WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

HOW TO BE HEARD

CHAPTER THREE: QUESTION EVERYTHING

Questions are a pathway through disagreements.

Have you ever played Battleship? You and your partner each arrange toy battleships on a grid. You can’t see your partner’s grid and they can’t see yours. The aim of the game is to ask questions that will reveal where your partner’s ships are located. What do you do when you find their ships? Simple – you sink them.

Questions are an essential part of your toolkit for having productive disagreements. They’re pathways through arguments. They can open up perspectives, reveal anxieties, broaden understanding, incite empathy, and sometimes even lead towards satisfactory resolutions. Yet in our disagreements, many of us use questions poorly. We ask closed questions calibrated to shut the discussion down. Or we ask questions designed to confirm our own perspective instead of probing that of the other person. In short, we use questions in arguments the same way we use them in Battleship. To sink arguments. To win the game.

For a more productive method of questioning, try turning to another well-loved game, Twenty Questions. In this game, your partner thinks of a person, animal, or object. Your goal is to work out what they’re thinking of using twenty questions or fewer. Twenty Questions forces its participants to ask open-ended, imaginative, unexpected questions. What’s more, it discourages its participants from asking questions with a specific answer in mind.

When we ask Battleship-style questions in a disagreement, we exercise an iron grip over the dialogue. When we adopt the spirit of Twenty Questions, we loosen control of the discussion and open up space for unexpected connections.

Imagine you’re a committed skeptic, yet one day your friend admits they believe in ghosts. You could ask a question designed to “sink their ship”, something along the lines of “What evidence do you have that ghosts exist?” Or, you could ask a question that allows them to illuminate their perspective instead, something like “What experiences brought you to this belief?”

Sometimes this kind of disagreement can even foster closeness and connection between friends. Think of a friend that you always disagree with on the topic of cinema. It can be fun to go to the movies together and argue about why you disagree. Even less light-hearted arguments, for example political disagreements, can form the core of a friendship. The key to having this kind of enjoyable disagreement? Asking the right questions.

Choose a strong debate partner for a robust, productive disagreement.

Do you want to win a debate? It’s easy enough to do, with a strategy known as nutpicking. Find the person on the opposing team who has the nuttiest, silliest arguments and then demolish those arguments one by one. Done and dusted!

But when you win an argument in this manner, you’re really losing opportunities for personal growth and interpersonal connection. In short, by nutpicking, you’re squandering the opportunity to have productive disagreement.

If you want to engage in productive disagreement, you’ll have to try a different tack. When you’re choosing your debate partner, don’t go for low-hanging fruit. Instead, choose the wisest, most credible person whose opinion is opposed to yours and engage them in discussion. You may find participating in this high level of debate challenges your own argument in unexpected ways. As a result, you may modify your own perspective. Then again, these challenges to your argument may only serve to strengthen it. Either way, your horizons have broadened.

Best of all, engaging in this level of debate can alert you to loopholes and blind spots in your own reasoning. There’s a famous short story called “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs that shows just how important it can be to guard against loopholes in your own logic. A couple are given a magical monkey’s paw and told it will grant them anything they wish for. The catch? It will always find a loophole that allows it to grant the wish in a different way than intended. The couple ignore this warning and took a chance, wishing for enough money to pay off their debts. The next day, their grown son is killed in a terrible workplace accident. As compensation, they receive a sum of money that is exactly equal to the sum of their debts. 

When you choose a debate partner look for the person who can be your “monkey’s paw,” highlighting the blind spots and flaws in your logic that you can’t see for yourself. It might be easier to win against someone with silly arguments – but you’ll gain a lot more when you pick your sparring partner wisely!

By the way, this topic is particularly important because at SHEGZSABLEZS’ blog, we roll out series of activities that encourages healthy debates on current issues.

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments box provided below.

Have a fruitful day!

Olusola Bodunrin is a graduate of Philosophy from the University of Ado-Ekiti. He is a professional writer, he writes articles for publication and he anchors – ‘What You Should Know’ on SHEGZSABLEZS’ blog.

‘What You Should Know’ is a column that offers to educate and enlighten the public on general falsehood and myths.