Secret Formula For Convincing Ar

According to Hugo Mercier’s lecture on “How Can You Change Someone’s Mind (Hint-Facts Aren’t Always Enough”, a 2005 study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler examined American attitudes regarding the justifications for the Iraq War. Researchers printed participants with a news article that showed no weapon of mass destruction had been found. Yet many participants not only continued to believe that WMDs had been found, but they even became more convinced of their original views. So why do arguments change people’s minds in some cases and backfire in others? Why are some people insensitive, unreasonable and unchangeable?

Let’s reproduce the scene of a fierce fight together. “I think…” “What?! How can you possibly believe something like that? That’s nonsense.” “How dare you doubt my viewpoint!” “Of course I can, coz you’re stupid.” “F***”… That’s what happens 90 out of 100 cases when we are trying to convince people badly with poor arguments coz we’re overriding them with what we agree on or what we think/know is right. And when that happens, they’ll sense our superiority and denial immediately and classify it as a foreign attack that’ll initiate war instantly. And the defensive soldier mindset could be contagious and hence the vicious circle of argument goes on and on.

Brendan made it clear that arguments are more convincing when they rest on a good knowledge of the audience, taking into account:

i. What they believe

ii. Who they trust

iii. What they value

Let’s play a game together first. Say two guards are standing in front of a door that leads either to heaven or hell. One of them tells no lies and the other only lies. And we can ask only one question to one of the guards to figure out a way to get to the heaven. We’ll have a 50/50 shot no matter who we pick to ask the question “Is it the door to heaven/hell?”—the same odds as that of our random guess or sheer luck, very helpful. Bottom line is whoever we ask should be able to provide us the answer that guarantees our victory. How about asking one of them “Do you think he/she is telling the truth?” Whether it’s the teller of truths or lies, both of them will come up with the identical answer “No”, but there’s still no way of telling whether it’s true or false, so no to the attempt to help them reach consensus. Let’s take a closer look at the brainteaser again. There’re two sets of variables here,

a). The door leads to heaven / hell.

b). The guard is honest / dishonest.

and only the guards know the answer to both questions.

Secret Formula For Convincing Argumentation

As we can see from the charts above, we can’t get unanimity with those questions but what remains the same is the mutual evaluation. Finally, we’re getting onto something here, it’s not about who we choose to ask the question, it’s all about the question we design, which should be able to engage both parties’s opinions with each other about a fact. —“What do you think his/her answer will be if I ask him/her ‘is it the door to heaven’?”

Secret Formula For Convincing Argumentation

And they’ll end up with identical answers to the same question, which means that in spite of the guard’s inclination to tell the truth or not, we’ll know it’s heaven when we get a negative answer and hell when we get an affirmative one. Puzzle solved!

Despite the differences we have during the problem-solving process, we reach the same conclusion in the end, even people who miss the answer nod in agreement—another victory to the powerful logic and intelligence—not because it helps them learn something new, but because they start from the same set of beliefs (truth teller and prevaricator and one question only in this case) as everyone else.

Unfortunately, most disagreements in real life involve different beliefs that can’t simply be reconciled through logic. When these beliefs involve outside information, the issue often comes down to what sources and authorities people trust, especially those that have proven themselves with clean track records. It also helps us to figure out whether we could trust someone or not. It’s a good piece of advice to check your dates’ track records with their exes or with their parents and other family members. Analyze their descriptions and observe their patterns, if they show any inclinations for domestic violence or gender discrimination or things that irritate you on a fundamental level, stay alarm and stay away.

Finally, for disputes that can’t be definitely settled with statistics or evidence, making a convincing argument may depend on engaging the audience’s values. Take myself as an example, theses that prior intelligence and fairness to other elements have a better chance to win me over.