Tamsen Webster explains why the best ideas don't need defending. When you give people evidence they actually accept, they can make sense of your claim on their own. The trap: presenting facts without support, or support your audience won't believe.
If sense-giving is successful, defense becomes the absence of the need to defend, not preparing for the fight, making the fight unnecessary. What gets in the way of that kind of defensibility? Two things. Number one, you offered a claim. You said your idea could do something or that your idea is something, but you didn't offer any support. Number two, you offered support, you offered evidence, but it was support or evidence that the audience didn't agree with. The audience's experience of both is, because I can't quite make sense of why you believe what you believe, or I can't understand why you would possibly think that supports why you believe what you believe, I can't support it. And worse, I don't think you can either.
