How To Win An Argument Without Making Enemies

sometimes arguments can get heated and spiral out of control and while we all want to win our arguments not making an enemy in the process can be even more important which is why today we're going to be looking at Trevor Noah and what you can learn from him about coming out of verbal scruffs and not only on top but looking cool calm and collected first off trevor has a simple but effective habit to prevent emotions from getting too heated his sub communications indicate that he isn't there for a fight to see this principle in action take a look at this exchange from his debate with Tommy Lehren and noticed Trevor's tone of voice compared to Tommy's shooter said point blank shooter said he's doing this because of black lives matter yes and there are many things you can say as people get more frustrated they have a tendency to raise their voices and talk faster like Tommy does here in this case both sides ability to change their mind completely shuts down and they dig into their positions to prepare for a verbal sparring match you can tell that this is beginning to happen when both people rush to talk over one another like here I go I saw people and race as chalk I wouldn't use that in these sorts of situations no matter how good your point is it's not going to be well-received so the first order of business is simply to slow things down and indicate that fighting isn't necessary so as Trevor gains control you can see him deliberately pause in these situations which reduces the tension and opens the other person up to his perspective when I grew up I believed that all people with chocolates a very basic but tried-and-true method when this starts to happen to you is simply to take a deep breath as you are about to speak it helps to slow things down tremendously now another key element that indicates Trevor isn't looking to fight is his inflection in last week's Harvey Specter breakdown we talked about how a downward inflection can be a powerful tool when you're giving commands and that may have given the impression that upward inflections are somehow bad this is definitely not the case though in fact upward inflections are excellent for de-escalating conflict because it reassures others that you're not commanding them or trying to control them which is what gets most people upset in arguments in the first place because you're the first person I've met who said this I've seen this message online I'm not labeling you as the bad person I just want to know if you've ever thought of the how that's what I want to know the last key piece you see from Trevor about sub communicating that you're not there for a fight is simply the ability to crack a joke it might seem counterintuitive to slow down the flow of debate with moments of levity but this actually makes you more persuasive since your sub communicating that you are on the same side as someone when you can laugh with them now there's obviously tons of ways to crack jokes but it can be as simple as misinterpreting a word like here and then I got closer to the campaign and I started seeing some of the things he was saying and I started seeing the effect he was having on people the things that he was saying that was touching people and making it was touching people or just about any argument you can just poke fun at the fact that both sides typically want to demonize one another like here and so I one of the you one of the good ones cracking jokes like this will help release some of the tension that comes when you're debating fiercely held beliefs and hopefully move you towards a more constructive outcome however keep in mind that if you are going to make jokes you need to also be willing to take a joke and to laugh at it even when that joke targets your side like here crazy partially crazy yeah that works in Washington you got Bernie this would give you a good base of sub communications but the literal words that you use are important too and that's why the next point is that whenever possible ask questions instead of making statements the reason this is so significant is that questions tend to come across as less confrontational than statements provided that they're not provocative accusatory questions now there's two general kinds of questions that Trevor uses first you see genuine questions aimed at better understanding the other person's viewpoint again note the upward inflection in this next clip that indicates he's seriously curious and now I would like to know from your side genuinely as someone who's one do you believe that Donald Trump will follow through on his promises the goal of these types of questions is to fully understand the opposing position so many people debates with the straw man of the person that they're debating assuming that they believe things that the Democrats believe or Republicans believe or Christians believe or atheists believe or whatever you must recognize that you do not know any individual's beliefs simply by knowing one of their affiliations you need to get to what they believe as an individual and genuine questions are the only way they're to make sure that you're actually understanding someone correctly a fantastic tool is to try to state back to them their own beliefs in your words and to not proceed until they confirm that you've actually got it you see this right here saying that populism both on Trump's side and on the left there's a danger of that hurting Americans that's right look there's nothing wrong with a little populism keep in mind though it's not simply about using the word so you're saying and then putting words in the other person's mouth we saw that in the Jordan Peterson Kathy Newman debate that you need to make a genuine good-faith attempt to rephrase the others position not like you see here you're saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters now once you have a good grasp of someone's beliefs you can begin to ask the second main type of question questions that probe for inconsistencies and beliefs in a non accusatory way a very recent interview with the Republican Senator Rand Paul has a few great examples of this from Trevor you can do a bad thing does it cancel each other out then I'm saying that most people people go look at what happened in Venezuela socialism then I go there's the corruption not count at all you know credit default swaps that's capitalism running rampant that's people going you can buy a thing that doesn't exist and nobody understands it and you don't have to regulate it and then all of a sudden the markets crash people lose their houses isn't that also capitalism this questioning style of conversation is known as the Socratic method and it's the reason that Socrates is the most famous philosopher ever so use it it works incredibly well in short your first attempting to understand people's positions as best you can and then frame your disagreements in the form of questions that gives the other person a chance to respond without feeling cornered and it makes them much less likely to be offended moving on to the next point let's have a look at what to do when the positions are reversed and you're the one who is having your beliefs challenged but let's say it's in a way that you feel is unfair your main goal here is to confidently defend yourself without coming across as antagonistic and there is a surprisingly effective way to achieve both at the same time and it's something that I like to call yes but now you've probably heard of yes end where you agree and then build upon someone's statement in order to develop on a joke like an improv comedy in an argument the same principle of finding agreement is very important the only difference is that you're gonna follow your agreement up by showing where you disagree that's the butt part no for instance in this next clip Trevor says yes that he is splitting hairs but then goes on to say why that's the right thing to do take a look you're splitting hairs here no but that is exactly what we should be doing because what you're doing is creating oh sure I you're creating a ratio to say no you're creating units it may seem subtle but finding any area of agreement can be critical to moving forward without making enemies people's egos get tied up in their arguments and oftentimes when you rebut someone completely they feel personally attacked even if your position is perfectly logical so find a way to validate them by saying yes to something about them or their argument it can be recognizing the value of one part of what they said it's nice to hear somebody say that the religion is not the problem these crazy people or when you think nothing they've said makes sense simply recognizing that they probably have positive intentions and believe what they're saying can be a really great way to move forward here's my thing like all these points that you make are great and I do believe that you believe them and I don't believe anyone is actively trying they're a few people are trying to be bad from their point of view but when I look at what you're saying now in order to do this technique effectively you need to know specifically where you agree with someone and specifically where you don't so identifying hidden premises is critical hidden premises are unspoken assertions baked into a question or a statement when someone creates an argument that feels wrong but you can't quite explain why sometimes that's because you can't find the hidden premise and sometimes it's because you're experiencing cognitive dissonance but we'll leave that for another video to focus on the hidden premise here's one quick example see if you can spot it here what do you say to people who say like The Daily Show can be an echo chamber did you catch the implied hidden premise it's that being an echo chamber is a bad thing something that you shouldn't be so watch how Trevor responds everything is an echo chamber I think that's a term that people use to try and justify what a group of people are saying in and amongst themselves I think for myself you will always have an echo chamber because people who watch your show are people who like your show this is a perfect example of yes but in this instance by saying yes the daily show is an echo chamber he's validating Charlemagne but then saying that it's natural to be so he roots out that hidden premise that it shouldn't somehow be an echo chamber and that way he is able to agree but defend himself elegantly and we discussed this topic further in our Ben Shapiro video if you'd like to play this game a few more times but for now let's get to the mindset that ties all of this together because everything in this video can move from a simple technique to a natural way of being if you adopt new mindsets and there are three keys first off in every argument you are not necessarily right and this is especially true if you've never amended your belief system be it political religious or otherwise in those cases chances are you're operating from conditionings so genuinely trying to understand other perspectives can help you towards a more accurate view of the world now this is obviously very hard to do because your ego gets involved so the second key mindset is that adjusting your beliefs changing your mind in the heat of an argument does not diminish you at all as my freshman year philosophy teacher said the goal of argument is not to be right it is to get it right so be proud of yourself when you change your beliefs in accordance with new evidence even if you technically lost an argument for it to happen now third if in fact you've taken the time to understand the other person and they're still wrong it's almost never because they are evil it's because they are somehow ignorant dialogue can help to lift that ignorant but only if you don't trigger their defense mechanisms by attacking them as people now trevor summarizes this well on hot ones i don't want to destroy you i want to engage with you and i think i think a lot of the time as people if you have ideas you believe in you should be willing to engage or you should be willing to test those ideas against somebody that you don't agree with if you allow these mindsets to sink in everything from the sub communications to asking the Socratic questions to the yes but technique will come much more naturally as you jointly work with the people you're talking to to find solid and true common ground to be honest I find that that principle of seeking first to understand is very sparse in the modern media and that's part of why my co-founder Ben and I started a podcast on it we discuss things like the news and cultural events but really the podcast is about digging into the hidden psychology and philosophy that drives our lives and all of those events and of course hopefully learning to become better people as a result the initial feedback on the podcast has been heartwarmingly fantastic so if you are a fan of the channel I think you could get a ton from the podcast we get to go deep on ideas that just don't fit here so if you want to check it out you can click on the page right here to subscribe or listen wherever podcasts are it is called the Charlie and Bend podcast still working on that name also one final announcement we have had lots of success in partnering with foreign language channels for Spanish Portuguese Russian Arabic Italian and other foreign languages and we're actually looking to expand so if you're interested in becoming a foreign language channel manager for charisma on command in dubbing our videos into your native language running the channel we are offering 50% of all revenue that the channel managers earn to them some of whom of these people like the Spanish and Russian channels in particular have been able to go full-time even starting teams to run their channel so if you are capable of the translation and interested in running german hindi japanese channels or one that i have not yet mentioned we would love to hear from you and in order to apply you can just click the link in the description and find out more anyways I hope that you guys enjoy this video I hope that you check out the podcast as well and I very much look forward to seeing you in the next video

Channel: Charisma on Command

Views: 2,801,381

Rating: 4.9340119 out of 5

Keywords: charisma on command, charismaoncommand, coc, charisma, charlie houpert, trevor noah, daily show, how to win an argument, how to argue, how to win a discussion, how to win an argument in 2019, charisma on command conversation, how to win a debate, how to be persuasive, how to be persuasive in a debate, trevor noah debate, daily show debate, daily show with trevor noah, charlie houpert podcast, how to persuade people, socratic method, the socratic method

Id: lgXqaS08ZqM

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Please remember we are here as a representation of Andrew Yang. Do your part by being kind, respectful, and considerate of the humanity of your fellow users.

If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.

Helpful Links: Volunteer Events • Policies • Media • State Subreddits • Donate • YangLinks FAQ • Voter Registration

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/nosnaj]

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1195148300833263616?s=19

"Humor might save the world."