Arguments

Thanks to Jonathan Haigt for this one:

“Once people accept the case for why you need to be exposed to people who disagree with you, and who challenge your ideas, then the question is, how do you do it? And here I have two recommendations. One, the one that worked for me, that really helped me, because I was an arrogant argumentative teenager and young adult, is reading Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it's so easy once you read it. It's a great book, it's a really fun book. And what he teaches you is, don't come out saying, “You're wrong and here's why.” Come out saying, “Oh, that's very interesting. I think you're right about that one thing there.” Or, “We have this in common.” Or, “I can understand why you're saying that,” or, “Here's something in my experience that confirms what you said.” And once you start by agreeing on something, then you can pivot to, “But now on the other hand, it seems to me that...” and then you can raise your point. And then you're much more likely to persuade the person ... If you're a Homo sapien, you evolved for group combat, you evolved for confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. We're not really evolved to be academics or scientists searching for truth in an unbiased way. We evolved to basically CYA, and win in social competitions. But if you learn some skills, you can actually be very effective as a teacher, as someone who persuades, as someone who changes people."