Chapter 17: Conversations Worth Having

Greetings once again, hypothetical newborn baby!  Instead, I’m here once again to teach you another Life Lesson. I had to learn these at the School of Hard Knocks. No, I’m not claiming that you’re not as able as me to learn those lessons.  I’m just trying to spare you some pain and frustration.  OK OK!  I admit that this is merely a thought experiment by which I am trying to set forth the most important things I’ve learned in 65 years. By the way, if you aren’t completely satisfied with these lessons, I’ll refund all of the money you paid for them ! This is Chapter 17 already.  Wow.  Aren’t you tired of hearing my voice? No?  OK. Then I’ll continue. If you need to review any of the past lessons, can find them all here. 

Today we’re going to talk about conversations. That term doesn’t simply mean talking with someone any more than food is defined as anything you put your mouth. Er, I can already see you drooling at you stare at my car keys. Just settle down now . . . OK, you can suck on your toes while you listen. That’s cool.

There are many types of conversations, but they fall on a continuum from simple factual exchanges on (“Is it raining?” “Yes”) to collaborations in which the parties set out to figure out a complex topic as a joint exercise by celebrating each others’ contributions.

Psychologist Scott Barry Kauffman recently Tweeted:

Imagine what discourse would be like if instead of it being conceptualized as a “match” to see who “wins”, discussions were seen as mutual attempts to get at a shared truth or seen as a shared mission to get outside of ourselves and transcend our individual perspectives.

That would be a nice world, the kind I can imagine happening 24/7 at the big house where the philosophers and other “virtuous pagans” hang out just on the other side of Dante’s River Acheron. You, however need to live in the world you were handed. You ended up on a Grade A planet in a Grade C era with regard to conversations.

Right now, your interactions will mostly be where some other baby grabs your toy and you cry. Here’s the problem you’ll encounter when you get older: Even if you optimistically join a discussion hoping it is of the “Kauffman” variety, that doesn’t guarantee an enlightening and engaging experience. It takes two to tango and many people would rather honk at you (don’t look at ME as I say that!) than celebrate each other’s differing perspectives. Tango is the correct metaphor because, at their best, conversations are like dancing with other people. If either of you are stepping on the others’ feet, neither of you are going to have a good time.

Here’s why this era is so fraught for those who want to share complex ideas with others (especially on contentious topics): We live in a time where the so-called news media makes much of its money by stirring up conflict and even hate. It’s the same thing with social media. The companies in charge of these things have decided in their corporate consciences that it’s quite simple, actually: no conflict, no money. This has wrecked a pretty decent (though admittedly imperfect) conversational thing we had going on for decades.

Here’s how it so often plays out: Let’s say that you join a conversation in an open frame of mind, interested in freely sharing perspectives on an issue, but the other person is not so inclined. The other person, having been steeped in news media and social media, and now cooked to an extra-fever pitch of loneliness and rage during the pandemic, is committed to scoring points, schooling you and “winning” the discussion. I know, right? Why should there ever be a “winner” to a discussion, but that’s how many people see it these day. And they have plenty of tactic for “winning,” including these:

• Strawman arguments.
• Ever-new varieties of ad hominem attacks.
• Least charitable interpretations
• Attacks based on guilt by association
• Either/Or thinking (False Dilemma)
• Motte and Bailey Tactics
• Ignoring Carl Sagan’s caveat that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” (ECREE)
• Definitional anarchy (claiming that words suddenly have new or opposite meanings)
• Innumeracy and proud disregard of relevant statistical evidence.
• Violations of the use/mention distinctions
• Tribal blinders
• Kafka traps
• Arguing that because you have criticized a political candidates position that you must therefore agree with all the positions of that candidate’s opponent.
• Shrinking of the Overton Window (claims that increasing numbers of topics are taboo), including spontaneous “rules” that certain people shall not be allowed to speak about certain topics.
• An Acute case of Confirmation Bias.
• Violations of Chesterson’s Fence (before you announce that we need to get rid of something that has been around for a long time, e.g., free speech, you should make sure you understand why it was established in the first place).

These are all serious conversation-stoppers. Making things worse, they will often inject a dozen of these dysfunctionalities into conversations in the first two minutes! As they toss these grenades into your “conversation” (which they see as a debate), you will be forced to either eat their logic or try to correct those misconceptions and fallacious arguments. The longer the conversation goes on, the further you will fall behind. They also have another favorite tactic: refusing to engage in turn-taking. You’ll sit there for 29 our of 30 minutes unable to get a word in and then, suddenly, they will wave good-bye, calling out “It was so good talking with you!”

By the way, no political party or demographic has a monopoly on the use of these tactics. They are equal opportunity conversational dysfunctions.

The above tactics lead to conversations where your good intentions and open-mindedness collide with Brandolini’s Law (also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle), which recognizes that the amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it. Brandolini’s Law recognizes that it takes much more time to correct factual misconceptions and fallacious arguments than it takes to inject these problems into a conversation. This asymmetry will keep you in nonstop clean-up mode for the entire conversation.

There is no third-party referee to most conversations (as there is in courtrooms), someone to blow the whistle at the moment any of these violations occur. Out in the real world, you’ll need to rely on your intuitive persuasion toolkit if you want to untilt the conversation, Job #1 will be convincing your opponent (who you never intended to be an opponent) to agree on some ground rules before going forward. Good luck with that task, because every person you talk with will claim that they will be “fair.”

I struggle mightily with some of these situations, even though I have been engaged in high stakes adversarial conversations for 40 years in my job as attorney and even though I “reach across the aisle” more than anyone else I know. I also have considerable training in difficult conversations, given my past volunteer work as a suicide counselor. Even with these qualifications and experiences, trying to have conversations in modern times can really try my patience.

As you try to establish ground rules, you’ll notice that there is a wide and blurry line between “having a conversation” and “doing therapy.” Truly and regrettably.

I’ll suggest a few things that sort-of work for me, though this is a work in progress for me.

Keep in mind that unvarnished debates and arguments almost never change minds. Make it the unending focus that you are there to learn from the other person and to exchange ideas.  The moment you start debating, the other person will start nodding but they won’t be agreeing–they’ll be counting the minutes until you leave.

Establish (or reaffirm) that there is a personal relationship before you ever get to any contentious issues.

Use some warm-up questions and be a world-class active listener throughout to bring down the temperature and establish credibility. Everyone gets calmer when they know that you are listening to them.

Don’t fall into a cycle of chit chat, the black hole of conversations—those who enter almost never escape, which is the point because chit-chat is the path for cowards, people who don’t want to risk learning new things or having even a friendly disagreement.

Set an upbeat mood in the room. Be likeable and be irredeemably upbeat. The two of you are fish and you can help decide what kind of water you will be swimming in.

When things get prickly, repeatedly look in the mirror to ask yourself whether you are the problem.

Lower your expectations for what can be achieved in one conversation. Give it lots of time, if at all possible. Daryl Davis is my favorite example of this: a mild mannered black man—a jazz musician–who convinced dozens of KKK members to turn in their robes forever (and see here). It took many conversations and extraordinary patience to pull off this miracle.

Actively seek out and note connection points: things to like about the grumpy person so that they can feel assured that you truly like conversing with them.

Sharing stories can be a powerful and relatively unthreatening way to connect. There is immense power and ability-to-connect in the use of narratives. 

When things get tough, remind yourself that people usually act rationally based on the information they are consuming. A better (diverse) information diet might be your best hope and that won’t happen overnight. Maybe share an information source or two with your “opponent” (not a ten-foot tall stack of reading material). Do this at the same time that you ask your “opponent” for a few sources of information that they trust.

Remember that “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” — Dorothy Nevill

Keep in mind that we need each other to keep all of us on track. All of us fall of track some of the time. The most brilliant person you know will sometimes lay a conversational egg. Those who care about us will speak up to warn us. That grumpy person who voted for the other candidate might be trying to help you. This point is a colloquial version of John Stuart Mill’s brilliant work, “On Liberty,” on which I will spend a future chapter.

Remember that Life is, indeed, a shitty first draft, so it is important that you honor that other person exactly where you found them. Think of Martin Buber’s I-Thou. Whether you are a Christian or an atheist like me, think of that utterly profound advice of Jesus: “Love [even] your enemy.”

Perhaps you are thinking that meta-conversational work will take too damned much work. This will be your choice, but you might find it much more enjoyable to find and discuss differences than to seek out same-thinkers who crowd into a big circle like emperor penguins. You might prefer that solitude to risking that you’ll disagree with others in a real-time conversation, even though solitude can shorten your life (see Chapter 8).  Also consider that as frustrating as it is to find yourself with people lacking conversational skills, that still might be an order of magnitude more mind-expanding, gratifying and sometimes exhilarating than planting yourself in any sort of echo chamber.

It’s not a bad thing that we disagree on some things, even vigorously. It would be far scarier if all of us agreed on everything, wouldn’t it?