Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

by Mehdi Hasan

If you use an ad hominem argument to question your opponent’s credibility, to raise the issue of bias, or to put your opponent on the defensive, then these are legitimate and appropriate rhetorical moves that go back centuries to Ancient Greece and Rome. They’re far from fallacies.

The fact that an ad hominem argument can be fallacious does not mean that it must be fallacious.

Credibility is an asset in any argument, and if your opponent’s isn’t warranted, don’t let it stand unchallenged.

The best plan, in my view, is to challenge your opponent’s three Cs—their character, their credentials, and their claims. If all three crumble, they’re going down.

Don’t be afraid to identify who your opponent really is. Don’t be afraid to define who your opponent is. Don’t be afraid to characterize the arguer, and not just the argument.

It is not a fallacy to directly rebut claims that have actually been made. If somebody makes an abstract statistical argument about the effectiveness of a certain medical procedure, then their evidence must stand by itself. However, when somebody says, “trust me, I’m a doctor,” then both their integrity and their medical school history become completely relevant to the question at hand.

What exactly do you know about this issue? When did you become an expert on this topic? What actual qualifications do you have to pass judgment on it? If they can’t answer them, then your audience will start to doubt the real merit behind all those credentials.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. —Ernest Hemingway

One recent survey, reported Insider, found that iPhone users unlock their devices an average of eighty times per day. That amounts to six or seven times per waking hour, or once every ten minutes.

critical listening and empathetic listening.

Critical listening is about going beyond hearing to mentally engage with what’s being said. It’s a very dynamic process, where you’re consciously absorbing, comprehending, and evaluating the information given to you by a speaker in real time. “Is it true or false?” “Does it make sense or not?” “Can I trust or believe what I am hearing?”

“the pen is mightier than the keyboard”: taking notes longhand, on paper, is a more effective way of documenting and processing information than taking notes on your smartphone or laptop.

Critical listening is what you should be doing when your opponent is speaking. But empathetic listening is what you should be doing when an audience member is speaking.

Empathetic listening is about connecting with the speaker and trying to see the world through that person’s eyes. The goal of empathetic listening is to focus on the speaker’s views and to understand where that person is coming from.

“He thought the leader’s role was to speak last, summarize what had been said before, and try to find consensus.”

“Stay present”: Make it clear to the other speaker, and the rest of those watching and listening, that you are focused on the other speaker.

Make eye contact: I cannot overstate how important eye contact is as a means of showing empathy and building deep emotional ties. It shows that you’re interested in what the speaker has to say, that you’re paying attention, that you care.

Ask the right questions: Pose questions to your interlocutors that allow them to “drive the conversation,” and then ask follow-up questions that show you were listening to their answers.

MAKE THEM LAUGH Once you get people laughing, they’re listening and you can tell them almost anything. —Herb Gardner, playwright

“For people who are laughing together,” says social psychologist and study coauthor Sara Algoe, “shared laughter signals that they see the world in the same way, and it momentarily boosts their sense of connection. Perceived similarity ends up being an important part of the story of relationships.”

my favorite quotes, often attributed to Oscar Wilde, says: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

You have to be careful, however, and you have to be prepared. As the ancient Roman rhetorician and educator Quintilian once put it, “Humor is risky, since wit is so close to twit.”

Everything that comes in threes is perfect. Since the era of Aristotle, good public speakers—and especially good debaters—have sworn by this principle, the Rule of Three.

Multiple studies of our working memory “converge on the notion that, reliably, people can remember up to three basic units or chunks or ideas at once,” Cowan told me. “Three is a good rule of thumb.”

“In the context of political speeches, the three-part list may signal to the audience not when to start talking but when to applaud,”

“Use one for power,” Clark says. “Use two for comparison, contrast. Use three for completeness, wholeness, roundness.”

You can use that same logic with your speeches, presentations, and arguments. You want your audience to feel like your presentation is whole and complete, so apply the Rule of Three when you’re structuring your remarks.

Or: Three Main Points. Or: Three Stories. Or: Pros, Cons, Recommendation. Or there’s my own personal favorite: making a Political, an Economic, and a Moral argument for or against something. In my experience, that always seems to hit the spot.

To win in a debate or gain the upper hand in an argument, you often have to be both flexible and willing to yield, judo-style. It’s not enough to go on the attack, bring your receipts, and deploy your humor. Sometimes you have to yield to a debate opponent—not because you’re losing, but because doing so will actually help you win.

you can concede an argument here or there, and then say “there’s one argument here that just doesn’t make much sense to me and I want to attack that.” Don’t be afraid to say to your audience, “Here’s where my opponent is right,” because that then gives you the opening to say: “And here’s where they’re wrong.”

synchoresis. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as “the act or an instance of conceding an argument in order to make a stronger one.”

Those of us who debate like to pretend our arguments revolve only around cold, hard logic. But the reality is that the success of many of our arguments depends on the language, metaphors, and narratives that we deploy.

Humans don’t make decisions, or conclusions, based on facts alone. We interpret those facts, and doing so requires context and background; our conclusions depend on how we “frame” a particular situation. Frames, say experts, are the “filters” our brains use to try and process and interpret information in any given setting.

THE ART OF THE ZINGER Unless there is the zinger or the kind of the cute line or whatever, the quotable moment, there’s no victor, in a sense. —George W. Bush

“All the best off-the-cuff remarks are prepared days beforehand.”

This is a speaking method that involves, to quote the Urban Dictionary, “spewing so much bullshit in such a short span that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.” It has one aim: to bury your adversary in a torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments.

CONFIDENCE IS EVERYTHING There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars. —Mark Twain

What do most people look for in a successful speaker or communicator? It’s the same thing they look for in a successful leader, says author Carmine Gallo: confidence. And when it comes to winning an argument, I simply cannot overstate how important it is to both be confident and show confidence.

Studies even suggest that confidence “matters just as much as competence” when it comes to predicting performance. In fact, confidence is preferred to expertise!

“Seeing” yourself succeed gives you the confidence that success is indeed around the corner.

When you stand up to give a speech in front of a crowd, you want it to feel like your thousandth time doing it, too. Because that’s what confidence looks and feels like. And that’s what positive visualization can do for you.

our self-confidence increases not just through success and achievement but through our experience of “risk and failure” as well. “Confidence comes with familiarity,”

“Familiarity comes with experience.” And experience comes from trying new things!

“Paradoxically, by being more willing to fail, you’ll actually succeed more—because you’re not waiting for everything to be 100 percent perfect before you act,”

“Don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.”

Another way to think of it is the “as if” technique. “If you want a quality,” noted William James, dubbed “the father of American psychology,” “act as if you already had it.”

“there are always two conversations going on”: what you’re saying to your audience, and what your body language is saying to your audience.

when you’re trying to change someone’s feelings or attitudes, your words account for just 7 percent of your overall message. Seven percent. That’s it. In contrast, your tone of voice accounts for 38 percent of it, and your body language accounts for a colossal 55 percent. This is the famous 7-38-55 rule,

“when humans observe others’ faces, eyes are typically the first features that are scanned for information.”

Because you cannot—I repeat, cannot!—project confidence to another person if you avoid eye contact with them.