- Our public conversations are in a state of crisis-
they're stuck.
It's people fully convinced of their views,
shouting at each other from a distance.
One of the reasons why we find it so difficult is,
I believe, because the skills of good argument
have been atrophying for some time.
We no longer view argument as something to be worked at,
rather we see it as
something we jump into out of instinct or defensiveness.
The bad arguments that result
decrease our confidence in what disagreements can do for us-
so the quality of the conversation further degrades.
I think we need to restore confidence and faith
in what disagreements can be,
and to highlight its potential as a source for good
as well as a source for ill.
My name is Bo Seo, I'm a two-time world debate champion,
a former coach of the Australian and Harvard debate teams,
and I am the author of "Good Arguments."
For me, my love of debate is inextricably tied
to a life that I've led of always moving countries.
I had to move from South Korea to Australia
as an eight-year-old
without really speaking English.
And I quickly found the hardest part of
crossing language lines, of cultural lines was disagreements
where people tend to be more disruptive
to interrupt, to speed up and slow down.
In response to all that, I resolved to be very agreeable
in the way in which I presented at school,
and to keep my thoughts to myself.
The thing that changed that
was I joined the debate team off the strength
of one promise,
which was that in debate,
when one person speaks, no one else does.
And to someone who had been interrupted
and spun out of conversation,
that sounded to me like a kind of salvation.
If intelligence is the ability to respond to any argument,
wisdom lies in knowing which arguments to respond to,
and which parts of an argument to respond to.
Arguments are easy to start and hard to end
because there are any number of differences
between two people.
And unless you are careful to say,
"We're having this disagreement at this moment
and not all the other disagreements we could be having,"
all of the differences between two people
can start flooding in,
and the argument becomes this unruly mass
where any of the potential sources of conflict
can come to the fore,
and you're not making progress on any given one.
One of the frameworks that I developed
in order to pick my fights more wisely
is called the 'RISA Framework.'
Before launching into a disagreement or challenging a claim,
ask four things:
First, whether the disagreement is in fact real
as opposed to a misunderstanding.
Second, is to ask whether it's important enough
to you to justify the disagreement.
The third is to ask whether the topic of disagreement
is specific enough in order for you to make some progress.
And the fourth is to ask
whether you and the other person engaged in the disagreement
are aligned in your objectives
for wanting to partake in that conversation.
By checking off on these four lists,
you can't guarantee that a conversation is going to go well,
but you may be able to give it
the best possible chance of doing so.
One of the limitations of the RISA Framework
that I worry about is that it is increasingly difficult
to find the right kind of alignment
in people's interests for wanting to engage
in a disagreement.
So, if you have two sides that
simply want to hurt one another's feelings,
that's some kind of alignment,
but not the right kind
that leads to productive conversations.
So, one place where you might be able to apply
the RISA Framework
is getting together with extended family
for Thanksgiving or Christmas
and knowing that
some of the personal or political disagreements
are gonna bubble up to the surface.
The RISA Framework provides
two sources of help in that situation:
The first is
that every disagreement should start with
a little bit of agreement,
and that is often naming exactly what it is
that you disagree about
so that it doesn't bubble up into
all the different areas in which you don't see eye-to-eye.
First step is to name the disagreement in front of you.
The second thing is to check,
well, why do you want to engage in this disagreement,
and can we come to an agreement about
what it is that we're hoping
to get out of this conversation?
So, forcing the slightly quarrelsome family member
who just wants to be a contrarian or to cause trouble
to say, "Are you really in this,
hoping to persuade me to change my mind?"
That bit of negotiation
of why it is that we're in the conversation
in the first instance
can often allow our conversations to go better
than if we just jump into the disagreements
without much forethought.
It allows us to almost make a contract with the other side:
"This is what we're disagreeing about,
and these are the reasons
why we're engaging in that dispute."
And one of the things that you can do with
someone who tries to break those rules,
to expand the debate into something it wasn't about,
to change the topic to introduce new reasons
for wanting to engage in the dispute,
is just to remind ourselves of the agreement that we made
and to bring the conversation back to those parameters.
Just as any number of the differences between two people
can give rise to a disagreement,
any number of things that people say within an argument,
can be contested.
'The success cases-
these are the ones in which the revolution works.
Closing, I'll take you if you have something.'
And a part of the wisdom one has to develop,
as a debater, is to know
which arguments to challenge, and which to let go.'
- 'A Marxist Revolution at this point doesn't change that.
- 'And will lead to a huge period of economic instability,
particularly with their livelihood.'
- 'Apparently, their role,
if we're to buy the premise of their case at all.'
- There are two questions that we often ask
to make that decision:
The first is,
is this disagreement between the two sides
necessary to resolve
in order to make progress in the argument?
And if it's not,
is us challenging it
going to help us make progress on the overall dispute?
No matter how offensive or wrong-seeming it may be,
by asking whether it's first necessary to challenge
or even if it's not whether challenging,
it would help us make progress on the argument,
you can be a little bit more judicious
in how you disagree and prevent our arguments
from becoming this unruly all-encompassing dispute.
One of the great lessons of debate is
in order to be heard, you have to first listen.
We're used to thinking about
listening as an essentially passive act-
we sit back in our chairs, and take it all in.
Debaters know that
it's a much more active process than that.
There are two lessons that we can take away
from how debaters listen,
and to try and apply it in our own lives:
The first is, it is in your best interest
to understand the opposition's argument
as they would understand it.
It's not in your best interest
to twist their meaning
or to take it at its worst
or to capture only a fraction of it
because they won't feel as though
they had been listened to
and heard and ultimately responded to.
The second thing is, it's also in your best interest
to respond to the strongest version of the other side
and sometimes to build up the other side's case
so that it's even better than where they have it now.
You know after you finish speaking,
the opposition might have a 'light bulb'
and come up with a better case,
or someone on their side might say,
"You've responded to the weak version of this argument
but here's something better."
So, the further you can take it
and the stronger the version of the other side
you can respond to,
the more you challenge the other side to go even further,
and the better the conversation becomes.
So much of debate is an exercise in certainty.
It's about spending-
sometimes weeks-
researching your side of the case,
coming up with the best possible arguments that you can
to sell the truth of your side to the listener.
But in the last moments before a debater goes on stage,
they know to take out a new sheet of paper,
and to put themselves in their opponent's shoes
and write the four best arguments for the opposing side.
They know also to look over their case again,
this time through the eyes of someone
who fervently disagrees with them
to identify all of the flaws
and the criticisms that could be leveled against them.
Debate is also known to imagine a world
in which they lost the debate,
and to come up with the reasons why they did.
Those exercises, which accord the 'side-switch exercises,'
puts a pause on that feeling of certainty.
It makes us feel, for a moment,
the subject of reasonableness of other people's beliefs.
It gives us that moment where we get back on our toes
and think maybe we missed something.
It makes us imagine a world in which we're wrong.
And all of that creates wiggle room
through which something like humility
or empathy might arise.
The sides which exercises, and the kind of empathy
that debate brings into the conversation,
is not only applicable in personal disagreements,
but in my view, more urgently needed than ever
in our political disputes and ideological commitments.
Each of us are bigger than our political affiliations,
than our religious commitments,
than our ideological beliefs.
It's in that setting
that exercises like side-switch become most effective.
It expands the scope of what we are able to talk about.
It enlarges and improves and strengthens our ability
to talk about contentious and difficult issues
in humane, compassionate, and productive ways.
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