How To Get The Upper Hand In Any Argument

Sam Harris has been one of the world's most formidable debaters for nearly 20 years. He has gone toe to toe with other people we've covered on the channel, like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, and he has held his own. And although he doesn't quite have that biting wit of Christopher Hitchens, he manages a few zingers of his own as well.

You're not a physicist. And, and, and basically every sentence demonstrates that, that you speak on the subject now.

So in this video, we are going to break down five reasons Sam Harris is so excellent in his debates. How you can use these tactics to your advantage as well as the betterment of all those who encounter your masterful skills. Now, believe it or not, there's only one point I'm covering that deals with the formal rules of logic, but it's enough to provide an effective way to dismantle many, many arguments. And it looks like this. First, you identify the premise that someone is putting forward.

When I'm looking at you right now, you may assume that what I see is immaterial. But that's not what I see and it's not what I believe. And I think I understand that's not what you believe. There's something in that is more than you believe.

Rather than arguing with that premise or disproving it directly, accept what the other person said as true. Then apply their logic to even more extreme situations, knowing that eventually they won't like where their own logic has taken them.

This is constrained by our common sense in every other domain of discourse. Just take, for example, the people who think Elvis is still alive. Okay, what's wrong with this claim?

The technical term for this is reductio ad absurdum, reduction to absurdity. And it is an incredible technique because your counterparts are essentially dismantling their own arguments rather than fighting. You show how a statement that someone else has made leads to more ridiculous outcomes that are obviously not true. So your opponent essentially destroys their own logic by disagreeing with its conclusions. Now, this can actually be difficult to use when someone's premises aren't clear, and that's often the case in conversation. We don't speak informal proofs, so Sam has learned to identify the implied or hidden premises in the statements of his counterparts. These hidden premises can be used to one's advantage in a debate, and I discussed that in the Ben Shapiro breakdown, which I highly recommend. If you're interested in this topic, I'm going to link that below. But herein is an example of a hidden premise that Sam identifies and dismantles with an argument that makes the logic sound absurd. First, see if you can spot that hidden premise. Ben in this case is arguing that religion, and in this case Catholicism has been supportive of scientific inquiry. In fact, that it was one of the foremost champions of scientific inquiry. Virtually all major universities were sponsored by the Catholic church, which saw consonants between science and religion as a reason to actually investigate the natural world.

Well, no, I mean, again, I think that's backwards.

Did you catch it? Ben's logic looks something like this, though he doesn't state it outright. Now with this in mind, watch how Sam responds and immediately shows this line of argument can be taken to absurdity.

I think the reality is there was no way, I mean, everything that was good that was done anywhere at any time prior to pick your year was done by some religious person. There was just nobody else to do the job. So you could make the argument that Catholics built every bridge in Europe until the Protestants came around and they built their half of the bridges so there was just no one else to do the job.

So if you can find the hidden premise and then take it to an extreme, you already have a very powerful logical tool to completely destroy someone's argument. But as with all human endeavors, emotion drives debates just as much if not more than logic. So the rest of the points in this video are emotionally based, even if they're coming from someone who seems Vulcan like in their demeanor. The first of these is conciliatory statements where you acknowledge the validity or at least the seeming reasonableness of the opposing viewpoint. It looks something like this.

Let me address that question because you. Because it seems so. This can all seem very abstract and academic and of no use to anyone.

This next statement is one that Sam says blatantly during an exchange where Ben Affleck was obsessed set about Sam's statements on Islam.

Let me just give you what you want. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims who are nominal Muslims who don't take the faith seriously, who don't want to kill apostates, who are horrified by isis. And we need to defend these people, prop them up and let them reform.

But by that point, it was already eight minutes into this exchange and it was too late to cool anyone off.

ISIS couldn't fill a double a ballpark in Charleston, West Virginia and you were making a career out of isis.

The point that I am making is that conciliatory statements are important before people get heated or dig into their positions. In fact, I think that the most important thing I'd like to see more of in public intellectuals is this conciliatory statements. Now, of course, I'm recognizing it is very, very hard to do in the moment, but it may have had a big impact, for instance, on the conversation between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, if each individual understands that they are not being attacked as a person. Now we have an entire video breaking down that particular interaction and how to keep cool and avo embarrassing yourself in arguments. If you want to check that out, I will link to that video in the description. Now, another emotional but effective point is that Sam frequently cracks jokes. You would think this doesn't make sense in a debate, but when it's done at the expense of the other side's arguments, this tactic can actually win over the audience. Like in this clip where Sam argues against the existence of a Judeo Christian God and.

And he's got. He's got galaxy upon galaxy to attend to, but he's especially concerned with what we do, and he's especially concerned with what we do while naked.

Or when you make yourself the butt of a joke, it can open up the other side to listening to you more and maybe even to changing their mind.

I've been very worried about this, that all of you have given up a perfectly serviceable Tuesday evening only to hear the four of us tell you every which way that we have no idea what happens after death.

I won't go deep into the details here, but different types of jokes can have wildly different effects. I've covered this at length in other videos and again, I'm going to link to those below. For now, know that in a debate setting, a well timed joke can either open your counterpart to having their mind changed or simply win audience points. Which brings me to the most persuasive element, I think, of Sam's style of speech and it's his use of vivid, specific imagery. Visual images are incredibly persuasive in people because we see them in our head. We can't deny it, it becomes true. And which is why, even though Sam could have simply said this just to.

Give some context, we were living in a world in which 9 million children every year die before they reach the age of five.

He decided to add this.

That is an Asian style tsunami of the sort you remember from 2004 every 10 days, killing only children before the age of five.

It's why in this next clip, Sam simply could have said that the conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple products, are really unfair. But instead he says the following. And again, the point that he makes here is very upsetting But I say it and show it here to illustrate.

Its power, perhaps on the iPad itself, that the people who built this gorgeous device live lives of such unendurable drudgery that they regularly hurl themselves off the rooftops at the factory where they work. Nets have been installed to catch their falling bodies.

The real power comes when you have conditioned these ideas to the degree to which they become a habit. It's no longer a tactic, but a style of behaving. And you know that's true when you start using them one on top of the other, which is where they become extremely powerful. So watch as Sam follows that particular point up with a reductio ad absurdum of on the Benevolence of God's will, plus a joke. And that just goes to show how all of these combined can be used to great effect.

It's God's will that I'm so lucky. If God had wanted me to do dangerous and deadly boring work for a few dollars a day, that's what I would be doing. But as it happens, he wants me to have a new iPad. Hallelujah.

There you have it. Five. Not all, but five. Five of the reasons that Sam Harris is so dominant in debates. Now, I've made a playlist of all the videos that I mentioned before. I think you will find them very useful because they contain some of the tactics that Sam is both using and arguing against, not to mention some of his top debate partners, including Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. I'm going to link to that playlist with the videos right here on screen as well. Now, if you want to make sure that you get more videos like this, of course subscribe. But a special one today because Game of Thrones is coming back and that means the breakdowns that we have done will finally, after many years, be making a comeback as well. I'm very much looking forward to them. Hit the notification bell if you want to make sure not to miss them. Either way, I hope that you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.