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Good Arguments: What the Art of Debating Can Teach Us About Listening Better and Disagreeing Well
At a time when every disagreement turns toxic, world champion debater Bo Seo reveals the timeless secrets of effective communication and persuasion.
When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in year five, something happened to change his he was introduced to debating.
Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. He went on to win world titles with the Australian schools and Harvard University teams.
But debating isn’t just about winning or losing an it’s about information gathering, truth finding, lucidity, organization, and persuasion. It’s about being able to engage with views you disagree with, without the argument turning toxic.
Good Arguments shares insights from the strategy, structure and history of debating to teach listeners how they might better communicate with friends, family and colleagues. Touching on everything from the radical politics of Malcom X to Artificial Intelligence, Seo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, far from being a source of conflict, good-faith debate can enrich our daily lives. Indeed, these good arguments are more important than ever at time when bad faith is all around, and our democracy seems so imperiled.
When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in year five, something happened to change his he was introduced to debating.
Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. He went on to win world titles with the Australian schools and Harvard University teams.
But debating isn’t just about winning or losing an it’s about information gathering, truth finding, lucidity, organization, and persuasion. It’s about being able to engage with views you disagree with, without the argument turning toxic.
Good Arguments shares insights from the strategy, structure and history of debating to teach listeners how they might better communicate with friends, family and colleagues. Touching on everything from the radical politics of Malcom X to Artificial Intelligence, Seo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, far from being a source of conflict, good-faith debate can enrich our daily lives. Indeed, these good arguments are more important than ever at time when bad faith is all around, and our democracy seems so imperiled.
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Published May 31, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 224 reviews
July 10, 2022
Seo is a great writer and I hope he writes more. In this particular book, I found it hard to pin down what to take away. It starts as memoir, but with a few sections on takeaways for how to debate. Then it becomes more focused on the art and history of debating itself, while finally weaving in more world examples in addition to his own experiences.
I enjoyed the book and parts of his story but it’s probably not something that will stick with me.
I enjoyed the book and parts of his story but it’s probably not something that will stick with me.
November 22, 2022
I know very little about the art of debate let alone debate as a sport - growing up Asian, the doctrine has been 'avoid conflicts by all means' :/.
However, I thoroughly enjoy this book.
While it does touch on a few principles and frameworks to deliver a compelling argument, spot the flaws in your opponents' counter claims, it expands beyond the battle field of debate competition and well into everyday life, business, geo-politics, education and other domains.
The author delivered a compelling argument (pun intended :) how the principles of a good argument can help us to become a better listener, intermediator, negotiator, friend, romantic partner, family member and very likely, a better person.
Besides, it is well written and structured, introspective, decorated with sparkle of humors. I am surprised and delighted by the author's ability to explain such an intricate craft that usually limited to intellectuals and aristocrats in an approachable, relatable even, manner.
Possibly the best book I have read in a long while. I might re-read some point in the future.
However, I thoroughly enjoy this book.
While it does touch on a few principles and frameworks to deliver a compelling argument, spot the flaws in your opponents' counter claims, it expands beyond the battle field of debate competition and well into everyday life, business, geo-politics, education and other domains.
The author delivered a compelling argument (pun intended :) how the principles of a good argument can help us to become a better listener, intermediator, negotiator, friend, romantic partner, family member and very likely, a better person.
Besides, it is well written and structured, introspective, decorated with sparkle of humors. I am surprised and delighted by the author's ability to explain such an intricate craft that usually limited to intellectuals and aristocrats in an approachable, relatable even, manner.
Possibly the best book I have read in a long while. I might re-read some point in the future.
July 21, 2022
Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this book.
On the chapter on relationships, the author notes that the average household has 217 arguments related to dishwashing every year. His comment is "1. Some of our most persistent disagreements are those with whom we are closest. 2. They are waged over trivial matters. Both phenomena were strange."
This is bizarre, given the huge body of research that shows women disproportionately bear the 'invisible load' of emotional labour and household tasks at home.
The author does not address these issues or dynamics. He seems, frankly, to simply not know about them. As such, the book is fundamentally flawed.
He may have a number of insights when it comes to debating. And maybe you may find his techniques useful at work. I think a lot of men would certainly find it appealing.
But when applying these to personal relationships the thinness of his personal experience and his research shows.
On the chapter on relationships, the author notes that the average household has 217 arguments related to dishwashing every year. His comment is "1. Some of our most persistent disagreements are those with whom we are closest. 2. They are waged over trivial matters. Both phenomena were strange."
This is bizarre, given the huge body of research that shows women disproportionately bear the 'invisible load' of emotional labour and household tasks at home.
The author does not address these issues or dynamics. He seems, frankly, to simply not know about them. As such, the book is fundamentally flawed.
He may have a number of insights when it comes to debating. And maybe you may find his techniques useful at work. I think a lot of men would certainly find it appealing.
But when applying these to personal relationships the thinness of his personal experience and his research shows.
December 19, 2022
This book was a little about a lot - memoir, how-to, intro to debate, mythology lesson, history lesson, etc. Seo is super smart and a good writer, but I had to look up way too many words that seemed often to impress when simplicity would have been sufficient. I wish I would have been introduced to debate as a youth and this books encourage parents to do so.
Here are a few take-aways from the book that you might enjoy:
As Dale Carnegie wrote in the great book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, “There’s only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument – and that is to avoid it.” Be ok with silence, meekness, and turning the other cheek.
We should disagree in such a way that the outcome of having a disagreement is better than not having it at all. Disagreement is not always the best response to conflict, but it may be the most revealing one. We discover the boundaries of who we are and what we believe with conflict.
Seo reduced the debate argument to its most basic form arrived at a structure centered around the 4W‘s:
What is the point?
Why is it true?
When has it happened before?
Who cares?
Seo developed a checklist to decide whether to engage in a given argument, consisting of four conditions: if the disagreement was Real, Important, and Specific, and the goals of the two sides were Aligned (RISA).
He also claims that bullies tend to take on one of five personas: the dodger, the twister, the wrangler, the liar, or the brawler. (Starting on Page 198) He uses the example of the Trump Clinton presidential debates, the Khrushchev and Nixon debates, as well as the 1960 Nixon and Kennedy presidential debates (in Chicago, which were the first time candidates faced each other on television).
Never mistake the right to free speech for a license for cruel speech.
No amount of no is going to get you to yes. The best debaters ended their rebuttals with a positive claim. They switched from attacking what they opposed to advocating for what they supported, and thus answered the question: If not this, then what? The final step of rebuttal is providing the counterclaim - “After the destruction, you have to supply a better answer.” The pivot is when a speaker shifts from arguing against to arguing for.
“Ideas don’t move people on their own. People move people.”
“Socrates said to Gorgias, that rhetoric was bad because it exploited human frailties. However, the opposite also seemed true: we needed rhetoric precisely because of our frailties…When we try to persuade another person, we battled not only ignorance and illogic, but also apathy, cynicism, inattention, selfishness, and vanity.” Rather than avoiding sensitive subjects, we should discuss how we can have good debates about them. But we must set a strict rule that a debate must not question the equal moral standing of persons. We must think less about the freedom to disagree than about the responsibility to disagree well. In a world with too many opportunities to disagree, we must choose our battles.
Debate exposes children to an extraordinary range of information on a wide array of subject matter (politics, history, science, culture) and requires of them a deep enough understanding to sustain a live argument. But the real learning occurs at a level above the content. Debate is a synthetic activity. The skills involved include research, teamwork, logical reasoning, composition, and public speaking. The activity gives children a reason to care about learning. Whereas much classroom work is top-down and passive, debate encourages constant participation and makes a sport of the most basic impulse: to be heard, and to hold one’s own in an argument.
A decade-long study of the Chicago Urban Debate League found that, controlling for self-selection, at-risk high school students who debated were 3.1 times more likely to graduate than non-debaters. (Page 227)
Unsurprisingly, the last chapter of the book involves technology and how to debate in the future. It discusses artificial intelligence automating aspects of journalism, including the software Bloomberg’s Cyborg, the Washington Post’s Heliograf, and The Guardian’s ReporterMate, which have been mostly trained on simple, formulaic stories, such as company earnings and the results of sports games.
Like so many other books, it referenced IBM’s Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in 1997 in chess and Watson defeating two champions in Jeopardy in 2011, Google’s DeepMind defeating the world’s best Go players in October 2017 by playing against itself repeatedly. AlphaGo Zero started out knowing only the rules of the game and in three days played 4.9 million games and defeated an older version of AlphaGo that had beat the 18-time world champion, Lee Sedol. DeepMind introduced software that mastered chess, shogi, and Go using the same method. The system came up with strategies that had eluded the best players of these games. We are no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge.
IBM’s Project Debater, an artificial intelligence system trained to engage, and possibly defeat, human beings in live argument leveraged a database of 400 million news articles and a compendium of commonly occurring arguments, examples, quotes, analogies, and framing devices. If persuasion was the end, pure attack and logical reasoning were insufficient means. The softer skills of reassurance, sympathy, and compromise had to play their rules too. Debater undertook a more complex job by breaking tasks down into smaller steps, then integrating the solutions. It was a “composite AI” system. IBM has decided not to further develop this live debate system, and instead focus on other uses of the technology.
Plenty of evidence suggests that lies spread faster than truth on social media, and that slander and misinformation, even when discredited, tend to stick in peoples’ minds.
The book concludes that debate does not scale. Each disagreement requires caring attention on its own terms. “We can only ensure one good conversation, one sentence at a time…Good arguments generate new ideas and strengthen relationships.” “Though debate has trained many great individuals, its basic commitment is to dialogue over monologue. To change the world, debate has to first change the lives of debaters.”
Here are a few take-aways from the book that you might enjoy:
As Dale Carnegie wrote in the great book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, “There’s only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument – and that is to avoid it.” Be ok with silence, meekness, and turning the other cheek.
We should disagree in such a way that the outcome of having a disagreement is better than not having it at all. Disagreement is not always the best response to conflict, but it may be the most revealing one. We discover the boundaries of who we are and what we believe with conflict.
Seo reduced the debate argument to its most basic form arrived at a structure centered around the 4W‘s:
What is the point?
Why is it true?
When has it happened before?
Who cares?
Seo developed a checklist to decide whether to engage in a given argument, consisting of four conditions: if the disagreement was Real, Important, and Specific, and the goals of the two sides were Aligned (RISA).
He also claims that bullies tend to take on one of five personas: the dodger, the twister, the wrangler, the liar, or the brawler. (Starting on Page 198) He uses the example of the Trump Clinton presidential debates, the Khrushchev and Nixon debates, as well as the 1960 Nixon and Kennedy presidential debates (in Chicago, which were the first time candidates faced each other on television).
Never mistake the right to free speech for a license for cruel speech.
No amount of no is going to get you to yes. The best debaters ended their rebuttals with a positive claim. They switched from attacking what they opposed to advocating for what they supported, and thus answered the question: If not this, then what? The final step of rebuttal is providing the counterclaim - “After the destruction, you have to supply a better answer.” The pivot is when a speaker shifts from arguing against to arguing for.
“Ideas don’t move people on their own. People move people.”
“Socrates said to Gorgias, that rhetoric was bad because it exploited human frailties. However, the opposite also seemed true: we needed rhetoric precisely because of our frailties…When we try to persuade another person, we battled not only ignorance and illogic, but also apathy, cynicism, inattention, selfishness, and vanity.” Rather than avoiding sensitive subjects, we should discuss how we can have good debates about them. But we must set a strict rule that a debate must not question the equal moral standing of persons. We must think less about the freedom to disagree than about the responsibility to disagree well. In a world with too many opportunities to disagree, we must choose our battles.
Debate exposes children to an extraordinary range of information on a wide array of subject matter (politics, history, science, culture) and requires of them a deep enough understanding to sustain a live argument. But the real learning occurs at a level above the content. Debate is a synthetic activity. The skills involved include research, teamwork, logical reasoning, composition, and public speaking. The activity gives children a reason to care about learning. Whereas much classroom work is top-down and passive, debate encourages constant participation and makes a sport of the most basic impulse: to be heard, and to hold one’s own in an argument.
A decade-long study of the Chicago Urban Debate League found that, controlling for self-selection, at-risk high school students who debated were 3.1 times more likely to graduate than non-debaters. (Page 227)
Unsurprisingly, the last chapter of the book involves technology and how to debate in the future. It discusses artificial intelligence automating aspects of journalism, including the software Bloomberg’s Cyborg, the Washington Post’s Heliograf, and The Guardian’s ReporterMate, which have been mostly trained on simple, formulaic stories, such as company earnings and the results of sports games.
Like so many other books, it referenced IBM’s Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov in 1997 in chess and Watson defeating two champions in Jeopardy in 2011, Google’s DeepMind defeating the world’s best Go players in October 2017 by playing against itself repeatedly. AlphaGo Zero started out knowing only the rules of the game and in three days played 4.9 million games and defeated an older version of AlphaGo that had beat the 18-time world champion, Lee Sedol. DeepMind introduced software that mastered chess, shogi, and Go using the same method. The system came up with strategies that had eluded the best players of these games. We are no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge.
IBM’s Project Debater, an artificial intelligence system trained to engage, and possibly defeat, human beings in live argument leveraged a database of 400 million news articles and a compendium of commonly occurring arguments, examples, quotes, analogies, and framing devices. If persuasion was the end, pure attack and logical reasoning were insufficient means. The softer skills of reassurance, sympathy, and compromise had to play their rules too. Debater undertook a more complex job by breaking tasks down into smaller steps, then integrating the solutions. It was a “composite AI” system. IBM has decided not to further develop this live debate system, and instead focus on other uses of the technology.
Plenty of evidence suggests that lies spread faster than truth on social media, and that slander and misinformation, even when discredited, tend to stick in peoples’ minds.
The book concludes that debate does not scale. Each disagreement requires caring attention on its own terms. “We can only ensure one good conversation, one sentence at a time…Good arguments generate new ideas and strengthen relationships.” “Though debate has trained many great individuals, its basic commitment is to dialogue over monologue. To change the world, debate has to first change the lives of debaters.”
March 13, 2023
Book Title: Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard
Standalone or Series: Standalone
Author: Bo Seo
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Memoir, Self Help
Recommended Age Rating: 12+
Reasons Why: Mild language and politics (special focus on 2016)
Recommended for Fans of: debate and self help books
Overall Rating: D
Brief Summary: Bo Seo, a world championed debater, talks about things he's learned over the years and takes us through his debating journey.
Not gonna lie, this book was super dry and dragged on a lot. It had some good tips, but I wouldn't read it again.
Standalone or Series: Standalone
Author: Bo Seo
Genre(s): Nonfiction, Memoir, Self Help
Recommended Age Rating: 12+
Reasons Why: Mild language and politics (special focus on 2016)
Recommended for Fans of: debate and self help books
Overall Rating: D
Brief Summary: Bo Seo, a world championed debater, talks about things he's learned over the years and takes us through his debating journey.
Not gonna lie, this book was super dry and dragged on a lot. It had some good tips, but I wouldn't read it again.
November 15, 2022
Good arguments shows you the relevance of debate techniques in our day to day conversations . The argument for good arguments is framed by a personal memoir with Seo sharing the role of debate in his life, from middle school, through college. While it reads much like a memoir Seo’s life experience makes the lessons more powerful and memorable than a simple list of techniques to use and pitfalls to avoid would be.
The book steps you through some basic principles of debate, and proceeds to some guidelines for dealing with those who don’t argue constructively. While the book started out deep in the realm of competitive debate, we quickly learn how the lessons apply to discussions with colleagues, friends and family as well.
We learn what kinds of subjects are good topics for argument (and which are destined to be frustrating discussions). We also learn about the difference between conflict avoidance (generally not useful) and letting go of certain points in the argument so that you can draw people in.
The book got me thinking about how to better engage and persuade people when I disagree with them -- and it drives home the point that a successful argument is about persuasion, and that persuasion involves understanding and connecting as much as, if not more than challenging your opponents views.
This is an important book to read, perhaps now more than ever.
The book steps you through some basic principles of debate, and proceeds to some guidelines for dealing with those who don’t argue constructively. While the book started out deep in the realm of competitive debate, we quickly learn how the lessons apply to discussions with colleagues, friends and family as well.
We learn what kinds of subjects are good topics for argument (and which are destined to be frustrating discussions). We also learn about the difference between conflict avoidance (generally not useful) and letting go of certain points in the argument so that you can draw people in.
The book got me thinking about how to better engage and persuade people when I disagree with them -- and it drives home the point that a successful argument is about persuasion, and that persuasion involves understanding and connecting as much as, if not more than challenging your opponents views.
This is an important book to read, perhaps now more than ever.
July 1, 2022
This book is not a technical manual for debaters, though it introduces many interesting heuristics and exercises. The most important for debaters would probably be to pick your fights. In real-life, this means using the RISA framework: disagreeing only when it is Realistic, Important, Specific, and the goals of both parties are Aligned.
July 31, 2022
Heavy on tedious autobiographical details, light on practical advice. Though the advice is generally thoughtful and useful.
January 7, 2025
Speaking to Bo Seo in an elevator at WSDC Bali when I was 17 was probably the peak of my debating career. While WSDC Bali is discussed in this book shockingly that incident does not feature.
September 21, 2022
This was more memoir than I had anticipated. I think the overall theme of sticking to the principles of debate for our political discourse makes a huge amount of sense. I also valued the analysis of when to choose to have an argument and how to regain a civil debate if one party doesn’t follow or know the rules. I wasn’t so interested in AI debating technology, however.
July 4, 2022
not bad but i really don't care about bo seo's childhood/debate career, both of which reek of privilege and what is more or less 凡尔赛 (i'm so sad, i go to harvard and just won worlds)
three stars because i can't believe the relationship between bo and fanele is real
three stars because i can't believe the relationship between bo and fanele is real
November 3, 2022
He says rebuttal is a form of respect since it requires you to actually engage with the original point instead of simply nodding and acquiescing, so in that spirit I’ll give my comments.
My critique of this book can be summed up by a debater of Bates College who handed him his first big loss after he started debating for Harvard: “there’s not much there there. It’s just talking pretty.” To me, it seems like David Brooks wrote a book when he was 20. Bo doesn’t want to be a journalist, he wants to be a conservative opinion columnist beloved by all lol.
This would be a good book if you found out it was written by a high schooler. It’s like a pretty good OO. I think his style of debate would better be described as “impromptu competitive oratory”. I don’t really understand World School or British Parliamentary styles of debate. If you find out the topic 1 hour or less before you start speaking, you’re not going to have enough knowledge to be able to talk cogently about it. As Aristotle himself said, the number one best way to be persuasive is to know your shit: “whatever it is that one is to speak or reason about… one must have to hand some or all of the relevant facts, because without these facts one would have nothing on which to base a conclusion.” Instead of knowing the topic inside and out, you have to rely on debate tricks and appealing to what the audience may already think about the topic even though it’s not necessarily true. I think this style of debate tends to reinforce stereotypes and further entrench commonly held assumptions even if they’re false. I saw one World Schools Debate coach do a mock debate about physician assisted suicide. The intro to his speech was about his childhood dog who suffered from a debilitating illness that left it in extreme pain that required his family to put it down. He later admitted to completely fabricating the story. And after researching physician-assisted suicide, I found that the presence of excruciating pain is basically a non-factor for those who support it. It seems like it would be a big factor, but I guess it’s easy for doctors to diminish the physical pain; they want to die more because of their loss of agency and an unwillingness to wither away and become a burden to their loved ones. Impromptu debate that doesn’t rely on research only entrenches the commonly held assumption about this instead of basing arguments on what is actually true in the real world. It makes me think the competition is just about who can bullshit better. Unironically he cites: “A study by Arizona State University researchers in 2018 found that the persuasiveness of evidence was robust in both discussions about ‘sociomoral’ issues and those on less charged topics.” – what does this even mean? People find evidence persuasive? obvi. this book needs more of it.
He doesn’t seem to talk to anyone. He claims to want to be a journalist but never really engages with anyone. There’s a story of his parents’ church has several meetings where they discuss how to address same sex marriage. Even when the discussions get heated, I found it weird he didn’t use his extensive background in debate and communications to try to help people communicate with each other better, or even to voice his opinions. Before the second meeting, he observes “everyone appeared to be occupied with conversation and food, but their eyes revealed that their minds were elsewhere.” He’s just projecting; why doesn’t he talk to a single one of them?! The aspiring journalist never talks to anyone. It’s baffling. He was mute in these meetings not only publicly in front of everyone, but even privately he only mentioned talking with his parents, but didn’t even mention the content of what they discussed. He didn’t really mention anything about how their church’s policy could actually have a real impact on people’s lives. He seems unconcerned with reality; the debate just seemed very abstract to him, ideas devoid of referents. In another dispute with his parents, he tries to tell them to scale down their house and move to an apartment in the city. They don’t want to. He’s a Harvard grad who can’t find a job, living with them at the time. When he finally gets a job as a journalist for some Australian news website, “most days I found myself scrolling through Twitter” — he still doesn’t even talk to people when he finally lands a job as a journalist! The book ends on an inspiring note about how debate doesn’t scale up like a Silicon Valley investor would like; instead it’s just about one-on-one discussions and honest engagement with those around you. While I like this sentiment, there’s really no evidence of him ever doing this in his own memoirs.
One weekend, he judges a US policy debate tournament. (He’s Australian (a subject of His Majesty’s commonwealth) so they do British Parliamentary style debate so he’s not familiar with US policy debate.) Not once does he mention talking to anybody involved in the activity. You’d think his whole life and passion is debate, that he’d try to be a bit more involved or curious and ask people questions or something. In his telling, he doesn’t talk to anybody. Instead, “through a fit of internet searches” he cites debate coaches from the 1960s and 1980s about their views on “spreading.” Spreading is a technique in US policy debate to overwhelm the opponents with a barrage of arguments and then capitalize on those arguments that the opposition is unable to respond to. He doesn’t like this so never engages with US policy debate again. This is a vibrant lively form of debate that dates back to the 19th century, yet he’s conspicuously uninterested just because of spreading. It’s like hating the NBA because you found out sometimes there’s a tactic of ‘drawing the foul’ and then you never engage with it again even though your whole life is basketball. It’s so bizarre. The extent of his engagement with American style debate is one weekend where even in his own telling, he doesn’t engage with anyone and googles about it instead.
He talks about the importance of “Switch Side” debate, which is basically that debaters don’t get to choose the side they will support, but must prepare for both sides. To him, it is a mindset and limited to the last 5 minutes of preparation before the debate starts: ‘Brainstorm what they could say, Stress-test your points from their perspective, Imagine why the judge could plausibly choose the opponents and avoid those pitfalls’. Instead of adopting Switch Side mindset as an optional technique, perhaps the activity could include it as an integral component. US policy and Lincoln-Douglass and Public Forum debate requires debaters to spend half their time in support and half their time in opposition to the topic. I couldn’t help but imagine an alternative version of World Schools where teams debate twice, once on either side, then if it’s a tie, the winner could be decided by the best argument. He says the aim of ‘Switch Side’ is to experiment with ideas “until we stumbled on ideas worthy of our commitment” — I have two responses to this: (1) I think the stronger reason for ‘switch side debate’ is that it helps you understand why those people would support that position. If I personally oppose gun rights but am required to defend it, then I would have a deeper appreciation for why they think what they do. I’d be incentivized to try to find the strongest reasons to support their position, thus enhancing empathy and helping me understand and appreciate my fellow citizens. (2) “playing with” and “stumbling upon” ideas just seems so weird. He’s not talking about researching and learning more and more about a topic until you feel confident that you know enough about it to make an informed decision about what you personally commit yourself to; it’s about playing with ideas in the abstract.
The chapter about conflicts in relationships is about who does dishes when he lives with his parents after graduating from Harvard. This reminds me of when I was raised Catholic and was forced to go to confession when I was in primary school and confess to my sins about losing patience when playing Nintendo and lying about doing house chores. His dishes example doesn’t even include any details—there’s no anecdote of his mom berating him for ignoring his chores or him getting frustrated with his parents’ not doing their own chores —it’s just all in the abstract that ‘there are conflicts over house chores’, and that’s the extent of it. Irregardlessly, this is such a low-stakes conflict, it seems like he has never had a real relationship (except for the subtle sexual tension with his debate partner). Earlier he discusses a friend who calls him out for being consistently late. Instead of simply apologizing, he develops this whole schematic for deciding when and how to engage in arguments in his daily life. and he concludes that because this meets his RISA (real, important, specific, aligned) paradigm, he argues with his friend about being late all the time.. instead of simply apologizing and vowing to do better in the future.
His descriptions of what it takes to be successful in debate include watching videos of successful debaters and imitating their styles. The pinnacle of his debate career was his win at the WSDC championships in Greece. After the topic was announced, he hears one of his opponents admit to not even knowing what the topic means. I watched part of the YouTube video of this debate, the topic was “the world’s poor would be justified in a Marxist revolution.” He describes the topic as ‘abolition of private property’ and has good points about how a lot of wealth of the Global North was stolen through colonialism, but a lot of this doesn’t necessarily justify a Marxist revolution. (private property bad ≠ Marxist revolution good) I fast forwarded to witness his opponents (one of whom didn’t even understand the topic) mention that if there were a Marxist revolution, those places would lose foreign investment from the West. Lol what a dumb argument considering the topic. This is supposedly the world championship! and the opponents don’t even understand the topic. His description of this tournament breezes past his first 12 opponents in one sentence. In the world championship debate tournament, nothing notable happens until the final round? The tournament must not attract the world’s best debaters lol.
He glorifies old dead white philosophers uncritically. He does include some black thinkers like Malcom X and Melvin Tolson. But it’s just from the movies somewhat about debate where Denzel plays the main character. Probably the best aspect of the book (why it’s 2 instead of 1 star) is that it’s a good collection of stories about debate. So he includes Gorgias, Aristotle, Cicero, Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill, John Quincy Adams (more of a rhetorician?), even the Nyaya Sutras and another story about a debate with Buddha. Normally, stories about debate support or at least recognize JFK’s victory over Nixon by acknowledging that knowledge wasn’t enough to sway the audience because they also had to consider the visual impression and how television changed the nature of debate, he brings up a “debate” between Nixon and Kruschev where Nixon visited Moscow to show off some American model house. It feels like he goes out of his way to support Nixon. And he never cites anything too critical and cites basically no thinkers after 1900 really) and no women thinkers. It’s like an intro to ‘western civilizations’ syllabus.
there are some parts about ‘how to debate’ and how to strengthen your arguments, but for this he relies on what his high school debate teacher told him. Stephen Toulmin was a British philosopher who specialized in moral reasoning and practical arguments and his model of argumentation, the Toulmin model, has been a strong foundation for learning the fundamentals of argument construction and analysis. I suggest Bo check out his seminal work The Uses of Argument 1958 which breaks down the different parts of an argument. Toulmin explains not only that we need reasons and evidence, but there must be a warrant to support those reasons, and backing for those warrants. Bo uses the term “importance” when talking about this idea. US debate coaches use the term “impact” to explain why something is important. Bo’s explanation is counterintuitive because he starts with a conclusion (which I guess is okay) and uses the term “important” to mean why the reason actually links to the conclusion. His high school debate coach Bruce taught him every argument has two burdens: to prove the truth of the main claim, and to prove the importance of the claim. This part, I think, is correct, but I think Bo is wrong to define importance as the logical relevance of the reasoning. You must convince the audience that you are right; and you must convince them it is very important. If you don’t do both, then they might agree with your reasoning but just not care about it; or they could really care about it but not really believe your point. so he’s right: there are two burdens and he names them correctly, he just doesn’t explain it right.
My critique of this book can be summed up by a debater of Bates College who handed him his first big loss after he started debating for Harvard: “there’s not much there there. It’s just talking pretty.” To me, it seems like David Brooks wrote a book when he was 20. Bo doesn’t want to be a journalist, he wants to be a conservative opinion columnist beloved by all lol.
This would be a good book if you found out it was written by a high schooler. It’s like a pretty good OO. I think his style of debate would better be described as “impromptu competitive oratory”. I don’t really understand World School or British Parliamentary styles of debate. If you find out the topic 1 hour or less before you start speaking, you’re not going to have enough knowledge to be able to talk cogently about it. As Aristotle himself said, the number one best way to be persuasive is to know your shit: “whatever it is that one is to speak or reason about… one must have to hand some or all of the relevant facts, because without these facts one would have nothing on which to base a conclusion.” Instead of knowing the topic inside and out, you have to rely on debate tricks and appealing to what the audience may already think about the topic even though it’s not necessarily true. I think this style of debate tends to reinforce stereotypes and further entrench commonly held assumptions even if they’re false. I saw one World Schools Debate coach do a mock debate about physician assisted suicide. The intro to his speech was about his childhood dog who suffered from a debilitating illness that left it in extreme pain that required his family to put it down. He later admitted to completely fabricating the story. And after researching physician-assisted suicide, I found that the presence of excruciating pain is basically a non-factor for those who support it. It seems like it would be a big factor, but I guess it’s easy for doctors to diminish the physical pain; they want to die more because of their loss of agency and an unwillingness to wither away and become a burden to their loved ones. Impromptu debate that doesn’t rely on research only entrenches the commonly held assumption about this instead of basing arguments on what is actually true in the real world. It makes me think the competition is just about who can bullshit better. Unironically he cites: “A study by Arizona State University researchers in 2018 found that the persuasiveness of evidence was robust in both discussions about ‘sociomoral’ issues and those on less charged topics.” – what does this even mean? People find evidence persuasive? obvi. this book needs more of it.
He doesn’t seem to talk to anyone. He claims to want to be a journalist but never really engages with anyone. There’s a story of his parents’ church has several meetings where they discuss how to address same sex marriage. Even when the discussions get heated, I found it weird he didn’t use his extensive background in debate and communications to try to help people communicate with each other better, or even to voice his opinions. Before the second meeting, he observes “everyone appeared to be occupied with conversation and food, but their eyes revealed that their minds were elsewhere.” He’s just projecting; why doesn’t he talk to a single one of them?! The aspiring journalist never talks to anyone. It’s baffling. He was mute in these meetings not only publicly in front of everyone, but even privately he only mentioned talking with his parents, but didn’t even mention the content of what they discussed. He didn’t really mention anything about how their church’s policy could actually have a real impact on people’s lives. He seems unconcerned with reality; the debate just seemed very abstract to him, ideas devoid of referents. In another dispute with his parents, he tries to tell them to scale down their house and move to an apartment in the city. They don’t want to. He’s a Harvard grad who can’t find a job, living with them at the time. When he finally gets a job as a journalist for some Australian news website, “most days I found myself scrolling through Twitter” — he still doesn’t even talk to people when he finally lands a job as a journalist! The book ends on an inspiring note about how debate doesn’t scale up like a Silicon Valley investor would like; instead it’s just about one-on-one discussions and honest engagement with those around you. While I like this sentiment, there’s really no evidence of him ever doing this in his own memoirs.
One weekend, he judges a US policy debate tournament. (He’s Australian (a subject of His Majesty’s commonwealth) so they do British Parliamentary style debate so he’s not familiar with US policy debate.) Not once does he mention talking to anybody involved in the activity. You’d think his whole life and passion is debate, that he’d try to be a bit more involved or curious and ask people questions or something. In his telling, he doesn’t talk to anybody. Instead, “through a fit of internet searches” he cites debate coaches from the 1960s and 1980s about their views on “spreading.” Spreading is a technique in US policy debate to overwhelm the opponents with a barrage of arguments and then capitalize on those arguments that the opposition is unable to respond to. He doesn’t like this so never engages with US policy debate again. This is a vibrant lively form of debate that dates back to the 19th century, yet he’s conspicuously uninterested just because of spreading. It’s like hating the NBA because you found out sometimes there’s a tactic of ‘drawing the foul’ and then you never engage with it again even though your whole life is basketball. It’s so bizarre. The extent of his engagement with American style debate is one weekend where even in his own telling, he doesn’t engage with anyone and googles about it instead.
He talks about the importance of “Switch Side” debate, which is basically that debaters don’t get to choose the side they will support, but must prepare for both sides. To him, it is a mindset and limited to the last 5 minutes of preparation before the debate starts: ‘Brainstorm what they could say, Stress-test your points from their perspective, Imagine why the judge could plausibly choose the opponents and avoid those pitfalls’. Instead of adopting Switch Side mindset as an optional technique, perhaps the activity could include it as an integral component. US policy and Lincoln-Douglass and Public Forum debate requires debaters to spend half their time in support and half their time in opposition to the topic. I couldn’t help but imagine an alternative version of World Schools where teams debate twice, once on either side, then if it’s a tie, the winner could be decided by the best argument. He says the aim of ‘Switch Side’ is to experiment with ideas “until we stumbled on ideas worthy of our commitment” — I have two responses to this: (1) I think the stronger reason for ‘switch side debate’ is that it helps you understand why those people would support that position. If I personally oppose gun rights but am required to defend it, then I would have a deeper appreciation for why they think what they do. I’d be incentivized to try to find the strongest reasons to support their position, thus enhancing empathy and helping me understand and appreciate my fellow citizens. (2) “playing with” and “stumbling upon” ideas just seems so weird. He’s not talking about researching and learning more and more about a topic until you feel confident that you know enough about it to make an informed decision about what you personally commit yourself to; it’s about playing with ideas in the abstract.
The chapter about conflicts in relationships is about who does dishes when he lives with his parents after graduating from Harvard. This reminds me of when I was raised Catholic and was forced to go to confession when I was in primary school and confess to my sins about losing patience when playing Nintendo and lying about doing house chores. His dishes example doesn’t even include any details—there’s no anecdote of his mom berating him for ignoring his chores or him getting frustrated with his parents’ not doing their own chores —it’s just all in the abstract that ‘there are conflicts over house chores’, and that’s the extent of it. Irregardlessly, this is such a low-stakes conflict, it seems like he has never had a real relationship (except for the subtle sexual tension with his debate partner). Earlier he discusses a friend who calls him out for being consistently late. Instead of simply apologizing, he develops this whole schematic for deciding when and how to engage in arguments in his daily life. and he concludes that because this meets his RISA (real, important, specific, aligned) paradigm, he argues with his friend about being late all the time.. instead of simply apologizing and vowing to do better in the future.
His descriptions of what it takes to be successful in debate include watching videos of successful debaters and imitating their styles. The pinnacle of his debate career was his win at the WSDC championships in Greece. After the topic was announced, he hears one of his opponents admit to not even knowing what the topic means. I watched part of the YouTube video of this debate, the topic was “the world’s poor would be justified in a Marxist revolution.” He describes the topic as ‘abolition of private property’ and has good points about how a lot of wealth of the Global North was stolen through colonialism, but a lot of this doesn’t necessarily justify a Marxist revolution. (private property bad ≠ Marxist revolution good) I fast forwarded to witness his opponents (one of whom didn’t even understand the topic) mention that if there were a Marxist revolution, those places would lose foreign investment from the West. Lol what a dumb argument considering the topic. This is supposedly the world championship! and the opponents don’t even understand the topic. His description of this tournament breezes past his first 12 opponents in one sentence. In the world championship debate tournament, nothing notable happens until the final round? The tournament must not attract the world’s best debaters lol.
He glorifies old dead white philosophers uncritically. He does include some black thinkers like Malcom X and Melvin Tolson. But it’s just from the movies somewhat about debate where Denzel plays the main character. Probably the best aspect of the book (why it’s 2 instead of 1 star) is that it’s a good collection of stories about debate. So he includes Gorgias, Aristotle, Cicero, Schopenhauer, John Stuart Mill, John Quincy Adams (more of a rhetorician?), even the Nyaya Sutras and another story about a debate with Buddha. Normally, stories about debate support or at least recognize JFK’s victory over Nixon by acknowledging that knowledge wasn’t enough to sway the audience because they also had to consider the visual impression and how television changed the nature of debate, he brings up a “debate” between Nixon and Kruschev where Nixon visited Moscow to show off some American model house. It feels like he goes out of his way to support Nixon. And he never cites anything too critical and cites basically no thinkers after 1900 really) and no women thinkers. It’s like an intro to ‘western civilizations’ syllabus.
there are some parts about ‘how to debate’ and how to strengthen your arguments, but for this he relies on what his high school debate teacher told him. Stephen Toulmin was a British philosopher who specialized in moral reasoning and practical arguments and his model of argumentation, the Toulmin model, has been a strong foundation for learning the fundamentals of argument construction and analysis. I suggest Bo check out his seminal work The Uses of Argument 1958 which breaks down the different parts of an argument. Toulmin explains not only that we need reasons and evidence, but there must be a warrant to support those reasons, and backing for those warrants. Bo uses the term “importance” when talking about this idea. US debate coaches use the term “impact” to explain why something is important. Bo’s explanation is counterintuitive because he starts with a conclusion (which I guess is okay) and uses the term “important” to mean why the reason actually links to the conclusion. His high school debate coach Bruce taught him every argument has two burdens: to prove the truth of the main claim, and to prove the importance of the claim. This part, I think, is correct, but I think Bo is wrong to define importance as the logical relevance of the reasoning. You must convince the audience that you are right; and you must convince them it is very important. If you don’t do both, then they might agree with your reasoning but just not care about it; or they could really care about it but not really believe your point. so he’s right: there are two burdens and he names them correctly, he just doesn’t explain it right.
June 14, 2022
อ่านจบแล้ว เป็นหนังสือสอนดีเบทกึ่งๆบันทึกประสบการณ์ เล่าชีวิตของ Bo Seo (เฉพาะ part ที่เกี่ยวกับการดีเบท) ตาม timeline ไปเรื่อยๆ แล้วค่อยสกัดเทคนิคจากประสบการณ์เขาไปตามเรื่อง ซึ่งจะต่างจากหนังสือ coaching ทั่วๆ ไปที่จะเน้นบรรยายตัวเทคนิค แล้วค่อยใช้เรื่องเล่ามาเสริมให้เห็นภาพ
ส่วนตัวไม่ใช่คนชอบอ่าน memoir ซื้อมาเพราะอยากรู้เฉพาะ part ที่เป็นเทคนิคดีเบทเท่านั้น ตอนอ่านเลยรู้สึกว่าหนังสือมีน้ำเยอะ และใครอ่านหนังสือแบบไม่ขีดเขียนจะกลับไปทบทวนได้ยาก เพราะแต่ละบทไม่มีหัวข้อย่อยให้ย้อนอ่านได้ง่ายๆ
แต่ bottom line แล้ว เราว่าเป็นหนังสือที่ดี เพราะพาร์ทที่พูดถึงเทคนิคดีเบทก็ได้แนวคิดที่เป็นประโยชน์หลายอย่าง
รีวิวนี้จะส้มป่อยเนื้อหาบทแรกเท่าที่พอจำได้คร่าวๆ ใครสนใจก็ไปหาอ่านนะ
บทแรกพูดเรื่อง Topic
Bo บอกว่า การเถียงกันในชีวิตจริงไม่ได้มีญัตติเขียนไว้ชัดๆ เหมือนดีเบททางการ หลายครั้งเราเถียงกันเป็นวรรคเป็นเวร แต่เราไม่รู้ด้วยซ้ำว่าเราเถียงกันเรื่องอะไร ขอบเขตอยู่ตรงไหน มิติไหนที่เราเห็นต่างกัน หรือหนักสุดคือเราไม่รู้ด้วยซ้ำว่าเราเห็นต่างกันจริงๆ รึเปล่า
ก่อนไปเถียงกับใคร คุณจึงต้องตอบตัวเองให้ได้ก่อนว่า "เรากำลังเห็นต่างกันเรื่องอะไร"
ถ้าคุณตอบไม่ได้ คุณจะไม่รู้เลยว่าคุณต้องพูด (หรือไม่พูด) อะไร, ประเด็นไหนต้องไล่งับ ประเด็นไหนที่ปล่อยไปได้ รวมถึงคุณจะไม่รู้ว่าคุณจำเป็นต้องเถียงกันเรื่องนี้จริงๆ รึเปล่าด้วย
Bo แบ่ง disagreement ออกเป็น 3 ประเภท คือ
1. fact - เห็นต่างกันในข้อเท็จจริง เพราะมีข้อมูลไม่เหมือนกัน
2. judgement - เห็นต่างกันว่า A ควรถูกนับว่าเป็น B หรือไม่
3. prescription - เห็นต่างกันว่าเราควรทำอะไร
ก่อนเริ่มเถียง ตอบตัวเองให้ได้ว่าเราเห็นต่างกันตรงไหนบ้างในสามข้อนี้ เรา agree fact แต่ disagree prescription หรือ agree prescription แต่ disagree fact ข้อไหนที่เห็นตรงกันอยู่แล้วก็ไม่ต้องเสียเวลาเถียงกันอีก
เช่น "ช่วยกันใช้ถุงผ้าเพื่อแก้ปัญหาโลกร้อน"
คุณอาจไม่เห็นด้วยกับ prescription ที่ว่าใช้ถุงผ้าเพื่อแก้ปัญหาโลกร้อน แต่ไม่ได้ปฏิเสธ fact เรื่องโลกร้อน
เมื่อทั้งสองฝ่ายไม่ได้ disagree fact การโยน fact ว่าโลกร้อนอย่างเดียวจึงไม่พอ ฝ่ายโปรถุงผ้าต้องมุ่งเน้นไปที่ prescription ด้วย
ปัญหาคือ พอเถียงไปเถียงมาเริ่มเหม็นหน้ากัน หลายคนจะคิดว่าการเถียงให้ชนะต้องปัดตกสิ่งที่อีกฝ่ายพูดทั้งหมด และดึงดันปฏิเสธ fact ของอีกฝ่าย จนใครมองมาก็รู้สึกว่ามึงฝืนอะไรขนาดนั้น
ที่สุดแล้ว Bo เชื่อว่าสังคมที่ผาสุขไม่ใช่สังคมที่ไม่มีความเห็นต่าง เราไม่จำเป็นต้องเปลี่ยน disagree ให้เป็น agree เราแค่ต้องเปลี่ยน bad disagree ให้เป็น good disagree ซึ่งทำได้ผ่านการดีเบทที่ออกแบบมาอย่างดี, มี topic ชัดเจนว่ากำลังเถียงกันเรื่องอะไร, มี mod คอยดูแลไม่ให้โจมตีกันมั่วๆ ฯลฯ
Bo ไม่เชื่อใน civil silence แต่เขายอมรับว่าเวทีดีเบทหลายๆ แห่งยังไม่พร้อมกับการถกเถียงประเด็นอ่อนไหว หลายครั้งมันเป็นแค่การให้พื้นที่คนประหลาดๆ มาพูดในสิ่งที่โหดร้ายเท่านั้น อิสรภาพในการเห็นต่างต้องมาพร้อมความรับผิดชอบที่จะทำให้ความเห็นต่างนั้นเป็นความเห็นต่างที่มีคุณภาพด้วย
ส่วนตัวไม่ใช่คนชอบอ่าน memoir ซื้อมาเพราะอยากรู้เฉพาะ part ที่เป็นเทคนิคดีเบทเท่านั้น ตอนอ่านเลยรู้สึกว่าหนังสือมีน้ำเยอะ และใครอ่านหนังสือแบบไม่ขีดเขียนจะกลับไปทบทวนได้ยาก เพราะแต่ละบทไม่มีหัวข้อย่อยให้ย้อนอ่านได้ง่ายๆ
แต่ bottom line แล้ว เราว่าเป็นหนังสือที่ดี เพราะพาร์ทที่พูดถึงเทคนิคดีเบทก็ได้แนวคิดที่เป็นประโยชน์หลายอย่าง
รีวิวนี้จะส้มป่อยเนื้อหาบทแรกเท่าที่พอจำได้คร่าวๆ ใครสนใจก็ไปหาอ่านนะ
บทแรกพูดเรื่อง Topic
Bo บอกว่า การเถียงกันในชีวิตจริงไม่ได้มีญัตติเขียนไว้ชัดๆ เหมือนดีเบททางการ หลายครั้งเราเถียงกันเป็นวรรคเป็นเวร แต่เราไม่รู้ด้วยซ้ำว่าเราเถียงกันเรื่องอะไร ขอบเขตอยู่ตรงไหน มิติไหนที่เราเห็นต่างกัน หรือหนักสุดคือเราไม่รู้ด้วยซ้ำว่าเราเห็นต่างกันจริงๆ รึเปล่า
ก่อนไปเถียงกับใคร คุณจึงต้องตอบตัวเองให้ได้ก่อนว่า "เรากำลังเห็นต่างกันเรื่องอะไร"
ถ้าคุณตอบไม่ได้ คุณจะไม่รู้เลยว่าคุณต้องพูด (หรือไม่พูด) อะไร, ประเด็นไหนต้องไล่งับ ประเด็นไหนที่ปล่อยไปได้ รวมถึงคุณจะไม่รู้ว่าคุณจำเป็นต้องเถียงกันเรื่องนี้จริงๆ รึเปล่าด้วย
Bo แบ่ง disagreement ออกเป็น 3 ประเภท คือ
1. fact - เห็นต่างกันในข้อเท็จจริง เพราะมีข้อมูลไม่เหมือนกัน
2. judgement - เห็นต่างกันว่า A ควรถูกนับว่าเป็น B หรือไม่
3. prescription - เห็นต่างกันว่าเราควรทำอะไร
ก่อนเริ่มเถียง ตอบตัวเองให้ได้ว่าเราเห็นต่างกันตรงไหนบ้างในสามข้อนี้ เรา agree fact แต่ disagree prescription หรือ agree prescription แต่ disagree fact ข้อไหนที่เห็นตรงกันอยู่แล้วก็ไม่ต้องเสียเวลาเถียงกันอีก
เช่น "ช่วยกันใช้ถุงผ้าเพื่อแก้ปัญหาโลกร้อน"
คุณอาจไม่เห็นด้วยกับ prescription ที่ว่าใช้ถุงผ้าเพื่อแก้ปัญหาโลกร้อน แต่ไม่ได้ปฏิเสธ fact เรื่องโลกร้อน
เมื่อทั้งสองฝ่ายไม่ได้ disagree fact การโยน fact ว่าโลกร้อนอย่างเดียวจึงไม่พอ ฝ่ายโปรถุงผ้าต้องมุ่งเน้นไปที่ prescription ด้วย
ปัญหาคือ พอเถียงไปเถียงมาเริ่มเหม็นหน้ากัน หลายคนจะคิดว่าการเถียงให้ชนะต้องปัดตกสิ่งที่อีกฝ่ายพูดทั้งหมด และดึงดันปฏิเสธ fact ของอีกฝ่าย จนใครมองมาก็รู้สึกว่ามึงฝืนอะไรขนาดนั้น
ที่สุดแล้ว Bo เชื่อว่าสังคมที่ผาสุขไม่ใช่สังคมที่ไม่มีความเห็นต่าง เราไม่จำเป็นต้องเปลี่ยน disagree ให้เป็น agree เราแค่ต้องเปลี่ยน bad disagree ให้เป็น good disagree ซึ่งทำได้ผ่านการดีเบทที่ออกแบบมาอย่างดี, มี topic ชัดเจนว่ากำลังเถียงกันเรื่องอะไร, มี mod คอยดูแลไม่ให้โจมตีกันมั่วๆ ฯลฯ
Bo ไม่เชื่อใน civil silence แต่เขายอมรับว่าเวทีดีเบทหลายๆ แห่งยังไม่พร้อมกับการถกเถียงประเด็นอ่อนไหว หลายครั้งมันเป็นแค่การให้พื้นที่คนประหลาดๆ มาพูดในสิ่งที่โหดร้ายเท่านั้น อิสรภาพในการเห็นต่างต้องมาพร้อมความรับผิดชอบที่จะทำให้ความเห็นต่างนั้นเป็นความเห็นต่างที่มีคุณภาพด้วย
July 17, 2022
I think I’m smarter after reading this book
November 19, 2023
A very charitable 3 stars. I put this on the reading list for my debate class this semester. The students were unimpressed.
Read
November 8, 2022FULL SCRIBE https://shrib.com/#TimberWolf-VrmpBp
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Get over your fear of conflict and learn how to disagree productively
The spirit of free and open debate in Western democracies today is under threat. It’s not that we lack things to disagree about. It’s just that we seem to be forgetting how to disagree well.
Perhaps the reason for this is that the values that make good-faith debate possible – like mutual trust and respect – are at an all-time low. They’ve been steadily eroded by a toxic mix of polarized politics, conflicting ideologies, and misinformation.
And, as a result, the quality of public discourse has taken a nosedive. Whether it’s an argument with a stranger on Twitter or a heated discussion with a relative at dinner, the exchange is often so bitter and hostile that it resembles more of a shouting contest than an actual conversation. On top of that, many people avoid participating altogether out of fear of getting caught in the crossfire.
But avoiding conflict out of fear isn’t going to heal social division. What we need to learn is how to approach our disagreements in a more constructive way. According to author and debate champion Bo Seo, the key lies in competitive debate.
He argues that if we only approach our disagreements with the same skill and respect that competitive debaters do, disagreement can actually be a force for social connection rather than a wedge driving us apart.
Bo Seo’s Good Arguments translates the wisdom of competitive debate so you can learn to disagree more productively. You’ll discover some of the core principles of debate – as well as which exercises professional debaters use to improve the way they think and speak.
---
Bo Seo’s Journey
Before we begin, we have to introduce the star of the show.
Bo Seo was born in South Korea. But when Seo was just eight years old, his parents made the risky decision to uproot their lives; in search of greener pastures, they moved the family to Australia.
At this point Seo spoke no English – and, as one might expect, he struggled to find his place in his new home. At school, unable to communicate with his peers, or even understand his homework, Seo receded into himself and eventually gave up speaking altogether. He learned that to get by in this world, it was easier just to keep quiet and do as he was told.
For several lonely years, Seo was your typical wallflower. He was never loud; he never asserted himself. He just kept his head down and studied, slowly getting a grip on the nasal Aussie English. But when he was in fifth grade, something happened that would change his life forever: his teacher invited him to take part in a debate competition.
Competitive debate is like a formal game in which two rival teams participate in a verbal battle in order to persuade judges to join their side on some issue. It’s a sport that thrives in schools and universities around the globe, and a surprising number of presidents, CEOs, and civil rights leaders have competed.
The rules are pretty simple. The opposing teams are assigned a motion – the topic of the debate – 15 minutes to one hour beforehand so they have time to prepare. After that, the debate begins. Each team takes turns speaking in front of the judges for about five minutes. Once the debate is over, the team that’s spoken most convincingly is declared the winner.
This is the world Seo had stumbled into. In his first-ever debate, he was asked to defend the motion, “All zoos should be banned.” On that stage, between the fearful walk up to the podium and the thrill of unbroken applause at the end, something happened to Seo – he found his voice.
Over the course of the next decade, Seo entered one competition after another, gradually honing his skill and rising in the rankings. He didn’t just excel at debating either. It turns out that the skills he was learning in debate – logical thinking, composition, public speaking – all helped him to excel in his social and academic life as well.
For Seo, debate was a powerful tool in his continued education – and it can be for you too. So, let’s shift gear and turn to the principles of good debate.
---
How to find the disagreement
The first thing any budding debater has to learn is how to spot the disagreement in an argument. After all, how are you supposed to know what to say if you don’t even know what the subject of the argument is?
Yet you’d be surprised by how many people run into arguments headfirst without thinking about this question. It’s no wonder so many conflicts are unproductive.
Try it yourself. Think back to the last argument you had. It doesn’t matter who it was with – just try to recall what was said and what sparked it. Then answer this question: What was the disagreement? There’s an important distinction here. You’re not asking what the argument was about. What did you actually disagree on?
If you can’t put your finger on the disagreement, it’s possible there may not have been one to begin with. Like bad dreams, petty arguments are forgotten just as quickly as they come.
So that’s the first thing a debater does. Armed with a pen and paper, debaters write down the disagreement. And they don’t bother arguing unless there’s really something to argue about!
Now, broadly speaking, there are three types of things that people disagree about – facts, judgments, and prescriptions. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Facts are claims about the way things are. For example, it’s a fact that Jakarta is a megacity. And it’s also a fact that the boiling point of water is 100°C, or 212°F. On the face of it, facts may seem impeachable. But given that humans are always working with limited knowledge and evidence, there’s typically room to argue that your opponent has got their facts wrong.
Judgments are a little different from facts in that they involve subjective opinion. Statements like “Berlin is dangerous” and “lying is wrong” are examples of judgments. Disputing judgments usually involves disputing the facts or assumptions on which they’re based.
Finally, there are prescriptions. These are judgments about how we ought to act. Think about those “should” statements – like “you should go to the gym” or “the government shouldn’t limit free speech.” Disagreements about prescriptions usually center on the likely consequences of the action.
So, those are the three types of disagreements. Unfortunately, as you’ve probably noticed, life is rarely neat and tidy. In real-world arguments, we usually disagree about all of these things at the same time. And, to make matters worse, we’re often forced to untangle the different threads of a disagreement mid-argument.
To make our job a little easier, we can repurpose a technique from competitive debate called topic analysis. Debaters use this technique to draw out the different layers of disagreement in a topic. For example, the topic could be “parents should not send their children to private school.”
First, you would write the topic down, and then you’d draw a circle around all the contentious words in the sentence – everything you could have a disagreement about.
At first glance, the disagreement here may seem straightforward. This is clearly a prescriptive disagreement about whether one should or should not send their children to private school. So the word you would circle is “send.”
So what appeared at first to be a purely prescriptive statement about what parents should do turned out to contain a bundle of assumptions about facts and judgments as well. The failure to recognize the plural nature of arguments often causes people to talk past each other as they argue over different things.
You can utilize topic analysis in your personal and professional disputes. It’ll help you identify the most important disagreements in any argument, thereby making it more focused and manageable.
---
How to make an argument
Once you’ve identified the disagreement, the next step is to argue your case.
In the world of competitive debate, argument reigns supreme. You simply can’t win without it. This makes competitive debate rather exceptional in our culture. In most other areas of life, arguments tend to decline in value. Ours is a culture of images, not arguments.
Maybe you’re not convinced. Let’s take the world of commerce, for example. Pictures of abs and cleavage can persuade us of a lot – anything from buying sodas to signing up for a gym membership. And even in politics, the traditional home of debate, politicians try their best to avoid making arguments; they prefer the power of the photo op.
Now consider this. In the workplace, we’re expected to follow instructions and not argue or question them. It’s no wonder many people have never learned – or have forgotten – how to construct a proper argument.
Let’s start with what an argument isn’t. An argument is not a slogan or a pep talk, nor is it a list of facts or an assertion of your feelings. It’s not a description or an explanation. And it’s definitely not raising your voice louder. So, what is it then?
An argument is a conclusion that you’ve arrived at logically from a set of premises, supported by evidence.
OK, to unpack this jargon a little, there are basically two things that every argument has to prove: First, that the claims it makes are true. And second, that they support the conclusion. Let’s look at an example.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a vegetarian who wants to convince a meat-eater to give up eating meat. “You should give up meat” is essentially the conclusion you’re trying to sell.
So, to construct an argument, write the conclusion, add the word “because” next to it, and then fill in the blank. What you write after this “because” is the main claim of the argument that you’ll have to prove.
For instance, you might write, “We should give up meat because modern industrial farming causes great suffering to animals.”
Next, you’ll need to establish the truth of your main claim by supplying evidence, such as further facts and information.
You might point to the conditions in which animals on factory farms live; you could say they live in extreme confinement and unhygienic squalor. Or you might point to their behavior, such as signs of abnormal aggression and distress. Evidence takes many forms, so there are a lot of possibilities here.
Once you’ve sufficiently justified the truth of your main claim, is your job done? Not quite. You still need to explain why the main claim supports your conclusion that people should stop eating meat.
This last part of an argument is the one that’s most often forgotten. In the rush to pile on reasons and evidence for the main claim, people often forget to explain why it all matters. A meat-eater might accept everything you’ve said about the conditions of animals on factory farms, and yet still shrug their shoulders. And they have a point – so far it isn’t clear why anyone should stop eating meat, as opposed to, say, eating meat less often or being a bit more selective about the meat we buy.
So you need to make the connection explicit. For example, you could argue that not eating meat is the strongest action you can do as a consumer to pressure the meat industry to change its ways. And then you can support this claim with further evidence.
And that’s an argument! It’s not as simple as it first sounded, is it? It requires careful structuring and logical progression. And it helps to have a good memory for facts and details. Try writing arguments down. The more you practice putting arguments together on paper, the easier it’ll be to make them when you’re speaking.
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How to refute a point
Now, unless you’re having an argument with yourself – which is fine – you’re not going to be the only person making arguments in a debate. Your opponent might also be making some good points. That means the next skill you need to get good at is rebuttal.
As we’ve just discovered, every argument has to prove two things: that the claims it makes are true, and that they support the conclusion. To refute an argument, then, you simply need to do the opposite. You need to either show that the claims your opponent is making are not true – or, that even if they are true, they don’t support their conclusion.
Let’s look at another example. This one’s a little less serious. Say your partner is trying to convince you to buy a new car because “the old hatchback you’re driving just isn’t fashionable anymore!” You, on the other hand, are quite fond of your old clunker, and you don’t feel like forking over the money for a new one. You need to rebut her point – so, what do you say?
First, you could target the truth of her claim, in which case you have several options. You could either argue straight up that her claim is factually incorrect: “No, people are buying more hatchbacks today than ever before, and I can prove it!”
Alternatively, you could argue that her view lacks evidence. You could say, “You haven’t given me any reason to believe that fashions are changing.” Or, if she does have evidence, you could argue that it’s inconclusive: “It’s true that fewer people in our neighborhood drive hatchbacks, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect a national trend.”
You can avoid a lot of hemming and hawing if you show up to an argument prepared. The real world doesn’t always afford us time to prepare. But if you do know you have an argument coming up, try a debate prep technique called Side Switch.
Side Switch involves stepping into your opponent’s shoes to try and guess what they’re going to say. For five minutes, really try to set your own convictions aside and consider the debate from their perspective. Then brainstorm as many arguments as you can in favor of their view. When that’s done, all that’s left is to come up with a rebuttal for each one of these arguments. That way, you’ll know exactly what to say if they raise this point in real life.
The purpose of Side Switch is to help us preempt our opponent’s lines of attack. But the effect of this imaginative exercise is often that we see our opponent’s side more clearly. Our own convictions become unsettled, and we usually end up approaching the argument with more seriousness, openness, and respect.
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How to sound persuasive
So far, we’ve covered the content of what you should say in an argument. But what you say isn’t everything. You also need to think about how you say it. That’s where rhetoric comes in.
Rhetoric is the study of how to speak persuasively. It’s a broad subject that includes everything from the words and structure of your speech to the tone of your voice to the body language you use to express yourself. All of these affect how people perceive you.
Just think, who are you more likely to believe: someone who speaks confidently and fluidly, or someone who appears nervous and breaks into umming every few seconds?
Thankfully, Bo Seo has come up with a few handy rules of thumb for more persuasive speaking. Let’s take a look at them.
The first rule is pretty straightforward: clarity is key. You won’t convince anyone if they don’t know what you’re talking about. So avoid using abstract words, and ditch the confusing metaphors. What’s more, be specific; use concrete examples to explain your points.
The second rule? Cut the excess. Delete anything from your speech that doesn’t contribute to the arguments you’re making. That means stick to the point. Don’t ramble. Avoid unnecessary repetition and excessive qualification. Don’t bother with long-winded introductions. Just get to the point before you lose the listener’s attention.
And here’s the third rule: make it personal. If you can strike an emotional chord with your audience, they’ll be more engaged and more sympathetic to your cause. So speak to the listener’s needs and experiences directly. Sprinkle in stories from your own life. And relate your arguments back to what they mean for real people.
Finally, you also need to pay attention to the manner of your speech. You’ll appear far more persuasive if you can speak fluidly without stops and starts.
Consider this drill, for example. Give a one-minute speech to a friend. Every time you trip up or say “um,” your friend throws a paper ball at you. Repeat the speech until you can get through it without being hit.
And here’s another one. Try making an argument while inserting the word for a random fruit between every word. Like this: Tax banana havens banana should banana be banana banned banana!
Doing speaking drills over and over again can be tedious. But it comes with the promise of a great reward – an elegant form of speech that’s sure to make people stop and listen.
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You’ve just been introduced to the principles of debate – what to say and how to say it. You can begin putting them into practice by trying out the exercises outlined in this summary. Of course, the easiest way to harness the power of debate is just to, well, debate!
If the idea of staging a formal debate with teams and judges seems a bit awkward to squeeze into your daily routine, don’t worry about it. You can reap all the benefits of formal debate just by debating with your friends and colleagues in a more natural way. The important thing to remember before you start is that all parties must be willing to have an argument, treat each other with respect, and try their best not to take anything personally.
When it comes to society at large, many leaders are beginning to appreciate the power of debate to enhance learning and solve problems. Movements are already underway all over the world to incorporate debate into school curriculums and workplace procedures. Warren Buffett, for instance, recently floated the idea of hiring two advisors before making any big acquisition – one to argue in favor of the move, the other against.
These are exciting developments. Still, debate has the potential to be so much more than a decision-making tool. Debate holds the key to solving some of today’s most pressing problems. If democratic governments committed to educating their citizens in debate and established forums for doing it, such as citizen assemblies, debate could be a powerful force in repairing social divisions and invigorating democratic participation.
As citizens, we have a responsibility to learn how to debate well – to deliberate with our neighbors on matters that affect everyone, to settle our disputes with reasoned argument rather than violence, to listen to one another’s concerns and make compromises. Debate is the very soul of civic participation; to give up on it would be to give up on the social project altogether.
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Get over your fear of conflict and learn how to disagree productively
The spirit of free and open debate in Western democracies today is under threat. It’s not that we lack things to disagree about. It’s just that we seem to be forgetting how to disagree well.
Perhaps the reason for this is that the values that make good-faith debate possible – like mutual trust and respect – are at an all-time low. They’ve been steadily eroded by a toxic mix of polarized politics, conflicting ideologies, and misinformation.
And, as a result, the quality of public discourse has taken a nosedive. Whether it’s an argument with a stranger on Twitter or a heated discussion with a relative at dinner, the exchange is often so bitter and hostile that it resembles more of a shouting contest than an actual conversation. On top of that, many people avoid participating altogether out of fear of getting caught in the crossfire.
But avoiding conflict out of fear isn’t going to heal social division. What we need to learn is how to approach our disagreements in a more constructive way. According to author and debate champion Bo Seo, the key lies in competitive debate.
He argues that if we only approach our disagreements with the same skill and respect that competitive debaters do, disagreement can actually be a force for social connection rather than a wedge driving us apart.
Bo Seo’s Good Arguments translates the wisdom of competitive debate so you can learn to disagree more productively. You’ll discover some of the core principles of debate – as well as which exercises professional debaters use to improve the way they think and speak.
---
Bo Seo’s Journey
Before we begin, we have to introduce the star of the show.
Bo Seo was born in South Korea. But when Seo was just eight years old, his parents made the risky decision to uproot their lives; in search of greener pastures, they moved the family to Australia.
At this point Seo spoke no English – and, as one might expect, he struggled to find his place in his new home. At school, unable to communicate with his peers, or even understand his homework, Seo receded into himself and eventually gave up speaking altogether. He learned that to get by in this world, it was easier just to keep quiet and do as he was told.
For several lonely years, Seo was your typical wallflower. He was never loud; he never asserted himself. He just kept his head down and studied, slowly getting a grip on the nasal Aussie English. But when he was in fifth grade, something happened that would change his life forever: his teacher invited him to take part in a debate competition.
Competitive debate is like a formal game in which two rival teams participate in a verbal battle in order to persuade judges to join their side on some issue. It’s a sport that thrives in schools and universities around the globe, and a surprising number of presidents, CEOs, and civil rights leaders have competed.
The rules are pretty simple. The opposing teams are assigned a motion – the topic of the debate – 15 minutes to one hour beforehand so they have time to prepare. After that, the debate begins. Each team takes turns speaking in front of the judges for about five minutes. Once the debate is over, the team that’s spoken most convincingly is declared the winner.
This is the world Seo had stumbled into. In his first-ever debate, he was asked to defend the motion, “All zoos should be banned.” On that stage, between the fearful walk up to the podium and the thrill of unbroken applause at the end, something happened to Seo – he found his voice.
Over the course of the next decade, Seo entered one competition after another, gradually honing his skill and rising in the rankings. He didn’t just excel at debating either. It turns out that the skills he was learning in debate – logical thinking, composition, public speaking – all helped him to excel in his social and academic life as well.
For Seo, debate was a powerful tool in his continued education – and it can be for you too. So, let’s shift gear and turn to the principles of good debate.
---
How to find the disagreement
The first thing any budding debater has to learn is how to spot the disagreement in an argument. After all, how are you supposed to know what to say if you don’t even know what the subject of the argument is?
Yet you’d be surprised by how many people run into arguments headfirst without thinking about this question. It’s no wonder so many conflicts are unproductive.
Try it yourself. Think back to the last argument you had. It doesn’t matter who it was with – just try to recall what was said and what sparked it. Then answer this question: What was the disagreement? There’s an important distinction here. You’re not asking what the argument was about. What did you actually disagree on?
If you can’t put your finger on the disagreement, it’s possible there may not have been one to begin with. Like bad dreams, petty arguments are forgotten just as quickly as they come.
So that’s the first thing a debater does. Armed with a pen and paper, debaters write down the disagreement. And they don’t bother arguing unless there’s really something to argue about!
Now, broadly speaking, there are three types of things that people disagree about – facts, judgments, and prescriptions. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Facts are claims about the way things are. For example, it’s a fact that Jakarta is a megacity. And it’s also a fact that the boiling point of water is 100°C, or 212°F. On the face of it, facts may seem impeachable. But given that humans are always working with limited knowledge and evidence, there’s typically room to argue that your opponent has got their facts wrong.
Judgments are a little different from facts in that they involve subjective opinion. Statements like “Berlin is dangerous” and “lying is wrong” are examples of judgments. Disputing judgments usually involves disputing the facts or assumptions on which they’re based.
Finally, there are prescriptions. These are judgments about how we ought to act. Think about those “should” statements – like “you should go to the gym” or “the government shouldn’t limit free speech.” Disagreements about prescriptions usually center on the likely consequences of the action.
So, those are the three types of disagreements. Unfortunately, as you’ve probably noticed, life is rarely neat and tidy. In real-world arguments, we usually disagree about all of these things at the same time. And, to make matters worse, we’re often forced to untangle the different threads of a disagreement mid-argument.
To make our job a little easier, we can repurpose a technique from competitive debate called topic analysis. Debaters use this technique to draw out the different layers of disagreement in a topic. For example, the topic could be “parents should not send their children to private school.”
First, you would write the topic down, and then you’d draw a circle around all the contentious words in the sentence – everything you could have a disagreement about.
At first glance, the disagreement here may seem straightforward. This is clearly a prescriptive disagreement about whether one should or should not send their children to private school. So the word you would circle is “send.”
So what appeared at first to be a purely prescriptive statement about what parents should do turned out to contain a bundle of assumptions about facts and judgments as well. The failure to recognize the plural nature of arguments often causes people to talk past each other as they argue over different things.
You can utilize topic analysis in your personal and professional disputes. It’ll help you identify the most important disagreements in any argument, thereby making it more focused and manageable.
---
How to make an argument
Once you’ve identified the disagreement, the next step is to argue your case.
In the world of competitive debate, argument reigns supreme. You simply can’t win without it. This makes competitive debate rather exceptional in our culture. In most other areas of life, arguments tend to decline in value. Ours is a culture of images, not arguments.
Maybe you’re not convinced. Let’s take the world of commerce, for example. Pictures of abs and cleavage can persuade us of a lot – anything from buying sodas to signing up for a gym membership. And even in politics, the traditional home of debate, politicians try their best to avoid making arguments; they prefer the power of the photo op.
Now consider this. In the workplace, we’re expected to follow instructions and not argue or question them. It’s no wonder many people have never learned – or have forgotten – how to construct a proper argument.
Let’s start with what an argument isn’t. An argument is not a slogan or a pep talk, nor is it a list of facts or an assertion of your feelings. It’s not a description or an explanation. And it’s definitely not raising your voice louder. So, what is it then?
An argument is a conclusion that you’ve arrived at logically from a set of premises, supported by evidence.
OK, to unpack this jargon a little, there are basically two things that every argument has to prove: First, that the claims it makes are true. And second, that they support the conclusion. Let’s look at an example.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a vegetarian who wants to convince a meat-eater to give up eating meat. “You should give up meat” is essentially the conclusion you’re trying to sell.
So, to construct an argument, write the conclusion, add the word “because” next to it, and then fill in the blank. What you write after this “because” is the main claim of the argument that you’ll have to prove.
For instance, you might write, “We should give up meat because modern industrial farming causes great suffering to animals.”
Next, you’ll need to establish the truth of your main claim by supplying evidence, such as further facts and information.
You might point to the conditions in which animals on factory farms live; you could say they live in extreme confinement and unhygienic squalor. Or you might point to their behavior, such as signs of abnormal aggression and distress. Evidence takes many forms, so there are a lot of possibilities here.
Once you’ve sufficiently justified the truth of your main claim, is your job done? Not quite. You still need to explain why the main claim supports your conclusion that people should stop eating meat.
This last part of an argument is the one that’s most often forgotten. In the rush to pile on reasons and evidence for the main claim, people often forget to explain why it all matters. A meat-eater might accept everything you’ve said about the conditions of animals on factory farms, and yet still shrug their shoulders. And they have a point – so far it isn’t clear why anyone should stop eating meat, as opposed to, say, eating meat less often or being a bit more selective about the meat we buy.
So you need to make the connection explicit. For example, you could argue that not eating meat is the strongest action you can do as a consumer to pressure the meat industry to change its ways. And then you can support this claim with further evidence.
And that’s an argument! It’s not as simple as it first sounded, is it? It requires careful structuring and logical progression. And it helps to have a good memory for facts and details. Try writing arguments down. The more you practice putting arguments together on paper, the easier it’ll be to make them when you’re speaking.
---
How to refute a point
Now, unless you’re having an argument with yourself – which is fine – you’re not going to be the only person making arguments in a debate. Your opponent might also be making some good points. That means the next skill you need to get good at is rebuttal.
As we’ve just discovered, every argument has to prove two things: that the claims it makes are true, and that they support the conclusion. To refute an argument, then, you simply need to do the opposite. You need to either show that the claims your opponent is making are not true – or, that even if they are true, they don’t support their conclusion.
Let’s look at another example. This one’s a little less serious. Say your partner is trying to convince you to buy a new car because “the old hatchback you’re driving just isn’t fashionable anymore!” You, on the other hand, are quite fond of your old clunker, and you don’t feel like forking over the money for a new one. You need to rebut her point – so, what do you say?
First, you could target the truth of her claim, in which case you have several options. You could either argue straight up that her claim is factually incorrect: “No, people are buying more hatchbacks today than ever before, and I can prove it!”
Alternatively, you could argue that her view lacks evidence. You could say, “You haven’t given me any reason to believe that fashions are changing.” Or, if she does have evidence, you could argue that it’s inconclusive: “It’s true that fewer people in our neighborhood drive hatchbacks, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect a national trend.”
You can avoid a lot of hemming and hawing if you show up to an argument prepared. The real world doesn’t always afford us time to prepare. But if you do know you have an argument coming up, try a debate prep technique called Side Switch.
Side Switch involves stepping into your opponent’s shoes to try and guess what they’re going to say. For five minutes, really try to set your own convictions aside and consider the debate from their perspective. Then brainstorm as many arguments as you can in favor of their view. When that’s done, all that’s left is to come up with a rebuttal for each one of these arguments. That way, you’ll know exactly what to say if they raise this point in real life.
The purpose of Side Switch is to help us preempt our opponent’s lines of attack. But the effect of this imaginative exercise is often that we see our opponent’s side more clearly. Our own convictions become unsettled, and we usually end up approaching the argument with more seriousness, openness, and respect.
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How to sound persuasive
So far, we’ve covered the content of what you should say in an argument. But what you say isn’t everything. You also need to think about how you say it. That’s where rhetoric comes in.
Rhetoric is the study of how to speak persuasively. It’s a broad subject that includes everything from the words and structure of your speech to the tone of your voice to the body language you use to express yourself. All of these affect how people perceive you.
Just think, who are you more likely to believe: someone who speaks confidently and fluidly, or someone who appears nervous and breaks into umming every few seconds?
Thankfully, Bo Seo has come up with a few handy rules of thumb for more persuasive speaking. Let’s take a look at them.
The first rule is pretty straightforward: clarity is key. You won’t convince anyone if they don’t know what you’re talking about. So avoid using abstract words, and ditch the confusing metaphors. What’s more, be specific; use concrete examples to explain your points.
The second rule? Cut the excess. Delete anything from your speech that doesn’t contribute to the arguments you’re making. That means stick to the point. Don’t ramble. Avoid unnecessary repetition and excessive qualification. Don’t bother with long-winded introductions. Just get to the point before you lose the listener’s attention.
And here’s the third rule: make it personal. If you can strike an emotional chord with your audience, they’ll be more engaged and more sympathetic to your cause. So speak to the listener’s needs and experiences directly. Sprinkle in stories from your own life. And relate your arguments back to what they mean for real people.
Finally, you also need to pay attention to the manner of your speech. You’ll appear far more persuasive if you can speak fluidly without stops and starts.
Consider this drill, for example. Give a one-minute speech to a friend. Every time you trip up or say “um,” your friend throws a paper ball at you. Repeat the speech until you can get through it without being hit.
And here’s another one. Try making an argument while inserting the word for a random fruit between every word. Like this: Tax banana havens banana should banana be banana banned banana!
Doing speaking drills over and over again can be tedious. But it comes with the promise of a great reward – an elegant form of speech that’s sure to make people stop and listen.
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You’ve just been introduced to the principles of debate – what to say and how to say it. You can begin putting them into practice by trying out the exercises outlined in this summary. Of course, the easiest way to harness the power of debate is just to, well, debate!
If the idea of staging a formal debate with teams and judges seems a bit awkward to squeeze into your daily routine, don’t worry about it. You can reap all the benefits of formal debate just by debating with your friends and colleagues in a more natural way. The important thing to remember before you start is that all parties must be willing to have an argument, treat each other with respect, and try their best not to take anything personally.
When it comes to society at large, many leaders are beginning to appreciate the power of debate to enhance learning and solve problems. Movements are already underway all over the world to incorporate debate into school curriculums and workplace procedures. Warren Buffett, for instance, recently floated the idea of hiring two advisors before making any big acquisition – one to argue in favor of the move, the other against.
These are exciting developments. Still, debate has the potential to be so much more than a decision-making tool. Debate holds the key to solving some of today’s most pressing problems. If democratic governments committed to educating their citizens in debate and established forums for doing it, such as citizen assemblies, debate could be a powerful force in repairing social divisions and invigorating democratic participation.
As citizens, we have a responsibility to learn how to debate well – to deliberate with our neighbors on matters that affect everyone, to settle our disputes with reasoned argument rather than violence, to listen to one another’s concerns and make compromises. Debate is the very soul of civic participation; to give up on it would be to give up on the social project altogether.
May 19, 2024
While it was an easy read, there isn't much to say. For me, there was too much information about the life of a professional debater. I was expecting more on the systems and frameworks. Once again, there were unnecessary remarks about Trump – it seems like if you don't include those, you won't get published at all.
July 28, 2023
I didn't enjoy this book in all honesty. A reviewer stated that he didn't know what the focus of the book was and I agree with this confusion. My expectations were to read a formative take on debate and arguments as advertised in the introduction but this is not the case. Rather, it is a biography where bits of knowledge about debates and arguments are scattered among piles of mundane stories and experiences of the author.
That being said, I do believe that if the reader is aware of this fact, his/her reading experience will differ from mine. The author is eloquent with his words (though often times wants to impress with difficult words when it could be kept simple as another reviewer mentioned) and he does have an interesting view on the importance of debate. If the book were written in the form of an essay rather than a jungle of memoir, history and anecdote and the focus of the book were to be outlined more clearly, the quality of the content would have been more profound and illuminating in my opinion. Nevertheless, I still did learn a thing or two from each chapter and when information of debate is provided, it is also explained intuitively and outlined decently.
So to conclude, I can only recommend this book to other readers if they are interested in the biography of the author and don't mind the story going through different tangents. If your debating style is, like mine, similar to that of a gorilla and instead would like grow into a more chimp-like debating style, this book won't cut it.
I have one minor remark: the analogy in chapter 2 of prep room following the same law as the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. entropy increasing with time , is quite unfitting and kinda feels forced into the paragraph. I still don't understand the link the author wanted to make between this metaphor and the context in which it was placed. Following the information as outlined in chapter 4, don't use confusing metaphors.
That being said, I do believe that if the reader is aware of this fact, his/her reading experience will differ from mine. The author is eloquent with his words (though often times wants to impress with difficult words when it could be kept simple as another reviewer mentioned) and he does have an interesting view on the importance of debate. If the book were written in the form of an essay rather than a jungle of memoir, history and anecdote and the focus of the book were to be outlined more clearly, the quality of the content would have been more profound and illuminating in my opinion. Nevertheless, I still did learn a thing or two from each chapter and when information of debate is provided, it is also explained intuitively and outlined decently.
So to conclude, I can only recommend this book to other readers if they are interested in the biography of the author and don't mind the story going through different tangents. If your debating style is, like mine, similar to that of a gorilla and instead would like grow into a more chimp-like debating style, this book won't cut it.
I have one minor remark: the analogy in chapter 2 of prep room following the same law as the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. entropy increasing with time , is quite unfitting and kinda feels forced into the paragraph. I still don't understand the link the author wanted to make between this metaphor and the context in which it was placed. Following the information as outlined in chapter 4, don't use confusing metaphors.
November 22, 2022
This was a surprisingly great book. I wasn’t sure what it was about, so I was pleasantly surprised. Bo Seo has been a debater his entire life. He joined the debate team at a young age and made it all the way to one of the best colleges in the USA for debate and traveled the world. In this book, he discusses the various aspects of debate and how we can use it to have better conversations in our life during these polarized times. I think more of us need to know how to debate properly, and I’m still learning myself, so I loved this book.
November 28, 2024
2.5 ⭐️
This book had some meaningful insight but I found it got to introspective at times. Every single moment had to be a deep lesson that connected to other historical figures, moral lessons, or politics. At times it just became a bit to preachy. But I suppose that is what it is supposed to be, maybe just not my style.
Also hard to figure out what his overall message is. It gets kind of messy and overly existential.
This book had some meaningful insight but I found it got to introspective at times. Every single moment had to be a deep lesson that connected to other historical figures, moral lessons, or politics. At times it just became a bit to preachy. But I suppose that is what it is supposed to be, maybe just not my style.
Also hard to figure out what his overall message is. It gets kind of messy and overly existential.
May 25, 2023
Part-memoir, part-how to guide, this is a great read about how to make good arguments (and how to avoid arguments outright) written from the perspective of a champion debater.
Read
January 18, 2025this one’s for u chets
November 18, 2023
This book was thought provoking and a good mental exercise. It provides useful tools on how to debate (and keep your sanity) when debating especially in the of age of endless social media arguments and trolling.
May 9, 2025
I read this as an audiobook. Enough travelling in my car while listening got me through it. It was tough going sometimes. I cared far less about the life stories and characters along the way. I actually skipped forward 15 seconds through certain stretches where there was (I felt) forced flowery language in service of those life stories and characters. But there were enough good moments along the way so I'm glad I stuck with it.
Bo Seo is likeable. I just wish the information and the learning moments I was craving were a little more direct and consistent. In other reviews many have said it's tough to feel the takeaways. Agreed. They were there, but they were delivered along with too much window dressing and personal narrative. At times it felt like a pure memoire.
It makes me wish I could have had a way to capture or annotate the parts that I thought were worth remembering. It's really not a strength of audiobooks. But on the other hand I don't know if I would have stuck with a print version. So, yay audiobook.
Bo Seo is likeable. I just wish the information and the learning moments I was craving were a little more direct and consistent. In other reviews many have said it's tough to feel the takeaways. Agreed. They were there, but they were delivered along with too much window dressing and personal narrative. At times it felt like a pure memoire.
It makes me wish I could have had a way to capture or annotate the parts that I thought were worth remembering. It's really not a strength of audiobooks. But on the other hand I don't know if I would have stuck with a print version. So, yay audiobook.
July 21, 2022
I can’t believe this was my most anticipated release of the year, I’m scared what that implies about how fun of a person I am. However it totally lived up to my anticipation! This book was really a really strong, persuasive, argument for why we should value debating skills (I guess that figured lol) Bo Seo is a well known world champion debater, who I first heard about because a girl on my debate team made a funny Christmas themed spoof of his world winning debate speech.
It’s clear the book was written for guidance in a real world context and not advice for actual debate rounds, even though it does give good techniques and brings up good considerations for both. I think if a debater kid is reading this for tips to win the world Championship they are probably going to be let down, but as a novice I really got a lot out of this read still. I think the writing was really organized and the book well structured. I think the quotes and historical mentions referenced really added a lot, and were not just put in for their own sake. The first half of this book might be my favourite part, I actually like some of his personal stories from school the most.
Also, whew 😅 he has an attractive voice. There’s something about a subtle Australian accent that really hits the ear right. He should consider doing more audiobooks.
It’s clear the book was written for guidance in a real world context and not advice for actual debate rounds, even though it does give good techniques and brings up good considerations for both. I think if a debater kid is reading this for tips to win the world Championship they are probably going to be let down, but as a novice I really got a lot out of this read still. I think the writing was really organized and the book well structured. I think the quotes and historical mentions referenced really added a lot, and were not just put in for their own sake. The first half of this book might be my favourite part, I actually like some of his personal stories from school the most.
Also, whew 😅 he has an attractive voice. There’s something about a subtle Australian accent that really hits the ear right. He should consider doing more audiobooks.
November 23, 2022
Good Arguments is everything you would want in a book about debating. Not only was it educational, but it was accessible AND fun to read (personal bias may influence the latter). I think a big issue with debating is that people avoid it because it seems intimidating, or requiring too high a level of thought, which is bullshit. This book proves that arguments, including debates, are at their very best when accessible, which is my main take away from Seo’.
I really enjoyed the integration of personal experience, argument tips, and historical/ pop culture references, as it stopped the book from being one dimensional and boring. HOWEVER, I do believe that the split between those 3 sections were almost even, leaving me to wonder what the book was really trying to be. I think it needed to settle on one form, and then draw upon the 2 other ones. Initially I thought the main form was a memoir, but it became more complicated as the book went on. This didn’t really impact my experience reading it, and only became a concern upon reflection, so overall a fantastic book!
I really enjoyed the integration of personal experience, argument tips, and historical/ pop culture references, as it stopped the book from being one dimensional and boring. HOWEVER, I do believe that the split between those 3 sections were almost even, leaving me to wonder what the book was really trying to be. I think it needed to settle on one form, and then draw upon the 2 other ones. Initially I thought the main form was a memoir, but it became more complicated as the book went on. This didn’t really impact my experience reading it, and only became a concern upon reflection, so overall a fantastic book!
December 17, 2022
I knew nothing substantial about debate and found this to be a really good introduction to the concept of debate as sport, and as tool for engaging with others on divisive topics. I'm not ready to become a debater, per se - this book isn't a how to primer - but in the future I think I'll be much more questioning about what's really being debated when people converse, as well as much more appreciative of what debate can be.
January 16, 2023
I would recommend this book for readers that have an interest in debate and would like some tools on how to better compete.
I would consider this book more memoir than actually giving unbiased practical tools on having discussions with others that you disagree with.
However still a good read, and I did feel like I was right in the room of these stories he shared!
I would consider this book more memoir than actually giving unbiased practical tools on having discussions with others that you disagree with.
However still a good read, and I did feel like I was right in the room of these stories he shared!
February 14, 2024
More biography and less advice than I hoped for.
The story of how Bo Seo became a professional debater and ultimately world champion was nonetheless engaging. An impression of a sport largely overlooked.
The story of how Bo Seo became a professional debater and ultimately world champion was nonetheless engaging. An impression of a sport largely overlooked.
April 15, 2024
Probably better read physically than listened to on audible. Interesting stories but didn’t necessarily grasp any techniques for more effective conversation. Again, could probably get more out of it if I physically read the book than listened to it.
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