How To Discuss
3 minute read
This page discusses how to talk to someone who holds the opposite opinion than we do on a political topic. It is the result of a lot of thought, research, and real-world experience. The goal of this page is to provide guidance regarding what works and what doesn’t, and to do so in a way that can be quickly read and understood.
Begin with, “What do you know about this that I don’t?"1 We start that way because we want the other person to listen, so we have to show them that we are listening. There’s no other way. If they don’t believe we are interested in what they have to say, they won’t listen either.
When we want to bring up a fact that we know, and which the other person doesn’t, we shouldn’t pretend that we’re omniscient experts. No one wants to be talked down to, and doing so will only make them respond ithe same way to us. We need to remember that we’re only human beings who have been influenced by hearing or reading something: “I find myself influenced by reading so-and-so, here’s a link to it. Given what I read, it’s been hard for me to see it the same way you do. What do you think of that information?”
Sometimes the other person will respond in a similar, open-minded spirit. Then we have an opportunity to possibly either help someone change their mind—or change our own. Either way, that’s wonderful!
Other times, they won’t care that we’re listening. They’ll assert that they’re right and we’re wrong, period. (Possibly adding a personal insult.) In which case, nothing useful will come of the conversation, and we should exit it as quickly as possible. It’s best to say why we’re leaving. Doing so won’t change the mind of the person we’re talking to, but it will help other people following the conversation understand that we don’t believe we’re wrong. Which makes it more likely that someone may still be influenced by the points we made. And, perhaps we don’t want to give the appearance of giving up when, in fact, we simply have good reasons to move on. That’s OK! We’re human.
Another commonplace occurrence is that the person we’re talking to ignores our response, and brings up a different point. Then, if we’re not convinced by that point either, they ignore our response again. And proceed to bring up yet another point. This can go on ad infinitum, accomplishing nothing more than wasting everyone’s time, simply because they can’t admit they’re wrong even once. (Which we must certainly be willing to do!) We should make reference to this pattern as soon as we notice it, and exit if it doesn’t stop. And again, we should explain why we’re leaving.
There are, of course, many other ways an online political discussion can go wrong. The important thing is not to waste our time and energy when there’s no real hope of convincing anyone.
Finally, note that the Reusable Responses section of this site provides pages we can link to when we leave a discussion, explaining why we did so. That way, we don’t have to spend our time writing the same explanations over and over for many different encounters.
If you have suggestions for how to improve this page, please join in the discussion area!
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See the “weak” form of the double-crux method at https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2016/double-crux. The weak form is almost always what is needed in online political discussions. ↩︎