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Most people are bad at arguing. These 2 techniques will make you better.
Listen
Your ideological opponents want to feel like they've been heard. The key is to let the opposition do most of the talking.
People learn lessons better when they come to the conclusion themselves. Listen to people, get them to think about their own experience, and highlight your common humanity. Letting them talk opens the door to reducing prejudice and changing opinions.
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Win the black belt in political argument
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Winning an Argument
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Understanding Frames
Frames, with respect to a discussion or argument, are different categories to 'slot' an idea or topic, just like a car can be evaluated by its color, price, or model number.
Change the Frame
During the course of an argument, to increase compliance towards your belief, you can change the framing of the existing belief of the listener.
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Feeling emotionally unsafe
When people feel emotionally threatened, they are not speaking of getting their feelings hurt or being forced to listen. It is when they experience dehumanizing language and behavior.
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Dehumanization
Dehumanization has fueled innumerable acts of violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocides like slavery, torture and human trafficking.
Groups are depicted as "less than" or evil when they are targeted based on their identity - gender, ideology, skin color, religion or age. The group eventually falls out of the scope of who is protected by our moral code.
Dehumanizing always starts with language
Images often follow after language.
- During the Holocaust, Nazis described Jews as subhuman. Jews were called rats and depicted as disease-carrying rodents - from military pamphlets to children's books.
- Hutus in the Rwanda genocide called the Tutsis cockroaches.
- Serbs called Bosnians aliens.