Good Arguments

GOOD ARGUMENTS

What I want to see in the world is more good arguments. What do I mean by that? I think that a good argument has a logical component and an emotional component and they work together. This is just like the fact that a well-written mathematical paper has a fully watertight logical proof, but it also has good exposition, in which the ideas are sketched out so that we humans can feel our way through the ideas as well as understanding the logic step by step. A good paper also deals with apparent paradoxes, where the logical situation appears to contradict our intuition.

The important first step in a disagreement is to find the true root of the disagreement. This should be something very close to a fundamental principle. We should do this by following long chains of logic in both our argument and theirs. We should try and express it in as general a principle as possible, so that we can fully investigate it using analogies.

Next we should build some sort of bridge between our different positions. We should use our best powers of abstraction and pivots to try and find a sense in which we are really just at different parts of a grey area on the same principle.

We should then engage our emotions to make sure we engage theirs and understand them where they are, and then try and edge slowly to where we can meet. This will include finding out what, if anything, would persuade them to change their mind. We also have to show that we are reasonable ourselves, and that we are open to moving our position too, as we should be if we are reasonable. If we really understand their point of view we may discover things we didn't know that really do cause us to move our position or even change our mind.

I think a good argument, at root, is one in which everyone's main aim is to understand everyone else. How often is that actually the case? Unfortunately most arguments set out with the aim of defeating everyone else – most individuals are trying to show that they are right and everyone else is wrong. I don't think this is productive as a main aim. I used to be guilty of this as much as anyone, but I have come to realise that discussions really don't have to be competitions. If everyone sets out to understand everyone else, we can all find out how our belief systems differ. This doesn't mean that one person is right and the other wrong – perhaps everyone is causing a contradiction relative to everyone else's belief system; this is different from people causing a contradiction relative to their own belief system. Unfortunately too many arguments turn into a cycle of attack and defence. In a good argument nobody feels attacked. People don't feel threatened by a different opinion, and don't need to take things as criticism when they're just a different point of view. This is everyone's responsibility, and if everyone is an intelligently powerful rational human being, everyone will assume that responsibility for themselves. In order to achieve that, we all need to feel safe. Until everyone is in fact that intelligent, those who are should try to take responsibility for helping everyone to feel unattacked. I try to remind myself as much as possible in any potentially divisive situation: it's not a competition. Because it almost never is, in fact, a competition.

A good argument does invoke emotions, but not to intimidate or belittle. A good argument invokes emotions to make connections with people, to create a path for logic to enter people's hearts not just their minds. This takes longer than throwing barbed comments at each other and trying to throw the "killer shot" that will end the discussion, and I think this is right. Logic is slow, as we saw when we looked at how it fails in emergencies. When we are not in an emergency we should have slow arguments. Unfortunately the world is tending to drive things faster and faster, with shorter and shorter attention spans meaning that we are under pressure to convince people in 280 characters, or in a pithy comment that can fit in a few words around an amusing picture, or a clever one-liner – correct or otherwise – so that someone can declare "mind = blown" or "mic drop". But this leaves little room for nuance or investigation or finding the sense in which we agree along with the sense in which we disagree. It leaves no time for building bridges.

I would like us all to build bridges to people who disagree with us. But what about people who don't want bridges? People who really want to disagree? This is a meta problem. First we have to persuade people to want those bridges, just like motivating people to want to learn some mathematics before we have any hope at all of sharing it.

As humans in a community, our connections with each other are really all we have. If we were all hermits living in isolation humanity would not have reached the place it has. Human connections are usually thought of as being emotional, and mathematics is usually thought of as being removed from emotions and thus removed from humanity. But I firmly believe that mathematics and logic, used in powerful conjunction with emotions, can help us build better and more compassionate connections between humans. But we must do it in a nuanced way. We have seen that black and white logic causes division and extreme viewpoints. False dichotomies are dangerous in the divisions they cause, both in the mind and between people. Logic and emotions is one of those false dichotomies. We should not pit ourselves in futile battles against other humans with whom we are trying to coexist on this earth. And we should not pit logic against emotions in a futile battle that logic can't win. It's not a battle. It's not a competition. It's a collaborative art. With logic and emotions working together we will achieve better thinking, and thus the greatest possible understanding of the world and of each other.