How to win an argument

How to win an argument?

Occasionally, like it or not, we argue with others. As winning is always a must for us high achievers, we have to do what it takes to win an argument.

There are a few techniques to win an argument or debate that will make you an admirable high achiever, and make those underachievers look up upon you. The beauty of these techniques is you don’t even have to know what your opponent’s arguments are. So, it is sort of a set of universal techniques that fits all debate and let you win all of them effortlessly.

1.     1. Attack the messenger.  Focus your assaults on the person instead of his/her arguments. The meaner you attack the messenger, the higher your chance of winning the debate. If practiced well enough, winning comes naturally by sending your opponents speechless and too busy defending themselves and forget about the real debate.

Example: You can’t even speak proper English, you points can’t be correct. Go back to school loser.

John is a low IQ dumb, if you believe what he said, you are a greater dumb .

2.       2. Reduce and distort the opposite opinions. This is technically called the “strawman” technique. It basically means build a reduced and distorted version of your opponent’s argument and then beat it up easily with a single blow like beating a strawman.

Example: Capitalism is nothing more than the rich exploiting the poor. So we must fight it with all our might.

Building a highway will create more accidents that kill. So we must object to this new proposal.

3.       3. Accuse hidden motive. This is also a very effective method to divert the attention from the direct arguments and instead focus the audience attention to your opponent’s immoral hidden agendas. Note that you don’t have to give a damn about what your opponent’s argument is.

Example: You support non violent just because you are a Buddhist who is on an evil mission to convert all the good Christians and Muslims in our audience.

You are saying global warming is a threat because you are a Greenie who wants to destroy the good economy of our country.

4.       4. Attack the weaker relatives. This is also termed as “kick his shin” technique. An experienced debater will be able to look for an irrelevant but related point and start attacking it to make the audience believe the actual arguments are being debated and beaten up badly.

Example:  Socialism is spoken many times by the evil communists, which means socialism is equally evil and if not banned from our good society, it will destroy all beloved country.

If we haven’t seen a monkey changing into human, the theory of evolution must be flawed.

5.       5. False options. Make your opponent choose between 2 options that are made up by you. This forces them to focus on your two options, whereas there are many more options to choose from. They are doomed whatever they choose because the options are cleverly designed to entrap them. This requires some levels of smartness but will come naturally if practiced a few times.

Example: Pakatan Rakyat is a corrupt party, so we have to vote for UMNO.

Do you want to be a religionless communist or a God fearing good Republican?

6.       6. False assumptions. This is a very tricky but effective way of confusing the opponents and beat them up after that. It involves giving a pseudo assumption that seems rock solid and hence make your argument undebatable.

Example: Most of the residents speak English which means they are educated and hence the theft must have been committed by the villagers outside of our community.

Look at the cows, they are vegetarians and yet they can grow so healthy. So being vegetarian is also good for our growth.

7.       7. Self referencing argument. This is used by many winners in human history with great successes. It is a powerful tool if used together with technique (3) above. The examples below are self evident.

Example: Communism is the greatest way of life on earth because Chairman Mao had said it numerous times in his Red book.

If your opponent detects the self referencing in your “circular logic” argument, quickly switch to technique (3) to question his hidden motives.

I know you are a bloody racist. Chairman Mao is the beloved leader of 1.3 billion Chinese. Just because you have white supremacy in your blood, you hate all Chinese.

If all of the above fail, you may have no choice but to resort to the dumbest, least effective and most time consuming method. Do research to back your opinions and counter your opponents with data and figures. Most of the time, you will lose an argument this way especially if your opponent employs the above methods instead.

Happy debating.