According to Dale Carnegie, You Can't Win an Argument—and He Has a Point

"A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still."

I think you need a longer time span to see this is quite often false. What has happened many times is I argue with my friend or my parent and "win" while they're defending their position to the teeth. Months later, they present my argument to me as their own as if the previous discussion never happened. Some people's forgetfulness amazes me, but I suspect I've changed my mind this way without noticing too.

Admitting you're wrong is quite different from changing your mind. Even so, I hopefully don't argue to win these days anymore.

Magic the gathering analogy time!

Arguing is like getting to look at the top card of your deck and then put it on the bottom if you wish ("scrying for 1"). When you scry, what you want is to see that the top card of your deck is great and doesn't need to be bottomed. But in that case you gained very little from scrying - the actual value of scrying comes when your top card is terrible, and you need to get rid of it.

Which is to say that you don't want to lose an argument, but that losing and actually changing your mind is a major way of extracting value from them.

Leaving a line of retreat is standard LessWrong advice and seems to fit this theme well.

Another perspective on why it's hard to meaningfully win an argument: epistemic learned helplessness.* Most people, though perhaps not most people on this site, have known someone who could argue circles around them and "win" nearly any argument, to the point where "losing" an argument is so sure either way that it's not even evidence of being wrong. If the fact that I've "lost" an argument (been confronted with reasoning that I am unable to effectively refute on a conversational timescale) forces me to actually change my mind, I could end up believing anything.

Just because my argument for why I like ham sandwiches is full of holes doesn't mean I don't really like ham sandwiches.

*Edit: blog has been locked since I posted this comment. See archived version of this post at https://web.archive.org/web/20130114194332/http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html. Bare URL because when I put in the actual hyperlink, LW gets confused and inserts a "<" in the middle, breaking the link.

Great post. This sort of perspective is something that I'd definitely like to see more of on LessWrong.

Like a lot of advice of this sort, this benefits from being flipped around: become able to lose arguments so you can learn from them (which is the real winning). I don't have much concrete advice on doing that, but I know it's possible because some people are more capable than others. Being surrounded by a community that respects mind-changing helps. Simply being aware of the problem also might. As might having something to protect (though probably only when you actually do).

You can’t win an argument

I'd add the caveat "it can't be known that you've won the argument". I've been in several conversations where I've got people to essentially argue away their entire position - but only as long as you don't point it out to them. As long as they can feel they haven't lost, they can end up with very different positions from their starting positions.

Firm endorsement of Carnegie, and firm endorsement of applying this rule basically everywhere. Even on Less Wrong, I do my best to clash with others' pride as little as possible. I've found the Socratic method to work fairly well. In my experience, it is most useful at finding your misunderstandings and preventing them from causing you trouble, which is well worth it.

It had the probably unintended effect, though, of helping to give me a deep cynicism about human nature, a cynicism which persists to this day.

I've had similar experiences:

-People refusing to draw conclusions that cast them in a negative light, and directing sadness / anger / annoyance at me for being critical.

-People accepting conclusions that cast them in a negative light, and subsequently reacting with sadness and self-anger.

However, Take Caution - this can lead to the following problem: "Person X has problem A, but what's the point of telling them so when I know that the result will be negative?" <-- I frequently experience this thought when I am in a particularly bad mood, so I'm going to guess that at least some people on Lesswrong sometimes fall into this mindset.

The thought is wrong because I've also had the following experiences:

-I've pointed out people's flaws and they acknowledge it (and then continue to behave exactly as before) - "Yes, I'm sorry, it's a flaw which is hard for me to change". For some reason, this response makes me much more understanding...the flaw becomes a common enemy rather than a point of contention.

-I've pointed out something I thought did not make sense, and the person changed my mind by giving me information I didn't have before.

-I've pointed out something I didn't like, and the person apologized and changed their behavior.

-I've pointed out that someone's closely held social opinion is wrong, appealing to shared fundamental values. After a long discussion, they conceded and change the viewpoint. Yes, it takes a long time...but that's not only because it's hard to change a person's mind. It's also because it legitimately takes a long time to analyze complex topics.

So the reality is that while it's certainly harder for people to conclude things which cast them in a negative light, it doesn't always turn out that way. A large part of it is learning how to use body language and verbal cues to steer people away from "argument" and towards 'discussion"...and most importantly reading the other person's cues to figure out when they are receptive to discussion, and when emotions are flaring and you should just drop it. As you might guess, if you catch someone in a good mood, they are much more capable of engaging in self-criticism without experiencing any emotional flare ups. And, naturally, some people are just better at it than others...

I guess the point of this comment is to clarify the middle ground between "People are all hopelessly narcissistic, why even bother trying to change them" and "Be brutally honest and critical all the time even if it upsets everyone". While I've gotten into my fair share of unpleasant, net-negative arguments due to my tendency to have the discussion rather than just drop it, I think it's had a net positive on my relationships. If nothing else, having the discussion has made my models of the people in my life more accurate and sometimes causes me to change my mind. I've never actually lost anyone forever due to this, though perhaps that's just my good luck...

Practical tip: I often tell people that if I'm criticizing them, it's a sign of respect because it means I think they can handle criticism. I find that making sure people understand this makes people more receptive to criticism. It's also helpful to let other people know that you are a friend and have their best interests at heart, so they don't perceive your criticism as a form of social attack. For this reason I usually only criticize people in-real-life after we are friends, and not before...unless they've given me reason to believe they are unusually good at handling criticism.

Edit: Also, I want to point out that religion, which is used as an example here, is a particularly difficult thing for someone to change their mind about for multiple reasons that have nothing to do with the human tendency towards narcissism....it's best not to draw broader conclusions about humans being unable to think negative things about themselves in general from looking at religion as a case study.

I still that the human need to think highly of ourselves is a far more important source of human rationality

Missing verb after still, and I also think rationality should be irrationality.

To your alternative approaches I would also add Bruce Schneier's advice in Cryptographic Engineering, where he talks a little about the human element in dealing with clients. It's similar to the Socratic approach, in that you ask about a possible flaw rather than argue it exists.

Bad: "that doesn't work. Someone can just replay the messages."

Good: "what defenses does this system have against replay attacks?"

I think this happens because it takes skill to accept being wrong. I know this has essentially been mentioned on LW before (my most recent reading was in MrMind's comment on the 5 Second Level), but I don't think most people have learnt that skill.

What we learn is that if we say "yes, I was wrong", others have then jumped on us, made fun of us or made an example of us - this starts when we're kids, or in school, where if we happen to be around teachers or parents with an inferiority complex, we've quickly learnt that it's better to be absolutely right or say nothing rather than be a little wrong.

We come here because we want to be, well, less wrong - and we're willing to admit we're wrong in order to be less so, so we're more likely to enter an argument with the genuine goal of coming out with a less wrong answer, rather than proving that our view is right. Most people want to be right, want to fit in, want to not make a mistake because most of us have learnt that being wrong = bad, and we don't want to be bad.

I have never been able to get the Socratic Method to work on the Internet. In theory the Socratic Method is effective because the student has to reason their own way to the conclusion, and so they end up knowing it more deeply and thoroughly than if they were just told the conclusion by the teacher. But somehow it never works for me.

I think part of the problem is that the Socratic Method relies on the participants agreeing to take on the appropriate roles in the discussion. In particular, the "student" has to agree to play the role of the student, so that when the "teacher" asks them to consider such-and-such, they actually do consider it.

Here's an example in which I try to help someone learn how to solve puzzles involving conditional probabilities. But he does not agree that I have any right to teach him, and so nothing is communicated.

The other problem is that the Socratic Method requires a very long interaction, with a lot of back and forth. In person you can keep someone focused on a difficult issue until they resolve it. But conversations on the Internet rarely go on long enough for a difficult point to be resolved, and it is easy for a participant who finds themselves in an uncomfortable position to abandon the discussion.

FWIW, I've stopped using the Socratic Method, because, in my experience, it always elicits a strong and immediate negative reaction. People basically respond to it by saying, "stop asking me questions to which you obviously already have all the answers; do you think I'm stupid and wouldn't notice ?"

I generally agree (a lot) with this principle, especially during direct, in-person discussions. Though I still remain persuaded that there is a place for contradiction -- and even explicitly ridicule of ideas in argument.

I'm thinking specifically of my experience with religion. You mentioned the example of lurkers being able to access direct arguments. For some large chunk of the fundamentalist theist lurker crowd out there, polite, Socratic-styled arguments against their religion may not do the trick. This, I think, is because (1) theists are super good at out-politing others and (2) the (especially childhood) indocrination into the meme of theism is designed to survive these sorts of encounters.

Upon reading a polite, Socratic-exchange online, a sufficiently indocrinated believer can just say, "Well, the atheist is really smart and his position sounds okay. But he obviously just can't see the Truth because he won't submit his stubborn heart. And it is clear from the discussion that he really respects the theistic point-of-view, since he seemed to engage with most of the theist premises during the debate."

What most stands out about those conversations is Borghossian's patience. He politely keeps asking questions as the conversation seemingly goes round in circles, sometimes even shutting up and listening as his interlocutors spend several minutes basically repeating themselves, or going off on a tangent about the leadership structure of their church.

This paragraph stood out to me as an example of what I mean. A theist "interlocutor spending several minutes basically repeating themselves, or going off on a tangent about the leadership structure of their church" is called a "sermon" where I grew up, and theists are used to them being delivered by the authoritative member of their community (i.e. pastor) to whom they defer for their knowledge about what is True.

In fact, many people I know would view such a "redundant tangent" as a valid argument that fully rebutted anything the atheist said, even if it contained nothing substantial in regard to the topic at hand, just because it was kinda long and sounded Christian-y enough to be True (i.e. it sounded like something the Pastor would say in his sermon...and so applause lights would go off).

As an alternative, I think someone like Christopher Hitchens can be effective (Richard Dawkins is good example, too). He doesn't tend to grant bad premises or emulate Socrates or even follow the format of the debate. He instead uses humor and strong polemics to attack the absurdity of the premise that a more polite opponent might allow for the sake of discussion.

He calls certain ideas "dangerously stupid" and tells people their favorite charity (i.e. the church) is wasting their donations. He ridicules bad ideas instead of engagaing with them. He did make lots of enemies. And I think he tends to take things too far once in a while. But I also think he (and his style) won some (de)converts that Dale Carnegie's style (or Peter Boghossian's) might never reach.

I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion?

How about "Do you ever wonder if your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? It's a frightening possibility, and most horrifying of all, no matter what actually ends up being true, you have to agree that most people do this."

Admittedly, I suspect a lot of people would completely miss the point and tell you about that Christ will give you the certainty you look for. Or at least think it's something that only applies to other people.

Speaking of which, it's not something that only applies to other people. If you guys aren't worried, you should be.

How many people on LessWrong realize that when you tell someone their AI project is dangerously stupid, or that their favorite charity is a waste of money, you risk losing them forever—and not because of anything to do with the the subtler human biases, but just becasue most people hate being told they're wrong?

Well, the problem is, these two specific examples simply are not true. Many charities are reasonably effective in their stated purpose, even if "effective altruism" believers would hold that they are strictly suboptimal in terms of human good. Likewise, let's be frank, almost all AGI projects are complete fucking bunk and never go anywhere. The ones that stand a chance of actually working, even slightly, tend to be run by people intelligent enough to actually notice the dangers when you point them out (even if they don't believe you can do anything about the dangers).

If you want to win an argument, be prepared to be persuaded of things yourself, to take into account evidence you haven't heard yet -- including evidence for null hypotheses, which are, after all, usually true.

Relevant other post: Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

whoops, redundant, sorry!

[Trigger warning: ableism]

Here's a, ahem, less polite way I've seen to put that sentiment.