HOW TO WIN (almost) EVERY ARGUMENT (PART I)

There are many reasons to argue, and almost all reasons are valid. Maybe you argue for a noble cause; to raise awareness to issues that you feel are important, to alert someone of danger, to stamp out ignorance, to crush weakness, to expose feeble reasoning, to turn your frown upside-down, or just to chill. Perhaps you argue with motives that are questionable at best; to make someone else feel bad, to make you feel better about yourself, to justify your own reasoning by getting others to unwittingly agree with you, to get people to disagree with you in a way that allows you to discount their opinions thus validating your own, to dogmatically express your rage, to make someone cower so you can feel that there is at least one part of your life that allows you to exhibit power and exert some miniscule amount of force, or just to be a total jackass. No matter what your reasons for arguing, and regardless of whether you are a professional or amateur, everyone can enjoy this delightful and relaxing activity.

Arguing is fun and educates the other person. It sharpens the senses and rejuvenates the mind. It is generally very easy to win an argument because the other person is almost always wrong. In the event that the other person may actually be on to something, just be happy that most people who actually have a good point don’t generally have a clue how to argue. You can easily crush them by rehashing some vague misunderstanding that they had when they originally formulated the idea or with some unintentional mis-statement or even a speech impediment they have. Certainly, an idealistic person who has thought through their beliefs to the nth detail has convinced themselves so thoroughly that they are correct (and no one really cares, but they may be) that they have also duped themselves into believing that everyone will praise the truths they have discovered (or at least that someone will). Even if this optimism is the only flaw in their argument, it is plenty of ammunition to fully obliterate their assertion. All you have to do is bring up generalized impossibilities and pose them as though they are legitimate questions somehow connected to the topic of current controversy. A question like, “What about the links made by Dr. Leopald Thorstieg in his 1938 paper regarding IFE, you are familiar with IFE aren’t you? Well, all the research that I’ve seen confirms his findings. How do you explain that?” will totally disarm almost all of these turkeys, for the simple reason that they can’t have possibly heard about something that doesn’t exist. Along with this another great thing about almost everybody else, is that they argue against the person confronting them rather than just arguing their point. So when you bring up a hypothesis in a forceful way, no matter how contrived, fabricated or spurious, they tend to feel a compulsion to argue against that point and lose track of the original thrust of the discussion. If you think they have a valid point then it is your civic duty to utterly annihilate their presentation, this will help them to hone their expostulative expertise, and thus, in the future, when you feel that they are appropriately equipped to save the world you may wish to allow them to do so, you may choose to stand by and supervise though.

But how do you destroy a perfect argument? Especially when you know that the other person is 100% right? Easy. No one can be 100% right on everything, so just sit back and wait for them to say something you can easily capitalize on. It helps if you continually disarm them by finding things you can agree with, this is extremely easy to do when you are debating with someone who is right. NEVER, agree with things that will undermine your own contradictory stance, if the thoughts expressed by your nemesis are correct, you can generally gloss over them by reaffirming an acceptable and similar point that was previously agreed upon by both parties. Remember that you only need to vary slightly from the essence of your opponents gist, anyone who has thought through their reasoning so well as to seem 100% correct will easily be lured to defend the seemingly insignificant details. If you are almost constantly agreeing with them they will eventually tire and/or drop their guard and actually say something wrong. In any of these cases you can then take that one small comment and pretend that it is the platform of their entire logical framework. Your opponent may see through this tactic but if you are playing to an audience they will be on your side. Because of the audience, your opponent will be compelled to respond to your quibbles, once this process has been started you can’t lose, just keep agreeing, baiting and inferring. If they refuse to continue the argument, you lost, but the audience thinks you won, so in a way you did win, because you convinced a large group of people to believe you instead of the person who was right. And that’s no easy task, actually, I’m kidding, it is very easy to fool people, but you still did it, plus you made the winner of the argument leave in frustration and that’s worth something!

In the event that your opponent sees through this tactic and there is no audience you will need to have the stamina and presence of mind to keep nitpicking and then agreeing while countering with hard hitting vague questions. If none of these things work, it’s time to play dirty, it’s all blatant falsehoods of incomprehensible atrocity all the time, a person who really wants to help you (and/or the whole world) will feel like they are physically being attacked, they will eventually fall into a stupor during which they are disoriented and begin to question their own beliefs. They start to wonder how others (that’s you, but you have made it seem that there are many who share your views) could have such strong beliefs that seem so contrary to reason. Being logical people, they will begin to doubt their own reasoning and consider the notion that the obnoxious blathering you are bombarding them with has some possible merit. Now you have them where you want them, if you don’t care about the future of our planet, you can just move in for the kill (This will be explained in detail in part 8). But if you would still like to see if they can adapt to the psychological punishment you’ve just dealt them, you can let them live (conversationally speaking), after all the argument is over, for now. They are still questioning things that they were fully convinced of, and may have lost all will to fight, you did your job well.

There are really no losers in an argument because you always win an argument if you enjoy yourself. That’s the whole point of arguing. If you follow the directions laid out in this primer, you should enjoy your next argument.