When you debate, there is a temptation to view it as a competition. Your goal becomes to outscore your opponent by any means possible, and there is no way your opponent can ever be right. You have to do your best to make absolute claims, assert infinite confidence, claim unyielding certainty, and never give in.

Intentionally or not, you might even twist your words a little, make a fallacious argument just because it sounds good, use applause lights, not recognize when you’re debating definitions, and/or smuggle connotations. For a competition has nothing to do with the truth, but about winning. In a debate, arguments are soldiers, and giving in and accepting the arguments of your opponent is like helping the enemy, and acknowledging you might be wrong is like stabbing your fellow soldiers in the back.

Well, I have what should be obvious to everyone, but appears to be genuine news to most: you’re probably not right about everything. Even I’m not right about everything — heck, even Steven Hawking and Albert Einstein aren’t right about everything. None of us qualify as superhuman, so none of us can honestly claim infinite infallibility. And this should make us a little bit humble, because every time we get into an argument with the other person, we must be willing to admit that the opponent has at least a small possibility of being right.

So when you debate with someone, what should be your proper mindset? It should be to build, not to destroy. For your debating partner is merely a fellow person who is asserting a fact contrary to what you know, and this is a curiosity, not a curse. This means that you two should not fight, but rather team up.

Since both of you are interested in knowing the truth, does that not make you two on the same side? Are you two not allies in the fight against error, not opponents in a fight between yourselves? Should you not be looking upon your own arguments with the same scrutiny upon which you look at others, since you could just as easily be the one in error? Should you not forever avoid stretching what you know because doing so stretches you both away from the truth?

If your goal is to get at the truth, shouldn’t being wrong feel amazing because you get to let go of falsehood, rather than feel bad because you think you’ve lost some fight that should never have been a fight in the first place? Since you get to fix yourself the moment you find out that you’re wrong, is there anything that is lost in the process?

This makes your debating partner an ally to understand — to find out where they went wrong, if they are wrong, to avoid making that mistake for everyone; or to find out how they went right, if they are right, so that you too can share in the being right?

Let us give up this petty fight and all join together in the battle for correctness, so we may better come to understand the world in which we all live and share.

We don’t just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war.

Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument–attack, defense, counter-attack, etc.—reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; its structures the actions we perform in arguing. Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground.

Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry them out differently, and talk about them differently.

-George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By

Some might say that maybe it is not worth to know the truth, for they would rather live in a comforting delusion. But this fails because they are not actually living in the comfortable delusion, but in a world where the truth holds. The truth is that which does not go away when you decide not to believe in it. The truth is stubborn like that.

I assert that you should value truth. If you’re not sure what truth is, that’s a different issue to which I have devoted many words elsewhere. But for those who do know what truth is but are not certain they should seek it, I counter that truth is always more bearable than a delusion, for how can the truth be unbearable if you are already living in it? And if the truth is already what is true, what do you actually lose by accepting it?

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn’t make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn’t make it go away.
And because it’s true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn’t there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

—Eugene Gendlin

Instead, if the sky is blue, you must desire to believe that the sky is blue and if the sky is not blue, you must desire to believe that it is not. For there is no reason to have any other belief besides the one that is true; there is no value in stubbornly clinging to the false.

This means that when we get a chance to lose the false we take it, with the thrill and excitement of discovery, not with the pain of losing a friend. The false is no friend of yours. Instead, find friends in the truth, and the allies who will help you seek it.

So what should you do when you encounter disagreement? Certainly don’t shy from it, though some allies may be more willing to join forces with you than others. If you do encounter someone who is, even after you have given him or her the appropriate benefit of the doubt, still appears sternly beholden to the idea of promoting competition over truth, then you have found he or she who actually qualifies as an opponent, and may be called-out on it and disregarded.

Once you have joined forces, make sure to clarify your proposition. It is very easy to be invoking applause lights, debating definitions, and/or smuggling connotations without realizing it, so scrutinize your arguments for it carefully. Placing your argument into a formal one where numbered premises lead to a valid conclusion is ideal for finding the flaws, but not everyone has the skills needed to do it (also see this and this).

Once you know exactly what you are debating, then you must do something to try and test it. Don’t just give in to your ally blindly, but make sure that both of you know what you agree would count as evidence for one side or the other, and then look for it.

Another mark of a successful debate is when you have truly understood your ally: you have either both come closer to the truth together, or you understand why one of you was mistaken, or both. In order to find the truth best, you must also find out how you went wrong. Thus you don’t really understand your ally until you understand how they come to hold the position they do.

This is personally a place where I stand much room for improvement. I admit that I honestly have little idea why people are religious; so it cannot be said that I understand my ally here.

It is understanding your ally, not just understanding that your debating partner is an ally, that is the hardest part.

Followed up in: This is What I’m Fighting For and The True Fear of Being Wrong

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