2022/09/12

How to disagree well: 7 of the best and worst ways to argue - Big Think

How to disagree well: 7 of the best and worst ways to argue - Big Think
 
[논쟁] 논쟁에서 갈등이 생기지 않게 동의하지 않는 방법
- 밑의 피라미드에는 동의하지 않는 방법을 그 결과가 가저오는 갈등의 정도로 나열한 것인데, 밑으로 갈수록 갈등이 많아지는 방식을 표현한다. 자세한 내용을 깊히 따지기 전에 말할 수 있는 것은 어떤 의견을 제시하는 사람의 말의 내용을 논하지 않고, 인물을 비판하는방식이다.  중간적 방식은 부분적 비판이다. 
- 제일 갈등이 적은 반론의 방식의 중요한 포인트는 상대방이 자기의 주장의 논리가 이해받았다고 느끼는 방식이다. 그러니 반론을 펼때는,  물론 자신의 반론에는 상대방도 동의할 만한 대안이 펼처저야 하지만, 우선 상대방의 주장을 제대로 이해하고 그 상대방도 동의할 만큼 설명해주고 시작하는 방식이다.

ERSONAL GROWTH — MARCH 16, 2018

How to disagree well: 7 of the best and worst ways to argue
A classic essay defines different ways to disagree, from the worst to the best, with lessons that ring true in our divisive times.

The hierarchy of disagreement, by Paul Graham.



Paul Ratner

Many find themselves arguing with someone on the Internet, especially in these days fraught with political tensions. A great tool, the web also seems to drive dispute. It is also a reflection of the larger reality, where divisiveness has spread throughout our society. A classic essay from one of the Internet’s pioneers suggests that there is a way to harness such negative energy of the online world and disagree with people without invoking anger—a lesson that extends far beyond the web.



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Paul Graham is an English-born computer programmer with a Ph.D. from Harvard, an accomplished entrepreneur, a VC capitalist as well as a writer. He created the first online store application which he sold to Yahoo and was one of the founders of the famous Y Combinator—a startup incubator that funded over 1,500 startups like Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, and Coinbase. Being a true Renaissance man, Graham also studied painting at the Academia di Belle Arti in Florence and the Rhode Island Institute of Design as well as philosophy at Cornell University.


Dubbed “the hacker philosopher” by the tech journalist Steven Levy, Graham has written on a number of subjects on his popular blog at paulgraham.com, which got 34 million pages views in 2015. One of his most lasting contributions has been the now-classic essay ‘How to disagree‘ where he proposed the hierarchy of disagreement which is as relevant today as it was in 2008 when it was first published.

Mark Bui (L) and Donna Saady (R) argue in front of the White House while MoveOn PAC members and supporters marched in protest of the Bush Administration’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster relief September 8,


2005, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In his essay, Graham proposed that the “web is turning writing into a conversation,” recognizing that the internet has become an unprecedented medium of communication. In particular, it allows people to respond to others in comment threads, on forums and the like. And when we respond on the web, we tend to disagree, concluded Graham.


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He says this tendency towards disagreement is structurally built into the online experience because in disagreeing, people tend to have much more to say than if they just expressed that they agreed. Interestingly, Graham points out that, even though it might feel like it if you spend much time in comment sections, the world is not necessarily getting angrier. But it could if we don’t observe a certain restraint in how we disagree. To disagree better, which will lead to better conversations and happier outcomes, Graham came up with these seven levels of a disagreement hierarchy (DH):


DH0. Name-calling

To Graham, this is the lowest level of argument. This is when you call people names. That can be done crudely by saying repulsive things like “u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!” or even more pretentiously (but still to the same effect) like, “The author is a self-important dilettante,” wrote the computer scientist.
DH1. Ad hominem

An argument of this kind attacks the person rather than the point they are making—the literal Latin translation of this phrase is: ‘to the person.’ It involves somehow devaluing a person’s opinion by devaluing the one who is expressing it, without directly addressing what they are saying. “The question is whether the author is correct or not,” pointed out Graham.
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John Pope (L) expresses his disagreement with supporters of President Donald Trump near the Mar-a-Lago resort home of President Trump on March 4, 2017, in West Palm Beach, Florida. President Trump spent part of the weekend at the house. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
DH2. Responding to tone.

This is a slightly more evolved form of disagreement when the debate moves away from personal attacks to addressing the content of the argument. The lowest form of responding to writing is disagreeing with the author’s tone, according to Graham. For example, one could point out the “cavalier” or “flippant” attitude with which a writer formulated their opinion. But why does that really matter, especially when judging tone can be quite subjective? Stick to the material, Graham advises: “It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what [their] tone is.”
DH3. Contradiction

This is a higher form of addressing the actual meat of the argument. In this form of disagreement, you offer an opposing case but very little evidence. You simply state what you think is true, in contrast to the position of the person you are arguing with. Graham gives this example:


“I can’t believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a cavalier fashion. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory.”
DH4. Counterargument

This next level sets us up on the path to having more productive disputes. A counterargument is a contradiction with evidence and reasoning. When it’s “aimed squarely at the original argument, it can be convincing,” wrote Graham. But, alas, more often than not, passionate arguments end up having both participants actually arguing about different things. They just don’t see it.




Paul Graham. Credit: Flickr/pragdave


DH5. Refutation

This is the most convincing form of disagreement, argues Graham. But it requires work so people don’t do this as often as they should. In general, the higher you go on the pyramid of disagreement, “the fewer instances you find.”

A good way to refute someone is to quote them back to themselves and pick a hole in that quote to expose a flaw. It’s important to find an actual quote to disagree with—“the smoking gun”—and address that.

DH6. Refuting the central point

This tactic is the “most powerful form of disagreement,” contended Graham. It depends on what you are talking about but largely entails refuting someone’s central point. This is in contrast to refuting only minor points of an argument—a form of “deliberate dishonesty” in a debate. An example of that would be correcting someone’s grammar (which slides you back to DH1 level) or pointing out factual errors in names or numbers. Unless those are crucial details, attacking them only serves to discredit the opponent, not their main idea.

The best way to refute someone is to figure out their central point, or one of them if there are several issues involved.


  • This is how Graham described “a truly effective refutation”:
  • The author’s main point seems to be x. As he says:
  • But this is wrong for the following reasons…



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Having these tools in evaluating how we argue with each other can go a long way towards regaining some civility in our discourse by avoiding the unproductive lower forms of disagreement. Whether its trolls of other nations or our own home-grown trolls and confused spirits, the conversation over the Internet leaves a lot to be desired for many Americans. It’s hard not to see it as a social malady.


Graham also viewed his hierarchy as a way to weed out dishonest arguments or “fake news” in modern parlance. Forceful words are just a “defining quality of a demagogue,” he pointed out. By understanding the different forms of their disagreement, “we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons,” wrote Graham.

Read the full essay here: How to Disagree.

Essays

If you're not sure which to read, try How to Think for YourselfDo Things that Don't Scale, or How to Lose Time and Money.


Heresy
Putting Ideas into Words
Is There Such a Thing as Good Taste?
Beyond Smart
Weird Languages
How to Work Hard
A Project of One's Own
Fierce Nerds
Crazy New Ideas
An NFT That Saves Lives
The Real Reason to End the Death Penalty
How People Get Rich Now
Write Simply
Donate Unrestricted
What I Worked On
Earnestness
Billionaires Build
The Airbnbs
How to Think for Yourself
Early Work
Modeling a Wealth Tax
The Four Quadrants of Conformism
Orthodox Privilege
Coronavirus and Credibility
How to Write Usefully
Being a Noob
Haters
The Two Kinds of Moderate
Fashionable Problems
Having Kids
The Lesson to Unlearn
Novelty and Heresy
The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius
General and Surprising
Charisma / Power
The Risk of Discovery
How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub
Life is Short
Economic Inequality
The Refragmentation
Jessica Livingston
A Way to Detect Bias
Write Like You Talk
Default Alive or Default Dead?
Why It's Safe for Founders to Be Nice
Change Your Name
What Microsoft Is this the Altair Basic of?
The Ronco Principle
What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
Don't Talk to Corp Dev
Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
How to Be an Expert in a Changing World
How You Know
The Fatal Pinch
Mean People Fail
Before the Startup
How to Raise Money
Investor Herd Dynamics
How to Convince Investors
Do Things that Don't Scale
Startup Investing Trends
How to Get Startup Ideas
The Hardware Renaissance
Startup = Growth
Black Swan Farming
The Top of My Todo List
Writing and Speaking
How Y Combinator Started
Defining Property
Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas
A Word to the Resourceful
Schlep Blindness
Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998
Why Startup Hubs Work
The Patent Pledge
Subject: Airbnb
Founder Control
Tablets
What We Look for in Founders
The New Funding Landscape
Where to See Silicon Valley
High Resolution Fundraising 
What Happened to Yahoo 
The Future of Startup Funding 
The Acceleration of Addictiveness
The Top Idea in Your Mind 
How to Lose Time and Money 
Organic Startup Ideas
Apple's Mistake
What Startups Are Really Like
Persuade xor Discover 
Post-Medium Publishing
The List of N Things
The Anatomy of Determination 
What Kate Saw in Silicon Valley 
The Trouble with the Segway
Ramen Profitable
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule 
A Local Revolution?
Why Twitter is a Big Deal
The Founder Visa
Five Founders
Relentlessly Resourceful
How to Be an Angel Investor
Why TV Lost
Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.
What I've Learned from Hacker News
Startups in 13 Sentences
Keep Your Identity Small 
After Credentials
Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?
The High-Res Society
The Other Half of "Artists Ship" 
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
A Fundraising Survival Guide
The Pooled-Risk Company Management Company
Cities and Ambition
Disconnecting Distraction
Lies We Tell Kids
Be Good
Why There Aren't More Googles
Some Heroes
How to Disagree
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss
A New Venture Animal
Trolls
Six Principles for Making New Things
Why to Move to a Startup Hub
The Future of Web Startups
How to Do Philosophy
News from the Front
How Not to Die
Holding a Program in One's Head
Stuff
The Equity Equation
An Alternative Theory of Unions
The Hacker's Guide to Investors
Two Kinds of Judgement
Microsoft is Dead
Why to Not Not Start a Startup
Is It Worth Being Wise?
Learning from Founders
How Art Can Be Good
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
A Student's Guide to Startups
How to Present to Investors
Copy What You Like
The Island Test
The Power of the Marginal
Why Startups Condense in America
How to Be Silicon Valley
The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn
See Randomness
Are Software Patents Evil?
6,631,372
Why YC
How to Do What You Love
Good and Bad Procrastination
Web 2.0
How to Fund a Startup
The Venture Capital Squeeze
Ideas for Startups
What I Did this Summer
Inequality and Risk
After the Ladder
What Business Can Learn from Open Source
Hiring is Obsolete
The Submarine
Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas
Return of the Mac
Writing, Briefly
Undergraduation
A Unified Theory of VC Suckage
How to Start a Startup
What You'll Wish You'd Known
Made in USA
It's Charisma, Stupid
Bradley's Ghost
A Version 1.0
What the Bubble Got Right
The Age of the Essay
The Python Paradox
Great Hackers
Mind the Gap
How to Make Wealth
The Word "Hacker"
What You Can't Say
Filters that Fight Back
Hackers and Painters
If Lisp is So Great
The Hundred-Year Language
Why Nerds are Unpopular
Better Bayesian Filtering
Design and Research
A Plan for Spam
Revenge of the Nerds
Succinctness is Power
What Languages Fix
Taste for Makers
Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented
What Made Lisp Different
The Other Road Ahead
The Roots of Lisp
Five Questions about Language Design
Being Popular
Java's Cover
Beating the Averages
Lisp for Web-Based Applications
Chapter 1 of Ansi Common Lisp
Chapter 2 of Ansi Common Lisp
Programming Bottom-Up
This Year We Can End the Death Penalty in California