The Truth about Scotsmen, or: Dissolving Fallacies

That really is the crux of the problem, isn't it? I think it's important to distinguish between two types of arguments, each with a profoundly different goal:

1. To persuade the person you're arguing with,

2. To persuade the bystanders watching a public argument.

If your goal is (1), then the method I would go with is to pick one really good argument and push it hard. Take whatever is your strongest argument, and throw all your weight behind it. When the other guy comes up with a weak rebuttal, just quickly point out the flaw in it and reiterate your central point. Don't let him squirm out, except through your line of retreat. Another thing that can help here is Socratically asking questions that expose the weak points in his beliefs. That tends to throw people off balance and help you seize the initiative. (Obviously, if the person you're arguing with makes actual good points, listen. Stay away from the Dark Side.)

If your goal is (2), convincing bystanders, then it's much easier. People passively watching others argue are not going to get as strongly attached to one of the sides right off the bat. They can be swayed much more easily than people actually arguing. What you need to do here is make yourself an attractive side to the bystanders. Try to be funny and charming, and trip up the person you're arguing with. Bring out a few zingers; ask questions that the other guy isn't expecting; and always, always be calm and collected. People like to follow a strong leader. Even the ones who will never join your side can be made embarrassed to speak up. And that's victory, of a sort, if the view you're arguing with is really repugnant.

This all sounds kind of contemptuous, doesn't it? I think it's true, though.

Here are some of the ways I go about trying to convince people of things. I have no idea whether it actually works or not.

Attacking someone else's thought process has the problems the OP observes. So instead, I try to explain my thought process. The goal is that they will say, "hey, I can get on board with what this guy is saying." Even if they aren't ready to get on board, at least they might be more open-minded towards my position for the future, and be willing to "agree to disagree" (yes, it's a fallacy, but don't point that out). I want to gain some of their epistemic trust.

Even when I disagree, I do the following things:

• Emphasize areas of agreement

• Personalize and subjectivize my disagreement: "Well, in my view...", "here's how it looks to me", "what worries me is this", "I can't quite get on board with that"

• Use analogies, rather than pointing out fallacies. (Though be careful picking analogies, or you can get whole conversation trees discussing the aptness of the analogies.)

• Respond to what I actually think their argument is, rather than trying to nitpick or trap them in what they actually said.

• Point out implications of what they are saying, and ask them if they agree with those implications.

I also try to project a likable, trustworthy character that people can feel is a "good person." Liking is an important tool of persuasion. You see, most people cannot consider arguments separately from people. By coming off as a likable and credible, I correct for people's biases against views they don't initially agree with. I want to minimize people automatically throwing out my arguments simply because they don't like the way I come off. Of course, I can't please everyone, and not everyone is going to like me. (Some people will consider my debate style passive-aggressive, and with them, all I can do is throw in a bit of sarcasm or anger.)

Luckily, since I have high Agreeableness and Openness, most of these strategies I describe are pretty authentic and fit my personality, most of the time. I have text files full of snippets of sarcastic stuff that I don't post, because nowadays I try to post what I would post if I looked at the thread tomorrow, rather than what I feel like posting in the heat of the moment.

I could probably go even farther towards projecting a likable character, and being emotionally relatable. But that could get smarmy, and I'm not always in the mood. So the character I project probably comes off as more cerebral than I seem in real life.

I won't claim the strategies of persuasion that I use to be successful or ideal; they are simply the habits I've fallen into over the years. Also, what I do in discussions where I'm only trying to convince onlookers, not the other person, can be different. YMMV.

So.... am I using "Dark Arts"?

You have to sell your idea. Some people have an immediate "ugh" reaction to the idea of selling anything in any way, but there are plenty of white-hat means to do so, e.g. 1 2. This is a completely different skill to debating. It's attracting people to your idea rather than pushing it on them. To herd cats, first work out the local value of tuna.

The specifics of that are rather beyond the scope of this post (and my understanding.) My point in the second part is that attacking fallacies is a facile and ineffective approach to persuasion because it fails to take into account the other person's state of mind. Fallacies are surface-level manifestations of deeper beliefs, and if you're really trying to convince someone, you have to address the underlying issue, not just the transparent one. It follows that you need to have an accurate model of their mental processes -- that you need to understand not only what they're arguing but why they're arguing it.

Knocking down fallacies is easy and often fun, but it's ultimately just a sport -- effective counterargument requires a more empathetic approach.

I'd say more like a half. I think that the labels "point 1 / 2" should be done away with: point 1 could be a smooth part of the introduction and point 2 could be elaborated on as the real focus, but quadruple would be too much :D

To offer a different perspective, I actually really appreciated the brevity of this post and wouldn't want it to be too much longer. One or two more examples could have been useful, but I don't think it's a fault that there aren't more.

This post makes one very insightful point that I hadn't thought about before in quite those terms, and it makes it clearly and succinctly and gives me lots of food for thought. Definitely worth an upvote from me.

I think many of the posts here err on the side of being longer than they need to be by giving too many examples with too much detail, or by cramming what should be split into multiple posts into a single post. I'm not saying every post should be like this one, but I think there's a place for the longer five-course meal posts, and there's also a place for snack-size posts like this one, which can always be developed into longer more definitive posts later after benefitting from the discussion in the original.

You're going to need to be able to deal with people who bring the war to you. However you resolve that is up to you, but the situation described - in which he thinks of it as a war, whatever you think - is not unrealistic.

And you will have occasion in life to need to actually convince someone of something. At which point you can approach it in a number of ways, e.g.

1. War of ideas (which there are any number of ways to conduct).
2. Selling the idea (just like selling something for money).
3. Do nothing and let them stay unconvinced (a sometimes neglected alternative, particularly for nerds).

The point is that, to most people, that is what an argument is. And the question is how to convince the average person that one of their beliefs is wrong.

Yep. Approximately no-one has ever taken advice. Ever. Even when they ask for it, they use it to confirm whatever course of action they had already decided on.

(If they're actually bugging you with problems they won't act to fix, a useful method is to strip politeness and be blunt: give them a short list of actions before they next ask you about it and demand progress on these before you'll talk about it again. Then they'll either do something or stop asking. Usually the latter. Either is a win.)

You might think from the amount of advice given out that it was going somewhere, but there's a lack of evidence to this effect.

If you need to change someone else's mind, you need to actually sell the idea. And this always has to be done with a pull, not a push - attract them to your idea. This is not quick, but push just doesn't convince.

Note that you won't find their true rejection by bluntly asking, as they will detect "sales!" and go defensive.

(I am awful at selling things for money, but try to sell people on ideas more or less every second I'm writing or talking. How am I doing on this one?)

To torture the metaphor - my highly-decorated veteran soldier in arguments involving this subcategory is questioning the validity of this subcategory. A juror shouldn't believe someone guilty because they enjoy holding that belief, etc.