Tom Guarriello asks when arguments actually change minds versus just extracting temporary concessions. He questions the conventional view of argument as a logical assault meant to break down opponents, and invites you to recall the last time you genuinely shifted a belief, not just said someone had a point to end the debate.
Good morning, it's Tom Guarriello. I'm trying out something new this morning just as an experiment, as you can see. The thing I wanted to talk about was, do you watch these alternative channels that people have I was— I started watching Paperlily's alternative channel, xPLX, a while ago and just started to catch up on some of her old videos over on that channel. They're very interesting, just like her videos on her Paperlily channel are interesting. But the one that I watched the other day I thought was particularly interesting to me, and that was the one about argument, and is argument helpful? So the question that it brought to me was, when's the last time that you changed anybody's mind in an argument? I was trying to remember the last time an argument changed my mind, and it's difficult for me to recall. I think the whole point of argument, as Paper Lily alludes to in her video, is, you know, attacking aggressively, having logical, fueled with emotional ideas that you, you know, look at the— I mean, the gesture kind of captures it for me— that you bang on the other person with. And, you know, in in the hope, I think, that you will break down their thinking and get them to accept your thinking. And so the experience that Bryony described in her video was one of, you know, kind of watching people on video say things that she disagreed with, and the thought that as a younger person she would have sprung into argument mode in order to try to convince them of the errors of their argument in favor of her argument, her logic, her reasons for thinking the way she thinks. And so, you know, it struck me that, gee, that really is something that we're taught to do, and some of us get very accomplished at argument and logic. And, you know, we see people here on YouTube who are, you know, very logical and have lots of reasons why, and some, you know, smoke pipes and cigarettes. But the, the point is that argument is, is presumed to be able to be the way to be able to change people's minds. And I just wondered, what about you? What's your experience with being in arguments that have changed your mind? And I don't just mean have caused you to agree with the person in the moment. You know, we do that in an argument a lot. If we feel like we're losing the argument, we go, "Well, you know, I guess you got a point." You know, "That's probably right, that it probably is that way." But did that really change our minds? Did it change our heart about what we believed? Or was it just kind of a temporary, you know, sort of showing our neck the way, you know, dogs do in a fight, or animals, you know, kind of giving up. But really, they have, you know, not having had our mind changed. So the question that I'm putting here to you is, when's the last time that an argument really changed your mind?
