Tips for Political Debate, part 1 and 2 – Fake Nous

Tips for Political Debate, part 1 – Fake Nous

I like and agree with Philosopher Michael Huemer’s guidelines on how to discuss politics with someone who doesn’t agree with you. His first tip sets the tone.

1. Guiding principle: Your goal is to make progress toward understanding, if not agreement.

It is not to “score points”, express emotions, prove your moral or intellectual superiority, humiliate the other party, or otherwise cause harm. (If this isn’t true, then you shouldn’t be engaged in discussion at all; you’re part of society’s problem.) Everything else follows from this.

Huemer follows this with four other tips in this post (which is the first of two on the subject): don’t beg the question, don’t be emotional, don’t take it personal, and don’t be dogmatic. These tips probably sound obvious but they have sub-parts to explain what Huemer means or gives examples to flesh out his point.

I'd summarize his overall method as "Seek to understand and be understood rather than to win." I've never seen someone "win" a political debate. By that I mean I've never seen a debate that ends with one of the people saying, "You're right and I'm wrong. I'm going to jettison my long-held belief based on this discussion." The most you can hope for is to plant a seed of doubt. As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff say in The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure disagreement "is part of the process by which people do each other the favor of counteracting each other's confirmation bias."

Tips for Political Debate, part 2 – Fake Nous

Here is part 2 of Huemer's tips on how to handle political debates. Continuing from the previous five tips Huemer offers the following: be charitable, don't confuse issues, don't be tribal, have modest aims, don't waste time, and don't misinterpret people.

In the first tip about being charitable Huemer recommends not straw-manning or weak-manning. Instead of straw-manning, "assume your opponent holds the most reasonable view that could plausibly explain his words, not the stupidest one." Regarding weak-man, "when defending a position, don't just address the least reasonable opponents. Address the most plausible, most interesting, and/or most common opposing positions."

Huemer doesn't refer to another concept called steel-manning in which you try to improve your opponent's position to be even stronger then address that position. Naturally this takes more effort and applies his tip of being charitable. Steel-manning might not be feasible to do in the heat of a discussion but we could think about an issue, say the opposing position on abortion or gun control, then think about how to make their argument the best you can think of then come up with your response.