|
|
Пишет Journal de Chaource (![[info]](http://lj.rossia.org/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small} lj_chaource)@ 2020-01-10 10:44:00 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
Adversarial debate and its enemies
A constructive debate is an attempt to clarify opposing points of view and gather relevant facts. Opponents assume that they both argue in good faith from a shared ground towards what each of them believes to be a well-founded point of view. Disagreement is due to different knowledge of facts, or errors in judgment.
In what I call an adversarial debate, each participant tries to find a fault with the opponent. It is not important to understand the details of each point of view, because participants do not assume that anyone has a well-founded point of view that they are prepared to argue in detail. Disagreement is due to a visceral feeling of antagonism.
The Russell-Copplestone debate on ontology ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXPdpEJk
An example of an adversarial debate is a heated exchange between Michael Dyson and Jordan Peterson (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chP_xFkl
1. How to recognize whether a debate goes into a constructive or into an adversarial direction?
Emotionally charged content may be present in any debate, constructive or adversarial. The decisive feature is how the participants behave with regards to each other's points of view.
One feature of constructive debate is that both sides assume that the opponent is arguing in good faith towards a well-founded point of view. A particular application of this feature is the "rule of forgiveness": If an opponent makes a minor mistake in citing some facts -- e.g. President Obama once said that the USA had 57 states, -- the rule of forgiveness requires us to "forgive" that mistake, that is, to continue arguing as if the opponent had not actually made the mistake. The reason is that a minor mistake is easily corrected without any impact to the argument. So it would be wrong to conclude that the opponent's point of view is poorly justified, on the basis of that mistake. Since the goal of a constructive debate is to analyze carefully the details of viewpoints, participants can avoid wrong conclusions of that kind by following the "rule of forgiveness".
The "rule of forgiveness" also implies that the opponent's argument needs to be understood as "forgivingly" as possible, giving the benefit of doubt whenever appropriate.
When we observe that participants do not follow the "rule of forgiveness", this gives us a clear indication of an adversarial debate. Typically, any mistake of a participant, no matter how slight, causes an opponent to make an "attack", that is, to claim that the other's point of view is poorly justified. Participants never give each other the benefit of doubt and instead interpret each other's words in the worst conceivable way, so as to make each other's positions look as bad as possible.
Another feature of constructive debate is that both sides will acknowledge when they have encountered new facts that their point of view (so far) did not properly take into account. Typically, the opponent will ask for exact sources of the new information, with the intention to look at that information later. The debate may stop at that point or go into another direction, since assessing new facts often takes a certain time. Each side will try in good faith to provide their sources to the opponent.
In an adversarial debate, opponents typically will not ask for sources of new information, other than in jest ("who told you that??"). When asked for their sources of information, participants will not react to the question matter-of-factly by providing the sources. Instead, participants will react as if they were "attacked", i.e. the question "what are your sources for this data" is understood as the statement "you are not knowledgeable". To answer that accusation, the participant does not necessarily need to provide the data sources. Instead, the participant might say something like "this is common knowledge, but of course you live in a universe of alternative facts".
2. What to do when the debate goes into an adversarial direction?
We are not born with an ability to conduct constructive debate; that ability needs to be trained and still does not ever become perfect. If the other participants behave as in an adversarial debate and have never shown that they can hold a constructive debate, it is a risky plan for us to follow the rules of constructive debate. The risk is that the other side will continue adversarial debate, and so we will spend time and emotional energy but will not learn any new facts or logical steps that could either support or refute our present point of view. This may happen regardless of whether the opponent is consciously adversarial.
One strategy I've been developing in recent years is what I call the "mirror attack" strategy. The strategy consists of four items:
- Begin the debate non-adversarially, from a neutral point of view, with a constructive exposition of facts and conclusions.
- An adversarial reply from an opponent (e.g. an accusation, an allegation, an insinuation about you or your position) is answered by repeating more or less the same phrase structure, adapting it to accuse or to allege the same thing about the opponent. (See below for more details about this.) This phrase is the "mirror attack". Optionally, the mirror attack may be followed by non-adversarial, constructive exposition of relevant facts.
- Once the opponent gives a constructive reply at any time, continue debating constructively.
- The mirror attack should make it clear that the debate is going nowhere as long as the opponent continues to debate adversarially. If the opponent realizes that the debate is stalled and calls it out ("hey, this discussion is going nowhere!") - agree immediately and attempt to talk about why that happened and how we might get out of the situation. This brings hope that the opponent may not have realized that they are being adversarial until this point, and that it was not their intention.
3. Why does the mirror attack work?
The "mirror attack" seems to work almost always, but it may not be clear why. Here are some examples:
- You are against affirmative action for blacks because you are racist.
- Actually you are being racist when you insist on affirmative action for blacks. Affirmative action hurts their chances of getting a good education, as data shows.
- You are against having a quota for women in managerial positions or in other professions, because you hate women.
- Actually it is you who hates women; you want to force them into professions they do not want.
- You are against minimum wage because you hate poor people.
- You obviously want to harm poor people. Minimum wage has been shown consistently to reduce their chances of getting a job.
The mirror attack phrases can be much simpler and yet exactly as effective:
- Why are you lying?
- Why are you lying?
- How can you defend this project?
- How can you be against this project?
- It is so sad that you still buy into their idea; I thought you were more intelligent.
- It is so sad that you still don't get their idea. I thought you were more intelligent.
- Do you always have to have the last word in a conversation?
- Do you always have to have the last word?
The point is to repeat their phrase structure and most of their emotionally charged words, making minimal changes as needed. As a result, your reply will still logically make sense from your point of view (although it will not be a constructive exposition of your point of view).
Interestingly, it seems to be always possible to do that. The attacks in an adversarial debate are so shallow that they can be flipped around very easily and quickly.
To use this method, we don't need to prepare a lot of rhetoric, because the phrases can be converted syntactically on the fly.
However, we do need to be prepared to suppress our initial impulse to answer the opponent's adversarial argument. The mirror attack phrase does not answer their argument, - it ignores their argument. This is certainly an adversarial (non-constructive) thing to do; but they deserved it by being adversarial first and by ignoring our constructive arguments.
Certainly, our "mirror attack" phrase is exactly as shallow and pointless as the opponent's original adversarial phrase. If we add a short constructive phrase at the end, citing some relevant facts, we might awaken an "unconsciously" adversarial opponent, and the adversarial debate would then either stop or go into a constructive direction. That's the goal of the mirror attack strategy.
A constructive debate is an attempt to clarify opposing points of view and gather relevant facts. Opponents assume that they both argue in good faith from a shared ground towards what each of them believes to be a well-founded point of view. Disagreement is due to different knowledge of facts, or errors in judgment.
In what I call an adversarial debate, each participant tries to find a fault with the opponent. It is not important to understand the details of each point of view, because participants do not assume that anyone has a well-founded point of view that they are prepared to argue in detail. Disagreement is due to a visceral feeling of antagonism.
The Russell-Copplestone debate on ontology ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXPdpEJk
An example of an adversarial debate is a heated exchange between Michael Dyson and Jordan Peterson (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chP_xFkl
1. How to recognize whether a debate goes into a constructive or into an adversarial direction?
Emotionally charged content may be present in any debate, constructive or adversarial. The decisive feature is how the participants behave with regards to each other's points of view.
One feature of constructive debate is that both sides assume that the opponent is arguing in good faith towards a well-founded point of view. A particular application of this feature is the "rule of forgiveness": If an opponent makes a minor mistake in citing some facts -- e.g. President Obama once said that the USA had 57 states, -- the rule of forgiveness requires us to "forgive" that mistake, that is, to continue arguing as if the opponent had not actually made the mistake. The reason is that a minor mistake is easily corrected without any impact to the argument. So it would be wrong to conclude that the opponent's point of view is poorly justified, on the basis of that mistake. Since the goal of a constructive debate is to analyze carefully the details of viewpoints, participants can avoid wrong conclusions of that kind by following the "rule of forgiveness".
The "rule of forgiveness" also implies that the opponent's argument needs to be understood as "forgivingly" as possible, giving the benefit of doubt whenever appropriate.
When we observe that participants do not follow the "rule of forgiveness", this gives us a clear indication of an adversarial debate. Typically, any mistake of a participant, no matter how slight, causes an opponent to make an "attack", that is, to claim that the other's point of view is poorly justified. Participants never give each other the benefit of doubt and instead interpret each other's words in the worst conceivable way, so as to make each other's positions look as bad as possible.
Another feature of constructive debate is that both sides will acknowledge when they have encountered new facts that their point of view (so far) did not properly take into account. Typically, the opponent will ask for exact sources of the new information, with the intention to look at that information later. The debate may stop at that point or go into another direction, since assessing new facts often takes a certain time. Each side will try in good faith to provide their sources to the opponent.
In an adversarial debate, opponents typically will not ask for sources of new information, other than in jest ("who told you that??"). When asked for their sources of information, participants will not react to the question matter-of-factly by providing the sources. Instead, participants will react as if they were "attacked", i.e. the question "what are your sources for this data" is understood as the statement "you are not knowledgeable". To answer that accusation, the participant does not necessarily need to provide the data sources. Instead, the participant might say something like "this is common knowledge, but of course you live in a universe of alternative facts".
2. What to do when the debate goes into an adversarial direction?
We are not born with an ability to conduct constructive debate; that ability needs to be trained and still does not ever become perfect. If the other participants behave as in an adversarial debate and have never shown that they can hold a constructive debate, it is a risky plan for us to follow the rules of constructive debate. The risk is that the other side will continue adversarial debate, and so we will spend time and emotional energy but will not learn any new facts or logical steps that could either support or refute our present point of view. This may happen regardless of whether the opponent is consciously adversarial.
One strategy I've been developing in recent years is what I call the "mirror attack" strategy. The strategy consists of four items:
- Begin the debate non-adversarially, from a neutral point of view, with a constructive exposition of facts and conclusions.
- An adversarial reply from an opponent (e.g. an accusation, an allegation, an insinuation about you or your position) is answered by repeating more or less the same phrase structure, adapting it to accuse or to allege the same thing about the opponent. (See below for more details about this.) This phrase is the "mirror attack". Optionally, the mirror attack may be followed by non-adversarial, constructive exposition of relevant facts.
- Once the opponent gives a constructive reply at any time, continue debating constructively.
- The mirror attack should make it clear that the debate is going nowhere as long as the opponent continues to debate adversarially. If the opponent realizes that the debate is stalled and calls it out ("hey, this discussion is going nowhere!") - agree immediately and attempt to talk about why that happened and how we might get out of the situation. This brings hope that the opponent may not have realized that they are being adversarial until this point, and that it was not their intention.
3. Why does the mirror attack work?
The "mirror attack" seems to work almost always, but it may not be clear why. Here are some examples:
- You are against affirmative action for blacks because you are racist.
- Actually you are being racist when you insist on affirmative action for blacks. Affirmative action hurts their chances of getting a good education, as data shows.
- You are against having a quota for women in managerial positions or in other professions, because you hate women.
- Actually it is you who hates women; you want to force them into professions they do not want.
- You are against minimum wage because you hate poor people.
- You obviously want to harm poor people. Minimum wage has been shown consistently to reduce their chances of getting a job.
The mirror attack phrases can be much simpler and yet exactly as effective:
- Why are you lying?
- Why are you lying?
- How can you defend this project?
- How can you be against this project?
- It is so sad that you still buy into their idea; I thought you were more intelligent.
- It is so sad that you still don't get their idea. I thought you were more intelligent.
- Do you always have to have the last word in a conversation?
- Do you always have to have the last word?
The point is to repeat their phrase structure and most of their emotionally charged words, making minimal changes as needed. As a result, your reply will still logically make sense from your point of view (although it will not be a constructive exposition of your point of view).
Interestingly, it seems to be always possible to do that. The attacks in an adversarial debate are so shallow that they can be flipped around very easily and quickly.
To use this method, we don't need to prepare a lot of rhetoric, because the phrases can be converted syntactically on the fly.
However, we do need to be prepared to suppress our initial impulse to answer the opponent's adversarial argument. The mirror attack phrase does not answer their argument, - it ignores their argument. This is certainly an adversarial (non-constructive) thing to do; but they deserved it by being adversarial first and by ignoring our constructive arguments.
Certainly, our "mirror attack" phrase is exactly as shallow and pointless as the opponent's original adversarial phrase. If we add a short constructive phrase at the end, citing some relevant facts, we might awaken an "unconsciously" adversarial opponent, and the adversarial debate would then either stop or go into a constructive direction. That's the goal of the mirror attack strategy.
