This is my rant for the week. Political discussions can get rather aggressive and violent, and often for no good reason. Sometimes, however, an idea comes up that’s so outlandish and useless that it’s best to simply shut it down and make room for productive discussion. This essay is my recommendation on how to recognize and respond to these ideas.
1
Sometimes people are wrong. Shocking, I know, but it’s true. Usually, it’s about rather insignificant things—misquoting an old, dead author or doing a math problem badly—but sometimes about important things too. For example, genocide is a significantly wrong decision to make.
That probably sets the bar too high—it’s also significant to misquote an important statistic or to screw up your taxes.
When people are insignificantly wrong, we correct them, gently, usually. No, 2 + 2 is 4.
When they’re significantly wrong, we correct them with a bit more oomph. No, you didn’t pay your taxes right. Go sit in timeout for a couple years and learn your lesson.
So, if someone says something that’s wrong, and you, being the knowledgeable good samaritan you are, want to correct them, how do you do it?
For many, it depends. On what was said and on who said it.
If it was a four-year-old who was insignificantly wrong, you’ll probably be more gentle. No, that’s not quite right. Why don’t you try again?
If it was an eighty-year-old president who was significantly wrong and had already lied more than 30,000 times,1 you might feel like calling them an idiot and telling them to shut up. If you’re in a good mood.
Is that ever ok? Is it ever fine to just tell someone to shut up and sit down, to call them names, or dismiss their ideas outright? If so, where’s the line?
↑ there it is!
2
On Debate
I don’t mean the competitive kind of debate, the one where the future lawyers and businesspeople of America yell at each other about things they don’t believe in. No, I’m talking about talking. That thing that we do all the time, where we see another person with differing opinions and try to convince them they’re wrong.
I’m all for this kind of debate. There’s an important caveat to my endorsement, however. You gotta go in with a legitimately open mind. You need to be prepared to be wrong, and able to accept the other person’s point of view. If their thinking is ridiculous to you, it’s totally useless to try to debate them.
If you and your partner in debatitude are resolved to have an open-minded, fair discussion, you’re golden. Unfortunately, that’s very rare. I’m a rather stubborn, maybe narcissistic,2 guy, so I may not be representative of everyone; but I can think of only a few conversations I’ve had in the past month or so that fit this model.
Not only is this sort of debate rare, it’s also really taxing. It’s ridiculous how little we actually listen to each other when we talk; we remember as little as 20%.3 Jumping from mostly ignoring the other person to listening to, internalizing, and analyzing everything they say is really difficult.
Most of these rare, productive debates are about insignificant wrong things. You want Chinese takeout, I want pizza, and you have strong evidence I’m wrong (they’re having a special, half-off the Kung Pao chicken). We can have a nice, open, productive debate and settle on Chinese, but not before you’ve considered the ramifications of missing out on a slice of sausage and pepperoni. It only works if I feel like you’ve really considered my viewpoint, otherwise, why should I consider yours?
How about when it matters? Is productive, significant debate even possible? There’s no reason it shouldn’t be, but there are some extra wrinkles thrown in.
On Civility
We’ll use the example of abortion.4 Very few people think this is a hard question, it’s either very right and necessary or very wrong and evil, no two ways about it. (To each individual; obviously, from a god’s-eye view there are two ways about it.)
This is probably one of the hardest topics to have productive debate about these days. There’s no reason we can’t—there is a right, universal answer,5 the (true) morality of abortion doesn’t change from person to person.6
Let’s say you’ve met someone who thinks you’re wrong on the question of abortion. Can you see yourself being totally convinced by them?
Odds are, you can’t. I don’t think I could.
But, imagine for a moment, you decide to enter a debate with this person. Maybe you’re banking on the possibility of a misunderstanding of the argument (ohh, you thought we were talking about online chess games, not the political issue!), or you think they might have some new information to factor into your thoughts, even if you’re not totally convinced (hm, I guess I can better understand a pro-life position if it includes more support to kids and mothers after birth, but I still think autonomy is more important).
You’ve sat down to debate this person, hoping you’ll get something out of it. You’re ready to internalize and analyze their thoughts, and you’ll hold on to more than 20%. Then they say, “My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is very clear about the fact that abortion is murder.”
At this point, I’d likely produce a few expletives and storm angrily away. That argument isn’t worth my civility.
Maybe you’ve got a bit more patience than I do, but they keep going and push you past your breaking point. Then you’d storm off too, maybe tell them to shut up. There’s a certain level of crap that anyone would refuse to take.
3
Shut Up
‘Shut up’ is powerful. Swear words are often just an excuse for having bad or incomplete ideas (which is why I use them not infrequently), but ‘shut up’ packs a punch.
Think about the phrasing. It implies, there is only garbage coming out of your mouth, it needs to be closed now. You’re not just asking them to be quiet, you’re totally invalidating their position.
It follows then, that using ‘shut up’ is acceptable and helpful only when the target’s position is actually totally invalid. When there is absolutely no value in what they’re saying, no misunderstanding or double-crux to find and sort out, no new information or insight you’d even start to consider.
They need to just shut up.
Stupid
Stupid’s a lot less strong. It’s similarly invalidating, implying that the target is totally clueless and unintelligent, but feels a bit childish in a way that can undermine the message. It’s also relative. There isn’t really ‘stupid and not stupid’, only ‘stupider and less stupid’.
A person can be stupid(er) and still have a valuable position. For example, people talk all the time about their little toddlers making them think hard about something, and teachers learn from students who are objectively less intelligent than they are.
Yes, ‘stupid’ is an insult, but it’s petty and ineffective. It’s not used in an attempt to change how the target acts, but for the benefit of the person saying it, plus any bystanders who happen to agree.
‘Shut up, stupid’, then, is a phrase reserved only for entirely invalid arguments from clueless and unintelligent people. The question becomes: should it be used, even in those cases?
4
When someone is significantly wrong, unwilling to be productive, making invalid arguments, clueless, and unintelligent, use the magic words.
There is a time and a place for civility. If you’re engaged in a productive debate with an even possibly valuable argument against you, it’s best to hold your peace.
The recent growing trend of dismissiveness is, in fact, rather counter-productive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen internet comments along the lines of, “As soon as someone says [buzzword], I stop listening.”
More often than not, there is some value in there. Even if the buzzword is woke, anti-woke, CRT, stand-your-ground, or whatever recent flashpoint you find most off-putting, it’s likely worth just a bit of your time. Hold your ‘shut up’ and hear them out. Try and find that misunderstanding or little nugget of value.
Over-dismissing leads to the echo chambers that lead to more nonsense that leads to more dismissing… Break the cycle. Go just a little deeper, give your viewpoints a bit of flexibility, and consider the parts from someone else’s whole which can enhance your understanding of an issue.
Of course, if an overgrown orange troll interrupts you with made-up facts about immigration-wall-whatever-nonsense, and then starts going off about “blame on both sides” at Charlottesville,7 then it’s time:
SHUT UP, STUPID!
5
While it’s important to respect other perspectives, and look to improve and enhance our opinions using the parts of others’ we respect, sometimes enough is enough.
The political scene only gets more and more divisive. Two-party systems are fine-tuned to divide the electorate, roughly in half. The parties go as extreme as they can go, and then dial it back when they start to lose centrists. This push and pull of the Overton window results in a lot of rapidly changing opinions, dizzying debates, and wacky viewpoints yanked into the mainstream.
During the extremist peaks of the cycle, moderates on each side will chime in with a little too much ‘Oh, let’s hear them out’ or ‘Don’t be so divisive and dismissive’. It’s true. We should lend extremists the benefit of the doubt, give them a chance to prove that there’s a nugget of gold in their beliefs. If only as a prophylaxis against their eventual claims of unjust political persecution and targeting.
But sometimes there really is no value. Sometimes people need to be confronted and stopped. Sometimes the stupid should just shut up.
So don’t be too afraid to tell them.
Thanks for reading.
Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years – Washington Post (disable javascript in your browser to dodge the paywall)
I’m writing a blog for Chrissake, like I’ve got so much interesting stuff to say.
How We Remember Conversation: Implications in Legal Settings – Sarah Brown-Schmidt and Aaron S. Benjamin
The start of every fun conversation…
I’m talking about answer-able questions like “Is abortion inherently evil?” or “Should abortion be allowed after 20 weeks?”—there are a million of them, and to each, there is a single, universally true answer.