Rhetorical Heavy Lifting

      I get into a fair number of arguments, and I daresay I'm reasonably good at it. I tend to "win" more often than I lose, if you define it in terms of persuading people that you're more likely to be right. (I actually think it's counterproductive to think of argument that way, as I elaborate on here.) I prefer to think of it as a process leading to greater understanding of the issue by all parties, a discussion rather than a debate, but there is usually some adversarial element, and I can usually hold my own pretty well when that's the case.

    So one thing that sometimes happens when I appear to be "winning" a debate is this: my opponent expresses some frustration that I'm only winning because I happen to be skilled at rhetoric, and if only they were better able to express their ideas more clearly, they'd be able to convince me. And that's certainly a possibility; there are many subtle concepts that are very difficult to express clearly but which turn out to be true (or at least, to have great explanatory/predictive power). But often difficulty in communicating an idea isn't so much due to a lack of rhetorical ability as it is due to the idea itself just not being as well-formed and coherent as it feels. That is, the feeling of being right or of knowing something to be so isn't identical with actually being right. (Like when I dreamed I came up with a mathematical proof of the immortality of the soul.) Goshdarnit, I know I'm right, but I just can't put it into words!

    A metaphor I've found useful for the way debates like that go is that it's like a rock-lifting contest. I choose a rock and you choose a rock, and the winner is the one who can lift their rock the highest. Now, you might think that what you need to win such a contest is to be very strong, but in fact, most often the winner is the person who is able to choose the lightest rock. 

    Now, skill at rhetoric is like being very strong in that it allows you to lift bigger argumentative rocks higher than you would otherwise be able to lift them. But the bigger impact is that it makes you a better judge of the weight of rocks. So much of the time, when someone tells me they'd be winning this argument if only they were better at rhetoric, I want to say hey, don't feel bad. I couldn't lift that rock, either.

    And to do that, I have to make a good faith effort to try to lift their rock.