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In the Supercut series, I collect and reflect on the best ideas about a given topic. Needless to say, my choices may be characterised by subjectivity, selection bias and unconscious incompetence.
I recently noticed something about my readers. Some of my most viewed long-form essays happen to be about disagreement. While pondering what that tells me about my audience, I realised that I was the one who wrote them. What does that say about me? I’m writing about it because I’m fascinated by disagreement and want to get to the bottom of it. Here are my Top 5 of the most powerful ideas on how to disagree — so far.
5. Strawmanning
Strawmanning is arguably one of the most common forms of disagreement gone wrong. The fallacy happens when we misrepresent someone’s argument and criticise them for views they have not expressed. The strawman argument is usually of much lower quality than the actual one. This makes it much easier to attack than one made out of steel. (More on that later.)
Two reasons for someone engaging in strawmanning stand out: Too often, we don’t really listen to what someone has to say. We just wait until they express our opinion and we can speak ourselves. We might also strawman deliberately. We know how devastating it can be to be attacked for something we did not do. This power move puts the onus on our counterparts to defend themselves.
What strawmanning rarely does is solve anything.
4. The Tenth Man Rule
I’ve previously described the Tenth Man Rule as an institutionalised version of devil’s advocacy. It originated in the Zombie flick World War Z (2013) where it was described like this:
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