Typically when two people disagree, neither makes significant progress in convincing the other, and little or nothing is learned on either side.
It’s tough to make real-life disagreements productive, but here are my favorite techniques for making it easier to do so. These help more if you are significantly motivated to use the disagreement to deepen mutual understanding of the issue.
I’m assuming here that you have control over your own behavior, but not over the other persons, because that’s the reality of almost all such situations. I’m not assuming that the other person is motivated to figure out the truth (e.g., they may be mostly motivated by “winning” the debate).
TIPS FOR HAVING MORE PRODUCTIVE REAL LIFE DISAGREEMENTS
(1) Avoid debates in front of others – if others are watching, it tends to create unproductive social dynamics. You or the person who disagrees with you may want to look good in the debate in front of those other people, which tends to push in the opposite direction of being open-minded and conceding when the other person has made a good point. What’s more, having other people involved increases the chance that the conversation gets derailed.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “Bob, what do you think about what we’re discussing?”
PRODUCTIVE: “Want to sit over there with me and discuss this in more detail?”
(2) Stay on topic – very often, the topic of disagreement will start to drift. Resist the urge to go follow tangents or switch what the debate is about, or you’ll lose focus. If someone says something new that you disagree with, resist the urge to address it if it isn’t related to the main point of contention.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “You’re wrong about that too.”
PRODUCTIVE: “We can discuss that point of disagreement later, but I’d be interested in returning to the subject we were discussing if you don’t mind.”
(3) Investigate first, don’t attack – when someone says something we strongly disagree with, we can be tempted to immediately attack their position. However, doing so sets up the discussion as a war. If the goal is to have a productive debate (where both you and the other person have a reasonable chance of making your views more accurate), then it’s much better to set the conversation up as a discussion where you can learn from each other instead. Avoid immediately jumping into attacking the other person’s position so that they aren’t put on the defensive and so that the conversation isn’t framed in terms of winning. This relates to Julia Galef’s concept of Scout Mindset (see: http://bit.ly/2fPYRJI), which I think is the right mindset to have when entering into a disagreement. You should be trying to understand the lay of the land, not firing cannons. If you fire cannons, you can expect cannon fire right back at you.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “There are at least three reasons you’re wrong about that.”
PRODUCTIVE: “Could you tell me more about that?”
(4) Clarify the other person’s claims – it’s surprisingly easy to have a long disagreement without fully understanding what the other person really meant. Typically you’ll need to ask a lot of clarifying questions early on so that you really understand what’s being claimed. If you refute the other person’s points, without having clarified, there is a good chance that you are arguing against something that isn’t quite what they believe. One of the best ways of making sure you’ve understood the other side is to repeat back the other person’s claims in your own words and ask if you’ve accurately reflected what they are saying.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “But X is not true because…”
PRODUCTIVE: “I think that what you’re saying is X, am I understanding that right?”
(5) Clarify definitions – language tends to be quite ambiguous. If the points you are making hinge on someone understanding your definition of a word, then take a moment to clarify what you mean by it. Or, if you notice that the way the other person is using a word may not be quite the way you use it, stop for a moment to explain your usage and to ask them to clarify their own. If you and the other party mean different things by word, it’s very hard to constantly keep that in mind without getting confused. It’s typically much better to either decide to switch over to the other person’s definition (once you’ve asked them to explain it) or to ask to switch to another word entirely that you both agree on the definition for. It’s a lot harder to get someone to successfully switch over to your definition than to simply resolve to switch over to theirs.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “We obviously don’t have free will because we don’t choose the things we fundamentally want.”
PRODUCTIVE: “Could you elaborate on what you mean by the phrase ‘free will’? I’m not sure I understand what you are using that phrase to mean.”
(6) Identify reason(s) for belief – don’t just stop at understanding what the other person is claiming. If you actually want to make progress in the debate, you’ll need to dig into the reasons behind their beliefs. Knowing why they believe what they do may cause you to agree with the other person more (because it helps you understand their reasoning) but, even if it doesn’t, it can also help you understand where the debate needs to focus in order to make progress. Without knowing why they believe what they do, you don’t know what points are most critical to discuss.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “I don’t think X is true because….”
PRODUCTIVE: “What are the main reasons that you think X is true?”
(7) Gently probe the reasons you’re given – if someone tells you that the reason they believe X is Y, don’t assume that if you were to change their belief in Y, then belief X would change too. First of all, we are not always aware of the reasons we believe things, so while the person might think Y is the reason they believe X, they might be wrong (it could just be their best on the spot guess or the first argument their brain could put together – they may have even forgotten what caused them to believe X). Second, our beliefs may be propped up by multiple other beliefs, so even if the other person really does believe X because of Y, there may be other beliefs P and Q that would need to change at the same time for the other person to stop believing X. What’s more, a person may have an emotional attachment to X that isn’t really supported by conscious “reasons” at all (e.g., the idea of not believing X causes them anxiety, so if they start to sense that X is being challenged they try to defend it with whatever argument comes to mind first). So if the main point of contention in your debate is whether X is true, and the other party says they believe X because of Y, you’ll want to gently probe Y to understand better what’s really going on. This can be done with questions such as:
-“Is Y the main reason you believe X, or are there other important reasons you believe X as well?”
-“If you were no longer convinced of Y, do you think that would be enough to cause you to stop believing X?”
-“If it turned out that X was true, would you see that as a bad thing? Why?”
UNPRODUCTIVE: “But Y is not a convincing reason to believe X.”
PRODUCTIVE: “If you stopped believing that Y was true, would that change your mind about X?”
(8) Look for the critical points of disagreement – there may be a lot of reasons that you and the other person disagree, but they are unlikely to be equally important. Chances are, there are a small number of important points of contention that the disagreement hinges on. (see CFAR’s “double crux” technique: http://bit.ly/2xYjqOI for more about finding these “crux’s”). It can be helpful to frame finding the core points of disagreement as an explicit goal in the conversation and to enlist the other person’s help in figuring it out.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “Let’s go one by one through all the reasons we disagree.”
PRODUCTIVE: “I think our main point of disagreement is actually just Y. does that seem right to you? If not, I’d be really interested in finding out what our core points of disagreement really are.”
(9) Find common ground – agreeing tends to make people feel closer to each other and to make a debate feel less heated and awkward, so it’s good to point out the things that you do already agree on. Pointing out what you think you already agree on can also be helpful for clarification because you may discover hidden points of disagreement that you didn’t even realize were there.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “It looks like we really don’t agree on this topic.”
PRODUCTIVE: “It looks like we already agree on a number of things, including…”
(10) Look for ways you can learn – one of the best things about a disagreement is that it presents an opportunity to make your own views more accurate. Even if you are right overall on the topic, you can still correct minor errors in your beliefs and arguments and hone them for the future. Chances are the other person has at least SOME good points. Try to learn as much as you can from them. At the very least, you can learn about how someone gets to the point of believing something that you disagree with on this topic, which is useful to understand in its own right. On complex, controversial issues, it is almost always the case that both sides have some reasonable points. It’s valuable to know what the reasonable points on the other side are. Keep in mind also that, like everyone, you are totally wrong about some of the things that you strongly believe in. This might just be one of those topics. If that’s true, it’s better to find out now and then start being right about it, rather than continuing being wrong about the topic indefinitely.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “I’m still not convinced.”
PRODUCTIVE: “I’d be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on Z because I’ve never thought about Z the way you’re presenting it.”
(11) Give credit when a good point is made – if the other person makes a good point, or changes your mind about something, tell them that. This might feel like conceding ground in the “battle,” but if you’re viewing the disagreement as a battle, then you are probably already not in a productive mode of discussion. Telling the other person that they made a good point or that they changed your mind about something shows good faith. It demonstrates that you are actually interested in listening to what they say and that you are not simply trying to beat them. That tends to make the other person less defensive, more open-minded, and more likely to be willing to admit that you changed their mind as well. It can help to frame the entire discussion as a collaborative enterprise to figure out the truth, rather than as a conflict between two people. Remember that finding out you are wrong about something is a gift that makes you more powerful because, the next time around, you’ll have truer beliefs and better arguments, as well as a deeper understanding of the world.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “What you said was not 100% true.”
PRODUCTIVE: “You made a great point about Z, which helps me understand this topic better.”
(12) Keep your ego out of it – if your ego is invested in coming out on top in the disagreement, or at least in not having your points refuted, then you are less likely to learn and more likely to turn the disagreement into a battle where the goal is winning. One nice trick for keeping your ego off to the side is to put forward claims without saying that you necessarily believe them. For instance, to keep an argument that you have uncertainty about at arm’s length, you can say, “Some people argue that Z, what do you think of that claim?” or if you aren’t sure you believe something, say “I’m not sure yet what I think about this yet, but one thing that comes to mind is Z.” You can also bring up the views of other people, as in “I was reading an article that said Z. What’s your reaction to that?” Using softening language can help too, such as “I’m thinking that” rather than “I believe that” or even worse, “I’ve always believed that.” The more your language makes the belief seem like a core part of your identity, the harder you may later feel it is to back down, even if you turn out to be totally wrong.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “I believe in Y.”
PRODUCTIVE: “I’m still figuring out what I think about Y. Some people say Z about it; what do you think of that argument?”
(13) Keep the other person’s ego out of it – if the other person’s ego is invested in winning (or at least not losing), it is likely going to tend to reduce the quality of the discussion. Make it as easy as possible for the other person to concede a point, for instance, by acknowledging that you understand why they think the thing and explaining how you see someone might come to that conclusion, or by emphasizing that another point they made was really good while you’re pointing out that this other point they made is weaker. Mentioning ways that you realize your own views were wrong can also be helpful, as it neutralizes the embarrassment of being wrong. If you used to believe the same thing that they do (but changed your mind about it), it can be helpful mentioning that as well to show that you understand why someone would take their side.
UNPRODUCTIVE: “You’re wrong about X.”
PRODUCTIVE: “I can understand why you said X, and you made a lot of good points about it. I think, though, that there is an important consideration that the argument you gave isn’t taking into account.”
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