preciousness or maybe they're trying to pull something over you

00:29:33.540 but i don't think we can elevate the state of our public conversation unless we start acting out the

00:29:41.380 kind of conversation we want to have and i think one of the things we want to have is a conversation

00:29:46.920 that's respectful and faithful to the real power that words do have and churchill was obviously one

00:29:53.800 master at that and there have been many others but we want a conversation that is alive to that

00:29:59.520 possibility of what words and language can do yeah i want to hear arguments that sound sound pretty

00:30:05.460 yeah me too okay so you put up put out your argument or maybe you're listening to someone give you

00:30:11.300 give their argument you have to rebut but i think people are typically terrible at this because

00:30:16.040 when you're rebutting you're in the defensive mode and you tend to get angry and nasty um yeah what

00:30:22.300 are some ways that we can uh rebut arguments more effectively i think the and i should sort of share

00:30:28.820 your your view on that brett it feels almost like a kind of a personal attack when someone's making an

00:30:36.280 argument against you and maybe the first step is just a mental one of just saying it's not an attack

00:30:43.160 it's an argument that they are presenting that demands a certain kind of response and and maybe

00:30:50.400 the other brief thing i would add there is you know like there's something very distorting about

00:30:57.420 platforms like twitter where you're meant to kind of like like own them you know at every exchange and

00:31:06.260 and we know that a conversation isn't like that it's we try in our best way to express our view but we usually

00:31:14.220 don't get it a hundred percent but you often get another chance at it and and so the conversation develops

00:31:20.760 in terms of then how we do that i'd say two things one is the framework that i presented in in presenting an argument

00:31:30.060 can often be useful here so just the way that an argument needs to show that it's true and that it

00:31:36.660 supports its conclusion those are the two main areas where you can focus a lot of the critique of

00:31:42.520 is your claim that the opposing argument is in fact not true or is it that it doesn't support the

00:31:48.940 conclusion and by being clear about what the nature of your criticism is i think you can be a little bit

00:31:55.220 more focused than just generally saying things that are contrary to what the other side has said

00:32:00.400 the second thing which i think is often overlooked is we can get very caught up in highlighting the

00:32:09.340 flaws of the other side's arguments but that's really usually half the battle because the other side is

00:32:16.520 well if the opposition's argument has all of these flaws then what are you for right what do you stand for

00:32:24.880 and so this is something i call the counterclaim in the book which is saying if not this then watch

00:32:33.680 and i think it's a hard it's an easy thing to forget that even when you're criticizing a proposal or when

00:32:41.060 you're proposing a criticizing an idea you're still arguing for something right so if if your partner is

00:32:48.700 saying let's go to hawaii for the holidays or go down charleston for the holidays and you're coming up

00:32:54.320 with a thousand reasons why not for each one you're still arguing for something you might be arguing for

00:33:00.240 not taking vacation at all it might be staying in your house it might be going to the place that you

00:33:05.680 usually go to but whatever it is there's a an argument that you're making that is a positive

00:33:11.140 advocacy as well and so being able to switch between criticism and advocacy i think is an important

00:33:18.580 skill for debaters and i like the way you propose rebutting because it does make it once you see

00:33:25.120 where you can rebut like whether it's you know facts or uh importance or yeah like you can there's

00:33:32.260 there's you there's way for you to find a room where you can find common ground which sort of

00:33:36.780 diffuses the situation a bit so you can say yeah look hey i agree with you like i think you got the

00:33:42.120 facts right i think that's true but despite that this this is how i this is why i think this is

00:33:46.320 important or more important and then now you know what you're you know what you're disagreeing

00:33:50.620 about like you find some commonality which kind of diffuses and kind of makes a connection uh but

00:33:56.380 then you're able to still point out differences exactly and and you know i think some of the

00:34:01.880 defensiveness in argument comes from a sense that you're kind of helpless or you know something is

00:34:07.980 wrong but you're a bit tongue-tied as to explain how or you think everything is wrong and and so

00:34:14.240 you you you're kind of stuck as to where to begin and one of the things that i hope to achieve is i

00:34:19.920 i don't want people to feel hopeless in argument or helpless in argument and there's always a kind of

00:34:25.480 a way into responding and as you say i think one of the really important things about seeing how an

00:34:33.100 argument works and the menu of potential responses that you have available to you is you don't have to

00:34:40.680 use all of them and being able to concede parts of an argument or set aside an argument um as you said

00:34:49.980 that's a really important skill too because it helps you make progress the ideal progression of a

00:34:56.540 disagreement i think is you start to narrow down the area of disagreement so that even if you aren't able

00:35:04.200 to reconcile all of your differences you can say uh we've sort of found the heart of where we

00:35:11.320 diverge and and it's not that we disagree on everything we usually don't but this is this is

00:35:17.280 the heart of our disagreement okay so every day we're encountered with just a million different

00:35:22.600 opportunities to to start an argument or to keep an argument going but you make the case that part of

00:35:27.280 arguing well means knowing when it's sometimes not good to argue and you developed a rubric for that

00:35:34.980 uh to help you determine whether ah should i really should i get in with this person it's r-i-s-a-r risa 0.83

00:35:40.500 uh tell us about that that's right it's a kind of a checklist and i'm a kind of a generally

00:35:46.300 a big believer in the idea that if you're about to do something that's going to consume your energy

00:35:52.720 that can potentially be a source of division and pain.

00:35:57.060 You want to be really deliberate about it

00:35:58.980 and you want to set the grounds in such a way

00:36:01.780 that it's going to be most conducive to a good discussion.

00:36:05.580 And after a lot of reflection,

00:36:07.860 I came to the conclusion that the most productive disagreements

00:36:13.980 tend to have four kind of background conditions

00:36:16.860 that contribute to its success.

00:36:18.720 So it's a checklist that I would encourage people to use

00:36:22.800 as they get into an argument,

00:36:24.840 whether they decide it's worth it or not.

00:36:27.120 So the first is, is it a real disagreement

00:36:30.660 as opposed to a perceived slide

00:36:33.480 or some issues that actually don't have two sides, right?

00:36:36.780 So if someone says, I don't like your cousins,

00:36:39.860 that's not really a kind of a proper subject of debate

00:36:44.460 because you can't really argue,

00:36:46.240 well, actually, you really like my cousins.

00:36:49.580 The second is whether it's important enough

00:36:52.960 to justify the disagreement.

00:36:56.700 And this is a question about the importance of the issue,

00:37:01.000 not just about the importance of the other side, for example.

00:37:04.900 So of course we care about what our spouse

00:37:08.260 or our partner or our friend thinks generally,

00:37:10.800 but is this particular argument important enough

00:37:13.560 to justify the disagreement?

00:37:15.020 The third is, is it specific enough?

00:37:19.560 And I think we've referred to it a little bit

00:37:23.460 in our conversation already,

00:37:24.840 but a disagreement about just about how we respond

00:37:30.820 to climate change or the merits of liberalism

00:37:34.560 probably won't take us very far because it's too big

00:37:37.880 and it gives too much room for people to slide around

00:37:42.220 and go to the corners of the topic

00:37:44.880 that they feel most comfortable in.

00:37:46.840 So you want to have an argument

00:37:50.060 that is kind of small enough

00:37:52.740 so that you're able to make progress on it

00:37:55.480 given the time that you have.

00:37:57.440 And then the last is,

00:37:59.260 you want the two sides to be aligned in their objectives.

00:38:02.220 So if the other side is just getting into a fight

00:38:05.840 to hurt your feelings,

00:38:07.400 whereas you're getting into it

00:38:08.900 to actually try and persuade them

00:38:11.580 or have a good conversation,

00:38:13.360 then you might judge that

00:38:14.940 that's not going to be very productive for debate.

00:38:17.120 So the research checklist again is

00:38:20.520 whether the disagreement is real,

00:38:23.380 whether it's important,

00:38:24.760 whether it's specific,

00:38:25.960 and whether the two sides are aligned in their objectives.

00:38:29.780 Yeah, I see the specific and aligned parts

00:38:34.040 giving people problems online.

00:38:35.660 Typically when people get into arguments online,

00:38:37.680 it's not specific,

00:38:39.100 it's just sort of general topic.

00:38:42.300 And everyone just kind of yells different things

00:38:44.620 about how they feel about the general topic.

00:38:45.960 And then the aligned part,

00:38:47.540 some people are actually interested in good faith debate

00:38:49.760 and some people they're just a troll

00:38:51.280 and you have to figure out what's what.

00:38:53.780 And so, yeah, I think that was really useful.

00:38:56.180 I can save people a lot of mental bandwidth

00:38:58.220 by checking through.

00:39:00.420 Well, speaking about this idea of good faith,

00:39:03.500 as you said, like this debate or an argument,

00:39:05.660 it is competitive, it is a conflict,

00:39:07.660 but it requires cooperation.

00:39:10.320 So it requires the good faith

00:39:12.380 of everyone involved in the debate.

00:39:13.880 I think when everyone is acting in good faith,

00:39:15.320 everything goes great.

00:39:16.760 The problem is that bad actors can take advantage of that.

00:39:19.700 So how do you navigate an argument

00:39:21.600 when you're engaging with someone

00:39:24.180 who is acting or debating in bad faith?

00:39:27.360 Yeah, it's a really difficult question.

00:39:30.060 And one where I think there are no easy answers.

00:39:33.920 It is true that debate relies to some extent

00:39:36.560 on the good faith of its participants.

00:39:38.320 And what it can do in the absence of that

00:39:42.060 is in some ways mitigation.

00:39:44.880 So debate can help us improve the quality of our conversations,

00:39:48.960 but without a kind of other kinds of improvement, right?

00:39:55.140 And even moral development,

00:39:58.440 it alone won't do the trick.

00:40:00.180 Having said that, it can, I think,

00:40:02.600 help in at least three ways.

00:40:04.380 So one is there's a chapter of the book

00:40:07.680 that deals with the common strategies

00:40:10.480 that bad faith actors tend to use,

00:40:12.680 whether that be lying or interrupting all the time

00:40:15.580 or wrangling or twisting around your words.

00:40:19.120 And going back to that idea of not being helpless,

00:40:23.760 you want to be able to identify those tricks

00:40:26.440 and to have some counter strategies,

00:40:29.460 kind of a defense against the dark arts available to you.

00:40:32.560 So you're not helpless in that situation.

00:40:36.380 The second thing is,

00:40:40.220 you know, I don't think people are

00:40:42.240 essentially good faith debaters or bad faith debaters.

00:40:47.460 I think that these are instincts that we all have.

00:40:50.960 We're all capable of good faith debate

00:40:53.440 as we are capable of bad faith debate.

00:40:56.420 And one of the strategies that I offer in the book

00:41:01.160 when you're up against a kind of a bully is to say,

00:41:05.260 well, is it a debate that we're trying to have

00:41:07.360 or is it something else?

00:41:09.040 And that ability to just pause

00:41:10.940 and return the conversation

00:41:14.100 to the kind of exchange we want to be having

00:41:16.760 and reminding them that walking away is always an option,

00:41:20.340 that feels to be something that's important.

00:41:23.860 And the last thing that I'll just say, Brett,

00:41:26.900 because I agreed with your description of social media is

00:41:30.160 on that point about us all having the capacity

00:41:34.180 to be good or bad faith debaters,

00:41:36.700 we should not pretend that where we have the exchange

00:41:42.260 and the means by which we have the exchange,

00:41:44.960 we should not pretend those are neutral forums.

00:41:47.820 And they reward certain kind of practices

00:41:51.980 and discourage others.

00:41:53.880 And so in addition to thinking about

00:41:56.460 what we do within a conversation,

00:41:58.800 we also have to have a little bit of situational awareness

00:42:02.880 of where we are having the discussion too.

00:42:06.120 Well, Bo, this has been a great conversation.

00:42:07.800 Where can people go to learn more

00:42:08.840 about the book and your work?

00:42:10.200 I enjoyed it so much, Brett.

00:42:11.500 My website is helloboseo.com.

00:42:17.520 The book is out with Penguin Press in the United States

00:42:21.200 and with a bunch of other publishers abroad.

00:42:25.060 So please check it out.

00:42:27.160 And I'm very eager to engage in conversations about...

00:42:33.340 And one of the most rewarding things, you know,

00:42:35.580 of rolling out the book has been hearing people adapt

00:42:39.240 some of these ideas to their own corners of the world

00:42:43.580 and to see the ways in which it fits

00:42:45.740 needs to be changed, needs to be improved.

00:42:48.280 And to be in that conversation is a real honor.

00:42:52.360 So thanks for having me

00:42:53.460 and I hope to keep the conversation going.

00:42:56.220 All right, Bo So.

00:42:56.700 Thanks for your time.

00:42:57.160 It's been a pleasure.

00:42:58.060 Thanks, Brett.

00:42:58.680 Have a good day.

00:42:59.640 My guest today was Bo So.

00:43:00.920 He's the author of the book, Good Arguments.

00:43:02.940 It's available on Amazon.com.

00:43:04.240 The bookstores everywhere.

00:43:05.000 You can find more information about his work

00:43:06.580 at his website, helloboseo.com.

00:43:08.920 And that's B-O-S-E-O.com.

00:43:10.920 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash argument.

00:43:13.400 We find links to resources.

00:43:14.580 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:43:22.900 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

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00:43:56.300 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

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The Art of Manliness - June 29, 2022

How to Make a Good Argument

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