Better arguments so we can have a better tomorrow
Nikola Man
I plan to produce a series of articles in which I will tackle a variety of societal and political topics and issues. This piece is the first in the series and the only one in which I will not address any issues, rather I will focus on the foundations of proper argumentation. The main goal today is to introduce you to some basic scientific concepts, ideas from formal debates and philosophy, and ultimately help you become more persuasive.
Why should you care though? It’s quite simple, arguing boils down to exchanging ideas and checking them against other ideas. This process usually results in you and your verbal sparring partner(s) getting closer to the truth. This process also entails several other benefits:
Less conflict – and this applies to all scales from small disagreements with friends to wars between nations. My motto here is more discussion less gunfire.
More sympathy and empathy for your fellow human beings – you will often encounter people coming with vastly different perspectives than you and they will bring up arguments you have never considered or even seen before. You will also realize that people you are talking to genuinely believe their positions and often have good intentions. This will lead to you becoming more connected on an emotional level to people you have disagreements with. To put it another way, by realizing that people have a different experience on this planet than you and that they can bring valuable arguments to the table, you will be more rational, more understanding, more calm, and more sympathetic and empathetic to the ideas of others which will in turn make you a better communicator and more persuasive.
Better politics – “no, I am 100% correct and you are 100% wrong” style of thinking is omnipresent in politics. However, policies and laws generally have both merits and flaws and by exchanging ideas and arguments rationally we can make better political decisions.
Higher productivity – there are people who are focused on ideas that have been shown to be clearly wrong many times and they are spending valuable resources such as time, money, and effort doing something unproductive. Through proper argumentation, these people can be brought closer to the truth and, as a result, their time will be spent more productively.
Better science – science is where most of the highly formal argumentation happens so if it is done properly we simply get better science.
With the benefits out of the way, I have to make a really important disclaimer. You shouldn’t be aiming to “win” arguments. The best kind of debate is the one where you move closer to the truth MORE than the person you are talking to. Imagine, a two-hour conversation with someone where you realize that you were mostly wrong on a particular subject and as a result of proper argumentation you now have a much better understanding of that subject and your time investment has paid off massively.
I have already mentioned “getting closer to the truth” a couple of times and you’re probably wondering why. The truth is not a matter of opinion. Reality exists independently of anyone’s opinion of it. Another important point is that we, the human race, are a part of this objective reality not just observers of it. For example, if you were at a beach and a large wave was coming at you, it would hit you with physical consequences, you wouldn’t just be observing the wave. Further, no one perspective on reality is perfect, but there is one actual truth about every topic. Now comes the main point – all people, on ANY subject, are a certain distance (in their knowledge/understanding) from the truth. The goal of proper argumentation and quality debates and conversations is to get closer to the truth. The best way to depict this is through the so-called Bullseye analogy. The truth is in the bullseye of a target (middle point) and we are all somewhere else on the target striving towards the middle. To make it easier to digest, please take a look at the two graphs below.
Both are some distance away from the truth
Through the process of proper argumentation, both person X and person Y are closer to the truth
Most disagreements come from the fact that both person X and person Y believe that they are standing in that bullseye. They each believe that they know the truth and see the other person as positioned lower and they need to drag them up to their level of understanding. In other words, both person X and person Y are trying to drag the other to the truth while in reality they are both some distance away from the truth. This simple understanding changes the way you see your fellow humans. We are not enemies even if we disagree. We are not enemies even if these disagreements are on topics dear and near to our hearts. The goal is to be better together.
So what does proper argumentation look like? What are the steps? The first step in this procedure is understanding and identification. This entails defining terms so we know exactly what each side is talking about. Many arguments often go nowhere because people talk past each other and sometimes even agree but can’t come to an understanding because they didn’t define their terms. Another element of understanding and identification is the clarification of claims. This simply means both sides saying EXACTLY what their argument is. No ambiguity, no room for misinterpretation. The second step is establishing common ground. This simply means finding what you agree on. This step is essential in the technical sense because it allows for a better flow to the discussion and a better understanding of the argument. However, we are human beings and not robots so the technical sense is not the only important one. Establishing common ground is great psychologically because it allows for a better emotional connection between interlocutors. The third step is exposing disagreement. This refers to the process of narrowing the discussion down to the disagreement itself, making it very clear as to what exactly the two sides disagree about. The fourth step is examining and reducing disagreement. Most people just jump straight into this one by trying to convince the other party that they are wrong about everything. If you want to be more convincing and a better communicator generally, you will need to invest time into these technical details like definitions and establishing exactly what you agree and disagree on as well as building rapport with people. The last step is argument egress. Translated to plain English, this means knowing how and when to end the conversation. Leaving the conversation properly is crucial to the future of the other party’s views on your arguments and the topic generally. If you end the argument by telling the other side that they should eat your ass and tickle your testicles while they do it, you probably won’t accomplish much.
With that out of the way, let us tackle the nature of knowledge. “What does it mean to know something” is a surprisingly complex subject and a millennia-long debate among philosophers. A debate that is still ongoing. The verb to know has an attachment to the truth. This is best exemplified in the following example:
Anna knows that it’s raining outside
John believes that it’s raining outside
Instinctively, we feel that there’s a difference between the two. You could say “John believes it’s raining, but it isn’t” and that makes sense because he may or may not be right. However, saying “Anna knows that it’s raining, but it isn’t” just sounds off.
However, the attachment to the truth is not the only component of knowledge. There is also confidence. Imagine that John enters a windowless basement and stays there for an hour. He could suspect that it is still raining outside but isn’t confident. Anna is dancing in the rain and she is confident that it is raining because she can feel the droplets on her skin and see the rain with her own eyes.
So far we have these elements of knowledge: a belief, thinking that our belief is true and being confident that our belief is true. However, that is not enough. There is one more element necessary and let me demonstrate why. Back to our rainy people. Imagine that John is a very pessimistic individual and that he sleeps in a windowless room. Anna planned a picnic on Sunday because the weather forecast said that it will be sunny and warm. John wakes up on Sunday and being the pessimistic bastard that he is, he thinks to himself “today is going to be terrible, it is definitely already raining outside”. Now let’s imagine that by some miracle he is right this time. Does that mean that he KNOWS that it is raining? No, it doesn’t.
In addition to your supposedly truthful belief and confidence, you also need a good basis. Being pessimistic isn’t a good basis for knowledge. For simple questions such as the one with rain we have above, a good enough basis will be mere observation. But what do we do with questions that have a multitude of factors at play? What do we do with issues where there are almost countless variables that need to be tested? That is where we turn to science.
The reason we turn to science and the scientific method is because it has in-built mechanisms that deal with issues that prevent us from a proper understanding of a certain subject. We all have internal biases. There will be several articles in this series that discuss these cognitive biases at great length. For now, it will suffice for you to know that sometimes we want something to be true so much that it clouds our judgement. You all know dudes that watch a football match and yell at the referee but only when perceived injustice is being done to the team they love and support but never notice when it goes the other way in the same match. There are also factors that correlate (happen at the same time and/or go in the same direction) but do not actually have a causal link and sometimes any link at all. For example, you take the official statistics collected by the governing body in your country and see that every time there is a huge growth in sales of ice cream there also seems to be an equally large increase in sales of sunglasses. You could conclude that eating more ice cream makes someone more likely to buy sunglasses. Obviously, the arrival of summer (rising temperatures/sunnier times) causes these spikes in sales. However, there are many issues where it is not immediately evident that events A and B do not have a causal relationship or any kind of relationship.
As discussed in the first step of proper argumentation, definitions are really important, so let’s define science quickly: Science is a systematic method of observation that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The in-built mechanisms I mentioned above help us quiet the surroundings and our internal biases and focus only at variables of interest. One crucial element there is the peer review process. Peer review simply entails the quality check of scientific/academic work by others working in the same field. The last point on science is to look at the weight of the evidence. You can find a study to support almost any claim. Just try Googling “is milk bad for you” and “is milk good for you”. Weight of the evidence, also known as scientific consensus, refers to the direction that most studies point to. For instance, if you have 150 studies saying that drinking milk has either a neutral or a positive effect on your health and then 3 studies that say that milk has a negative effect on your health, most likely the 150 studies are going to be right. I would need a whole book to show you how to analyse individual studies and that is obviously way beyond the scope of this article, but for those interested in more material, feel free to reach out to me and I will send you books, lecture series, and short summary videos on topics such as fundamentals of science and scientific principles, methodologies of scientific research, cognitive biases, and critical thinking among others. What I can show you within the scope of this article is what constitutes high quality evidence. The best thing to look for are meta-analyses. A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies focusing on the same issue and trying to answer the same question or questions. Below you can find a chart of the hierarchy of evidence.
RCT stands for randomized controlled trial, the highest quality study design
Please notice that there is no mention of your favorite YouTuber, no gut feeling, no Greta Thunberg, no horoscope, no personal stories and anecdote, no random Instagram infographic, no random internet articles by someone who agrees with your point of view, no some guy or girl you know, no Instagram posts by a popular fitness chick or personal trainer, no opinion of an actor or actress, and no grandma who “knows” that energy drinks are bad for you.
Jokes aside, none of these are admissible in court and none of these are admissible in science. The one I want to highlight specifically is anecdote. Anecdotes hold almost no weight anywhere except in people’s arguments online. You can’t submit an anecdote as evidence in court and no scientist or highly knowledgeable expert in any field will take you seriously if the main foundation of your argument rests on something as tenuous as anecdotes are. Let me give you a concrete example. Imagine that I invented a religion that believes in a god called Norag the almighty who is half bear half human. Now imagine that I have one other follower of this wonderful religion and that he claims that he saw Norag with his own eyes. Would you believe him? Of course you fucking wouldn’t. Obviously not all anecdotes are this ridiculous but they are all subject to emotions, biases, delusions due to indoctrination and general stupidity. All of these can massively affect how we see events and that in turn reduces the quality of our observations. This is why anecdotes are inadmissible. So please, when we discuss highly emotionally-charged subjects, don’t come at me with “you are an insensitive pig” because I am not taking anecdotes into account. I am and always will be highly empathetic towards individuals who have experienced injustice or pain. I will always acknowledge that these people are not lying in the sense that they believe their experience to be true. However, I will not let someone’s anecdote impact my views on a subject. Simply put, if the majority of the evidence points to a certain conclusion, your anecdote or anyone else’s anecdote is irrelevant.
So in the coming weeks and months we will take a look at many hotly contested, highly emotionally-charged issues. I will build arguments based on sound scientific evidence, official statistics (verifiable numbers), expert opinion and logically sound reasoning which will hopefully lead to productive conversations and a step towards begin a tiny bit better on a personal and societal level for all of us.
I leave you with this – reality exists whether you like or not. It is entirely independent of anyone’s opinion of it. You can spend your time doing one of the following three things:
Pretend that your opinions are true and not look to challenge them with evidence and always disregard those with a different view as ignorant, stupid, racist, sexist, bigoted or whatever other label you want to use
Claim that the reality is subjective and that truth is a matter of opinion. This simply ends the search for objective truth and usually regresses to the point above
Try to improve your ability to get closer to the truth by expanding your cognitive arsenal. Focus on learning how to reduce your biases and learn how to use the tools of science and philosophy
I am only interested in the last one. How about you?