Short analysis of a master persuader tweet. Here is the previous tweet analysis.
You are going to disagree with people. This is part of life. All you can do about it is get the most out of the experience.
You can’t control what the other person does as a result of this experience. You can only control what you do as a result of this experience.
What are the ways you can benefit from disagreeing with somebody? The most important one is that they can know something you do not, and teach it to you. Other outcomes are relatively unimportant to you, since what you can control is your own mentality and your own knowledge.
Having established this fairly self-evident fact, assuming that you analyze the process of argumentation in a logical way, let’s look at the master persuader’s tweet.
As you can see, these words completely tilt the frame away from the approach that helps you get the most out of your disagreements. The first part operates under the assumption that the purpose of the discussion is to change what the other person is going to do.
As my intro explains, this is an ineffective premise for having fruitful discussions. You don’t have control over what the other person is going to do. It is an inutile concern. What you should focus on is if the disagreement will change what you are going to do.
If you disagree with somebody and tell each other why you think differently, some percentage of the time the other person will have better ideas. Even if you don’t end up agreeing on the point of contention, you can still make use of those better ideas.
Every discussion is an opportunity to learn. It’s not a guarantee you will learn, but it’s a chance to learn. The more you learn, the better your ideas. The better ideas, the better your life.
Master persuader is intentionally putting a big roadblock in your path to better ideas.
There are other elements of persuasion in this post that reinforce this. For example, the exact phrasing of the first line, using the word “people,” makes his readers more likely to behave in the manner described in red. I discuss this in more detail in “Turtles all the way Down.”
I think it’s pretty obvious why you want to avoid the second behavior in red. The first one is less obvious, but still a behavior you want to avoid. This is for the same reasons as above. Sometimes, your interlocutor is right, and if you are open to the possibility, you capitalize.
This post is part of a larger pattern where the master persuader tries to isolate his readers by attacking your ability to have profitable relationships with other people. Past articles that help elucidate this pattern include “Men Compete” and “Socialization is a Skill.”
One last point. I saw many people interacting with this post by talking about how it’s an “ego” problem. While that may be literally true, focusing on this is not helpful if you actually want to solve the problem.
What solves the problem is understanding that when you frame the discussion in terms of “understanding” and “learning,” the ego disappears without effort. People can only “defend the ego” if there’s something to defend, and if there’s no winner and loser, there’s no attacking and defending, either.
When there is no attacking and defending, you remain calm and analytical. When you are calm and analytical as you disageee with other people, arguing becomes much more fun.
I hope you learned from this article, and if so, I hope your newfound knowledge helps you learn many more things in the future. See you underground.