How to DESTROY Anyone in an Argument

throughout history most philosophers have cared about a few key things truth logic and open inquiry but they have failed to provide what we really want to know how do we dominate our opponents in a debate making them look like a fool and us really really clever for that matter how do we do this even if they are right and we are wrong after all truth can be dry boring and involve tedious complex reasoning steps whereas destroying someone in an argument is deeply exciting and will make everyone look at us and go what a smart and

handsome man I wish my boyfriend were like him before giving us a kiss on the lips and telling us how irresistibly attractive we are because of our humongous swollen brains well luckily schopenhauer has got your back in his brilliantly sarcastic essay on the art of being right he outlines exactly how you can use a myriad of underhanded and logically spurious techniques in order to gain the upper hand in any argument even if you don't have a leg to stand on and as you watch this video you'll notice you don't have to go very far to

see these models in action littered across the internet are these Brave Warriors of sophistry simply choose your preferred Guru and let them guide you into the wonderful world of argumentative performance using shopen how's handbook as your definitive text get ready to learn how politicians can convince you of something that you know is false why logic barely matters in most debates and so much more so throw out your old dusty critical thinking books and let's learn how to destroy people with facts and logic without using either one so what you're saying is the trouble with lots

of debates is there's often more than one reasonable perspective on an issue and this is a massive hurdle people start to think that your opponent's position is plausible or even just understandable then there is every chance they will start to listen to them and we can't have that listening might lead to comprehension which might lead to persuasion at this point the debate is lost and our ego is tossed in the bin fortunately schopenhauer says that we can nip this nent threat in the bud through the careful use of exaggeration every time your opponent puts forward

a position simply say so what you're saying is and then fill in the blank with the most outlandish interpretation of their words you can possibly imagine so if I were to argue that freedom of speech is a good General principle in any liberal Society you can respond by saying oh so you think we should be able to shout bomb in a crowded airport that is ridiculous you can clearly see the move being made here we have taken my statement that freedom of speech should be highly valued and reinterpreted Free Speech to mean a total lack

of restrictions on any speech rather than leaving room for a more moderate position that would admit of certain caveats there are a number of ways you can achieve this exaggeration you can pretend that in affirming a particular case of something your opponent has actually agreed to a much more General principle so in the above example I could put on my best foe outraged face and say well I never this guy wants to control what people can say and do well actually their argument simply points out that in the particular case of yelling bomb at an

airport we might want to make an exception to the general rule of not policing speech we can also interpret every use of a word with some inherent vagueness in the most bizarre and ridiculous way possible so if they say bad we will pretend they have said equivalents to the Devil Himself and if they say good we will interpret that as completely Beyond reproach as if it is the Wellspring of morality this ensures that their true point will be completely obscured with only an implausible straw man left in its place and that sets us up perfectly

for our next move if you want to help me make more videos like this then please consider subscribing to either my channel my email list or my patreon the links are in the description two what I'm saying is to continue our misrepresentative Gambit we can bolster our own arguments by essentially splitting them in two we will have one very careful circumspect rational and almost truistic position and another one which is much looser but can also do a lot more for us whenever we're not being actively criticized we can assert the looser position and then Retreat

back into our stronger one if anyone raises an objection if I wanted to argue for the abolition of puppies I would start by saying something really sensible like certain types of large dog can be very dangerous then when my opponent has taken their eye off the ball I can start talking about banning puppies more openly but when they regain focus and point out that my position is ridiculous I can say get a load of this guy he doesn't think that dogs can be dangerous this is known as a Mot and Bailey argument or a Mot

and Bailey fantasy if you're talking to someone who cares about logical principles it is perfect when you want to smuggle in a position without anyone noticing the slight of hand maneuver going on if you're really good at this then you can convince people of whatever you like framing the entire discussion as if it follows from an obvious truism eventually people may become so confused that they'll start to think your extreme suggestions are simple entailments of your more minimal position so someone will hear certain types of dog are dangerous and immediately think this means we have

to eliminate all puppies without stopping to consider whether that actually follows from their original statement the ideas will become associatively welded to one another this means we'll be able to bypass The Logical reasonable part of someone's mind and get great to the good stuff the stuff that is more willing to hang on our every word unthinkingly if you use this strategy and the previous one together successfully it becomes basically impossible to lose an argument as far as your viewers or listeners or audiences concerned you are a very reasonable person holding a perfectly obvious position whereas

your opponent is making some plainly ridiculous claim they cannot possibly defend it's a way of poisoning the well before you even really get started anyone watching will begin from the position that you are probably right and then you just have to Lampoon the straw version of your opponent's argument that you've constructed to hammer home the message it basically does itself but of course we're just getting started now we have to move on to the business of active argumentation and how to come out on top even when you really shouldn't three the endless assault of questions

in another one of my videos we went through the careful way that Socratic questioning can be used to clarify what someone says in a discussion and how it can facilitate good faith argumentation where both you and your interlocutor can come to a mutual understanding of one another's points in order to learn something new and hopefully get closer to the truth but who cares about that now we must forget Socrates and employ questions in an entirely different way one aims to baffle and confuse rather than illuminate we must keep our opponent constantly on their toes with

questions that are either irrelevant to their overall point or simply lead them in the direction we want them to go so if you're presenting the pro puy league and I am still on my puppy Annihilation campaign I might send a merciless barrage of questions your way they might range from ones that imply something is nebulously untoward about your character why is it exactly that you have such a perverse affection for Kines Mr Jones two ones that are evidently loaded so how do you account for the fact that dogs have consistently been used as weapons of

war throughout history to ones that are simply beside the point is it not true Mr Jones that you were recently seen in the company of not dogs but cats our aim here is not to use questions to understand but to undermine even the most intelligent people can be reduced to stuttering and silence if you throw enough varied inquisitions at them in quick succession you're essentially forcing their minds to continuously jump from issue to issue never letting them rest long enough so that they can form a coherent thought it goes without saying that we should only

pay attention to the answers of these questions when it suits us so if they give a perfectly sensible response we should just ignore them refusing to even acknowledge it but obviously if they slip up giving an answer that seems unsatisfactory or is confusing or contradict something they said earlier in the debate even slightly then we can pounce upon that we triumphantly cry upon closer inspection your whole position falls apart for the rest of the encounter we should not let them forget this coming back to it whenever we get the sense a bit too comfortable best

of all would be if we get them to make a series of flawed or confusing or contradictory answers in quick succession as this is sure to provoke a laugh from anyone watching this is all to give the impression that your opponent does not even know what they are talking about despite the fact they might be very knowledgeable some of the best types of questions to provoke this sort of reply are ones that contain within them a presupposition that the debator does not agree with so I could ask but given that puppies are evil why shouldn't

we get rid of them then not only does the speaker have to answer the question they are also bound to want to dispel this presupposition or else they'll be seen as implicitly endorsing it and of course my opponents would not want to concede the idea that puppies are evil however to anyone watching it just looks like someone's giving a long convoluted response to a downright simple question this would leave the impression that we are a superior intellect easily able to trip our opponents up with Elementary questions about puppies of course this is even easier if

you prime your audience to feel like you must be fundamentally in the right and this is where shopen how's next observation enters the arena four control the metaphors a lot of us like to go around pretending that we are very rational but in recent years we've started to discover just how many extra logical factors influence our judgments and decisions and just one of these is the power that framing metaphors and labels have on our thoughts for instance if the losses in a situation are emphasized more than the gains then it makes people more risk averse

even if the actual facts have not changed at all but this cognitive bias presents a gleeful opportunity for the unscrupulous debator who cares nothing for truth and simply wants Victory the prospect of controlling the frame of the discussion this can be done in a number of ways first we give our position a name that is packed as full as possible with positive connotations so we won't call our worldview puppy nihilism but instead something like maing protectionism and this will stretch to the metaphors we use we won't paint ourselves as joyously arguing for the an ation

of innocent puppies but instead we'll emphasize all of the protective elements of our position we will Express real Sympathy for the puppies we don't want to hurt them we'll say we just recognize that this is a sad necessity of protecting people from harmful guard dogs we will Proclaim that those who oppose us are not doing so out of some affection for puppies they just don't have the guts to do what must be done we won't call them puppy lovers but instead something more nefarious like puppy Fanatics or the puppy League of course the particular context

will dictate which metaphors it Mak sense to use if we want to appeal to those who consider themselves supremely rational then we will emphasize the hysterical nature of caring so deeply about puppies we'll use terms like puppy worshippers and pup sterio if we want to make it seem like our opponents are out of touch then we can talk about those fortunate enough to have the time to care about puppies if we want people to view our opponents as just evil then we can emphasize what we say are the downsides of puppies and then say that

they act L support that then the puppy supporter becomes a Ming Enthusiast or a dog poo lover the possibility stretch as far as your logical conscience is willing to accommodate and this does not just end at controlling the terms used in a debate it can stretch to the way that we talk about the power dynamics at play in one situation we can argue that we're only saying what everyone else is thinking and it's only because the powers that be prevented that people aren't speaking out more against puppies alternatively if we want to appeal to people

that consider themselves intelligent and moderate then we can say that really this is the position of the thinking man we are the few who are enlightened enough to stand up for killing puppies when most are still dreaming of unrealistic scenarios of humans and puppies living in harmony but you and I we've thought about it we know the truth we could also associate the puppies or their supporters with a group of people maligned by our audience which in different scenarios might be the rich or the poor or certain foreign Nations as I said the possibilities are

endless none of this directly argues for our position or adds a single logical reason to believe in it because it doesn't have to it's playing on people's identities very few people want to be seen as hysterical or unthinking so the more we keep implying that our opponents must be like that the less people want to take up the cause of the puppies we're then controlling not just the debate but the way the debate is perceived if we are able to frame the whole issue in our favor either by presenting ourselves as the sensible voice of

reason fending off some Fringe lunatics or as a small independent group of Brave truth tellers revealing hidden secrets then a great many people who don't know anything about the questions involved will probably accept this presentation and think ah well the anti- MERS do seem to be the rational ones here and they'll be much more likely to unthinkingly Parrot our position when done skillfully this is a proper Master stroke for the manipulative debator as it allows them to pre-weight this discussion and any further discussions in their favor which is quickly becoming a consistent theme of the

video and in a similar vein we'll now move on to a devious type of trap to lay for our unsuspecting opponent one that can actually turn their Superior know against them five the strength of Common Sense how many times have you heard someone defend a position by saying well it's just common sense isn't it of course strictly speaking this doesn't support anything Common Sense is a pretty fallible way of establishing whether something is correct if we had clung desperately to our common sense since 3000 BC then we would arguably still believe that the sun god

Rah fought monsters over the course of the night to ensure that he rose again the next morning after all how else would the sun keep coming back it's just common sense this this is where schopenhauer's next dastardly play comes in he points out that one of the best ways to make an informed opponent seem foolish is to say something wrong but that appears to be common sense and then let them try and refute it probably using some long explanation that draws on their particular expertise you can imagine this happening in a historical debate about geocentrism

the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe and everything else orbits it at least in theory the geoc Centrist could say look we seem to stay still don't we and the sun seems to move no doubt a crowd of non- astronomer 16th century onlookers would be pretty satisfied with this line of reasoning it appeals to common sense of course the actual historical Renaissance position of geocentrism was much more sophisticated than this I don't want to misrepresent that after this kernus has to take the stand and carefully explain that there are actually subtle

contradictions in the best geocentric models of the solar system and that if you move to a more complex heliocentric model then this clears some of them up then a century later Kepler would have to interject and say that our best heliocentric models actually make slightly more accurate predictions of planetary movements than are best geocentric ones sure they are technically you know correct but the very length of their explanation would probably cause many listeners to go look how hard they have to work to deny the basic facts of the matter the sun revolves around the earth

get over it it's just common sense this reflects the observations of Behavioral Economist Daniel Carman that we often prefer a simple explanation to one that is complicated but ultimately closer to the truth it is often a much better way of managing our mental resources if reality is too complex to understand at a glance then unless the issue is of life-changing import we may as well just move on in ignorance but for the dishonest debator this opens up a great opportunity to get the upper hand by making sure their position is not necessarily correct but definitely

seems simpler than their opponents this will allow that ever helpful Common Sense advantage to kick in and you'll have an inherent Head Start in any confrontation with someone arguing something more complicated and the great thing about your opponent embarking on a lengthy explanation of a complex point is that you can do the following to great effect six interrupt imagine the time giving an in-depth presentation of quite a delicate argument perhaps I am arguing that despite girdle's second incompleteness theorem there are still multiple helpful uses for second order logic this would take quite a long time

and require several reasoning steps that some people might question especially if they're not presented in a sufficiently nuanced way so what would make turning this difficult task into a near impossible one well interrupting me every few seconds would probably do the trick then I would lose my place multiple times and be much more likely to put something clumsily allowing for my points to become confused or garbled then I will leave the impression on anyone present that I'm not confident in my argument or that I do not sufficiently understand it it will seem like you are

showing me up as you forensically analyze my argument in real time as I'm giving it of course in reality all you're doing is not letting me get a word in edgeways but that's besides the point as I said at the beginning we are not concerned with good faith truth logic or validity we are concerned with winning dominating and destructing and for all its philosophical flaws this strategy can leave the strong impression of Victory this Interruption tactic is especially important to do if your opponent looks like they have an argument that will actually end up refuting

your position then you are in a race to interrupt them before they can reach their dreaded QED you see this an awful lot in interview programs in an effort to catch out their subjects the interviewer will refuse to let them finish their point and instead insist on taking issue with every step of the argument as it progresses I think people are luckily starting to see through this trick more often but it's still incredibly common and if you plan to be a disingenuous arguer it is an invaluable tool in Your Arsenal and it might also have

the rather Nifty side effect seven make your opponent angry the trouble with calm people is that a lot of the time they're pretty reasonable they are often able to formulate their arguments both intelligently and convincingly and this is really annoying if your overall goal is just to trick people into agreeing with you so if our opponent is on the verge of making some sense we must nip that in the Bud immediately by making them as angry as humanly possible when someone is angry it's much harder for them to refute your arguments Point by point they

are much more likely to drift off topic or become incoherent or just make a fool of themselves at this point you can pretty much ignore anything they've said so far and simply point at them and say goodness me how can I be expected to debate with such a person after the discussion people will be talking about how calm and collected you were in the face of this clearly unhinged adversary despite the fact that you set out to get under their skin in the first place of course how you make this person angry is contextual and

also entirely up to you you might launch a series of unjustified ad homonym attacks and hope that they take the bait maybe your constant interruptions will be sufficient to make them snap perhaps you can just speak in a supremely derisive tone of voice condescension dripping from your every passing word until they find your very presence insulting I'll leave you to work out the details but the main objective is to be a complete windup Merchant once your opponent is frothing at the mouth they'll be unable to challenge your position meaning that you win by default sure

we've missed out on the potential to have our views challenged and made someone look like an idiot for no reason but we won and that's the important thing then again what's the point in winning if we don't get across the further idea that we are beings of unparalleled intellect brain box Titans straddling the channel through which lesser mines paddle in their silly little boats well luckily our next point should clear this up nicely eight toss a word salad now we have come my most Amorous and treasured squabbler to the juncture at which we commence the

audacious explorations of the isle's most theside we must pluck the loquacious fruits from the evergreen tree at the midmost yard of the garden of faux eloquence we shall conquer the monosyllabic dispense with the comprehensible and Retreat into the safe Refuge of near unintelligibility or to quote WC Fields if you can't Dazzle them with Brilliance then baffle them with but in this case we must carefully construct our dress it up in the finery of academic language and Technical terminology so that to the uninformed Observer it looks like a Colossus of intellectual capability but on closer inspection

it's just a shop mannequin in a cheap powdered wig this is a way of achieving the Aesthetics and authority of intellectualism without having to do any of that messy thinking or learning to the untrained ey we will appear exactly like any other incredibly clever person after all we've got the lingo down we ourselves with authority we speak with assured confidence at first glance anyone would take us to be an expert on whatever we are speculating about according to his Memoir the reformed con man Frank Abel Jr was able to pass as a pilot a doctor

and even an FBI agent simply by means of his own unflappability and by dressing the part and these identities are all much easier to disprove than a nebulous claim of expertise or authority so we'll probably have a much easier time than franked of course there will always be some people who see through the Skies but they will be drowned out by the sheer number of onlookers Star Struck by your extensive vocabulary and nice tweed jacket someone can even fall into this Trope without realizing it one of the reasons I say pretty much once every video

that I am not some Grand Authority in that you should draw your own conclusions is that the mixture of my Posh accent eccentric demeanor and way of writing might trick you into thinking that I am anything more than just some guy with a few books and I would be eager to disabuse you of any such notion but if you do want to put on the Thrills and Petty coats of the intelligencia employing helpful servings of word salad along the way then it might just be your shortcuts to winning an argument even if you haven't done

5 minutes of research but now some final decorations on the cake nine some miscellaneous pointers some of shopen how's tips and tricks can't be neatly grouped together like I have done for previous sections so here's a selection of some of his Greatest uncategorized Hits consider using personal insults if you're backed into a corner this will force your opponents to try to defend their character which will then derail the discussion if you refuse someone's particular argument then claim that the conclusion of that argument is therefore false disallowing them to have any further argument in its favor

if their position has never been tested state that it's good in theory but just would not work in practice if pressed avoid elaborating why if you have nothing to say to directly challenge your opponent simply point to some general but irrelevant concern like how everyone is wrong sometimes or that nothing is certain conflate terms that have no business being conflated make your opponents choose between two extremes obscuring any reasonable Middle Ground begin an argument with everyone knows that so that people understand where they should stand on the issue if you're close to being defeated just

suddenly change the subject above all if you want to be a successful dishonest arguer you must learn how to never concede except on the most minor points anytime you are forced to give something up simply pretend that you haven't later in the argument and ignore what you said before each time it appears you've lost some dialectical territory launch an immediate Counterattack to reclaim it or just assume it again when your opponent's not looking refuse to engage with the substance of your interlocutor's arguments and employ every tactic of exaggeration obfuscation and Distortion in your power to

make them seem ridiculous nothing is off the table no principle should hold you back from an ad homonym attack or a blatant misrepresentation cast logic out the window it is no longer your master your only Guiding Light is the Optics of what you're doing how it will be seen by others whether they'll think you have won the debate don't see conversation as a potential search for truth but rather a competitive sparring match where the object is to humiliate rather than construct or communicate and of course don't admit to anyone that this is what you're doing

but say that we don't want to do any of this say we are exactly the kind of idealistic truth-loving philosophers that a deceptive debator would treat with derision and Scorn what can we take away from shopen how's biting satire on how discourse tends to function 10 the lessons of Deceit right I'm going to remove my slightly sardonic intensely sarcastic hat and let's assume that what you and I are interested in is actually the truth we ideally want good faith debates to proceed between two respectful and open-minded participants so that the truth can be converged upon

provided we have all of the relevant information well on the one hand if you don't mind playing their game it offers a series of rhetorical tricks you could use if you're ever confronted with an opponent who is clearly interested in stooping to that level as schopenhauer says I think seriously in the argumentative arena in practice it is not enough to merely be right you must also be able to swat away all of the limic persuasive but logically fallacious objections you will encounter but even if you're not planning to dive into the wonderful and terrifying world

of public debate schopenhauer's work is fantastic for inoculating us against the kind of argumentative moves people make that are merely sophistic tricks that distract us from the real issue at hand it lets you know whether you're watching someone who genuinely wants to understand a topic or someone who just wants to appear right some Anarchist philosophers interpret mavell the prince as a warning about all the ways leaders can seize and maintain power that are deadly efficient but morally horren and I think we can view shopen how's sarcastic essay in a similar way it is showing us

the tricks of the trade used by bad faith actors who care less about truth or logic and more about simply getting their idea shoved into your skull and who are willing to use any means necessary to do so and in our internet age where anyone can post any opinion on any topic the skill of separating education from indoctrination is vital for staying sane to paraphrase the opening pages of schopenhauer's essay the issue of OB truth is inexpedient if your only aim is to change someone's mind or to win at any cost and you would be

surprised at just how often people trade in honesty logic and consistency for a slim shot at glory of course a much more important skill than knowing how to deceive someone into thinking that you're correct is how to actually critically analyze both someone else's views and your own and click here to watch my video on that very topic and stick around for more on thinking to improve your life