How to Lose an Argument

“This is what we mean by the term polarization — not that we disagree, or even that we disagree too much or too often, but that we disagree badly: our arguments are painful and useless.” — Bo Seo

Run a Google search for “how-to” books on argumentation and the top results will be gilded with verbs of victory; promises to instill the reader with tactics for conquering, succeeding, prevailing — or most frequently, winning — in the jeopardous affair. In the public consciousness argument is akin to war — and in war, losing is not an option.

Both our productivity-obsessed culture and our quest for personal gain coax us into approaching arguments as winner-take-all campaigns with weighty social stakes. We conduct arguments in a combative high-risk / high-reward framework, as we’ve done for millennia, but only rarely stop to consider the price we pay for structuring them in such a manner.

A price that might be higher than we care to acknowledge.

The Role of Argumentation

For most of us, any interest we might have in arguments (typically, how we might succeed in them) exists because they are so ubiquitous and increasingly inevitable. Whether you love or loathe them, you never know when you might be thrown into one. The workplace, the comment section, even the holiday dinner table can shift into a battlefield of wits and opinions in the blink of an eye.

Arguments aren’t worth our consideration for their inevitability, however, but instead for their centrality. That is, for the imperative role they play in managing the bedrock of society: our ideas.

From laws and business strategies to architecture and technology, every pillar of our day-to-day began somewhere first as an idea. Those ideas eventually take hold and are manifested into societal pillars, but not before being sifted and appraised through argumentation. As the gatekeepers of an idea’s road to reality, arguments are the tectonic force underlying our civil infrastructure.

Beyond their process of idea winnowing, arguments also dictate the shape of the ideas that end up making the cut. The back-and-forth volley of argument batters and molds proposed ideas, eventually giving them their lasting phenotype when they are ready to be rooted as societal sinews. Meaning that how we argue is just as, if not more, consequential than what we might argue about.

The Standard Model

The “how” of our current argumentative framework is most commonly gladiatorial. Disputes are conducted as zero-sum skirmishes of words, tone, and logic where the victor is rewarded with a gain in prestige and a sense of intellectual superiority, and the defeated is left with humiliation and indefinite loss of credibility. We diminish argumentation when we structure it this way, but this approach isn’t beyond redemption.

As is the case in any sport, we structure and agree upon the rules of engagement which then dictate the attitudes and behaviors of the players involved. This holds no less true for the sport of argument, for better or worse.

By habitually (albeit sometimes subconsciously) framing arguments as kill-or-be-killed battle royales, we incentivize a form of arguing that is at its most entertaining, but far from its most productive.

Limits of the War Model

Conceiving arguments in a war-like manner reduces their utility in a number of ways, one of which is the tendency to nudge us into seeing issues as only two-sided. The caricature of war as a conflict between two opposing parties gets mapped onto our conception of argumentation. As a result, we fall into the trap of simplifying complex, multifaceted issues into false dichotomies, stripping them of their nuance in the process. Ideas lose their dynamism and multiplicity, becoming shallow us-versus-them team alliances, and polarization swells.

The war model also tends to mark ideas with a false sense of finality. “Winning” validates one idea and ends up completely discrediting the other. But not all ideas that come up short in an argument should be thrown out wholesale. Unfortunately with the stigma attached to loss, we are less likely to reexamine ideas that ended up on the wrong side of an argument, even if they have redeeming qualities. Nor are we likely to further interrogate the ideas that have won, even if aspects of them remain dubious.

The very concept of winners and losers is another limitation of the war analogy, possibly the most problematic. The framework puts individual supremacy at the center, instead of the ideas needing examination. Rather than a means for developing a deeper understanding of an issue, arguments get used for gambling with the social currency of credibility, either reaping a quick and favorable gain or losing it all in one bout.

The allure of the potential benefits of winning is outmatched only by the immense fear of the potential perils of losing. The social cost of argumentative defeat is so high that arguments turn into fight-or-flight situations.

Flighters tend to be conflict-avoidant, sidestepping arguments altogether to bypass the risk. Our ideas benefit when they are shaped in argumentation by different perspectives. But if the social risk of losing an argument is too high, valued viewpoints are discouraged from participating in the first place.

As for the fighters, the risk of defeat drives a win-at-all-costs mentality. This turns arguments into wars of attrition, where both parties desperately wear the other down instead of attempting to actively listen or empathize. The process chips away at the relationship between the participants and atrophies the ideas in question, as opposed to building them up, making even an eventual victory a pyrrhic one in the long term.

These outcomes aren’t inevitable, but our all too common colosseum approach makes them more likely and inculcates poor habits of mind. Thankfully we can redefine the rules of engagement and adopt a healthier alternative.

Pascal’s Approach

In his celebrated work, the Pensées, the 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal provides us with a good starting point for making our conception of arguments more profitable:

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

There are a couple of ways we could take Pascal’s advice. One is to maintain the analogy of war in argumentation and interpret Pascal’s observations as a subversion tactic for victory — a trojan horse approach to arguments. In this view, it may as well read “Make the enemy vulnerable by giving them a false confidence, and when they’ve lowered their guard, attack.”

But this ignores the most profound part of his advice, something that can be used as the basis of argumentation itself: the observation that “man naturally cannot see everything.”

“When arguing with a fool, first make sure the other person isn’t doing the same thing”

Acknowledging that none of us is omniscient, no matter how much we’d like to be, is the key to turning an argument from a crusade of annihilation to an expedition of discovery. The notion puts everyone on the same plane. No one has the higher ground; everyone is limited and therefore, to some degree, dependent.

In Pascal’s view, a flawed idea is more likely to be incomplete rather than irreparably erroneous and only needs to be expanded, tweaked, or complimented — a process best done cooperatively. With this approach to arguments, we are all on the same team striving toward the same goal. It’s still a sport, but no longer a fruitless competition.

It’s worth mentioning that, according to Etymonline, the term argue comes ultimately from the Latin arguere meaning to “make clear” (from the Proto-Indo-European root arg- meaning “to shine”). We argue for clarity, refinement, and understanding, not for domination and prestige.

War is Tempting, But Peace is Prudent

The digital age brings an abundance of information, competing intellectual tribes, and social media soapboxes for anyone who desires one, which in combination make up a vast minefield of ruthless arguments. The already hefty risk/reward model found in our standard style of argumentation is multiplied on digital platforms, given that online disputes are taking place on a potentially global stage.

Such a climate fosters an almost irresistible temptation to play the game with the sole goal of winning above all else. But there is bravery in alternatively — perhaps in this day and age, subversively — using arguments to cultivate wisdom and seek congruence.

When we adopt a posture of Philonikia, a love of victory, we risk humiliating our fellow man, discouraging future dialogue, and distorting our ideas, which ultimately reduces the structural integrity of our societal pillars in the long run— all for the sake of stroking one’s ego.

In contrast, Philosophia, a love of wisdom in arguments, encourages admitting when you might be wrong, acknowledging your ignorance, and listening with humility.

The willingness to appear naive might be interpreted as surrender in a game that, as it is typically structured, favors unrelenting offense. But it is only when we “lose” in our wars of intellectual superiority that we begin to discover even greater value. Maintaining a posture of philosophia reveals a surprising amount of courage, while an insistence on philonikia is nothing more than masked cowardice.

We shouldn’t be afraid of arguments or despise them. We need them. We’re dependent on them. But we should approach them with curiosity, seeking insight and common ground, not with hubris seeking a transient social trophy. The former will greatly benefit our friendships, businesses, and society as a whole; the latter will come back to bite us.

Sources:

• Pascal, Blaise, 1623–1662. Pensées. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1966

• Online Etymology Dictionary, Digital Entry: argue (v.), https://shorturl.at/YwDd8