De-escalation: It's useful!

I made a comment earlier saying we should be talking about de-escalation regularly here. I figured I would post this here, we can discuss it and hopefully come up with a good set of advice to stop things from spinning out of control. A good place to start is the wikipedia article on it. It's pretty small, but nonetheless here it is. You can google to find out more about it, but wikipedia hits the nail on the head. We're talking about commitment bias. Simply put, it's when you're comitted enough to an argument that you won't bail even if you know or have been shown that it's wrong.

When people won't abandon arguments after they've been refuted, things will invariably get hostile. This is when we see ad hominem attacks and the like. If your opponent employs these, it's not great for their position, but it also does harm ours, because an intelligent discussion failed to happen. Those are very good for our image, and great ideas come out of them. They also better prepare us for more academic arguments. This means, whenever possible, we should stop a discussion from escalating.

There are two sides to this. The first is to not escalate. This is mostly a matter of willpower. Don't let yourself get upset, and remember that no one can force your hand in an internet argument. And, I cannot stress this enough, act in good faith. Don't wait for them to act civilly to do so yourself. That breeds hostility, especially when both sides are doing it, which is usually.

The second half of this is to avoid creating an environment where they'll want to escalate. This requires a bit of willpower and a whole lot of careful thought.

It's true that some people will be comited to escalation no matter what, e.g. manhood academy, SRS, but most of them aren't. Most of the time, both sides will be unknowingly feeding into hostility and then everything boils over and all of a sudden it's an argument between nazis and rape apologists, rather than a discussion between gender equality advocates. I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence when I say that they do this without knowing it, as it requires a lot of deliberate thought, but trust me when I say that you've almost certainly helped escalate without realizing it, and then blamed the other person. Everyone has. We all do it.

So how do we avoid creating a mentality that says "I know I'm wrong, but don't back down" in other people's heads? It's no easy feat. Plenty of you will have ideas to contribute, and I encourage you to do so, but here are mine.

1) Always, always, always leave an out. This is my golden rule of internet arguments. If you create a way for someone to leave their position with grace, they will be much more willing to do so than if you make them feel stupid for believing something you've just refuted. Ideally, you should be able to do this without compromising. A good example would be "Would you then agree that, whether or not society favours men, there are cases where women do have advantages over men in a uniquely female-over-male way?"(following arguments to that effect). This is good because it emphasizes that they don't need to abandon all of their ideals to accept what you've successfully argued, but you don't have to change your opinion. Separating parts of an ideology from the whole is absolutely key to this; if you're expecting to convince a feminist to join us all in one go, you'll have no luck and end up in a shouting match. It's much easier to convince them that male genital mutilation is a real issue and not just snivelling, or that there is a glass cellar as well as a glass ceiling, but only if you allow them to accept this without throwing away everything that they believe.

2) Choose your words carefully. You'll notice that in the previous example, I said "agree". I could have said "accept" "concede" or "admit", but all of those create a 'you vs me' dynamic, so your counterpart won't want to accept anything you say, because then you score points. In contrast, agree is two people agreeing on one point, not one person accepting another's. "Admit" is especially bad, because it implies the other person already knew what you were saying but wouldn't admit it. Very, very bad. It might also be better to say "can we agree" than "do you agree".

3) Be friendly. I know you don't want to be nice to someone whose beliefs you despise, but small things go a long way. Make a little joke (don't hide an argument in it), let them know you aren't the one downvoting them if they get buried, tell them you're enjoying the discussion. Things like that set the tone in a great way.

4) Avoid intellectual shock and awe. We all love doing this, but please, please don't fill somethig up with more citations than the person is reasonably going to read. Scrambling for the intellectual high ground makes the argument feel like an arms race, which is a surefire way for things to turn ugly. In the same vein, if they contradict themselves, ignore it if it does nothing for your argument. If it is useful for your argument, tread carefully. You don't want them to feel like they can't say anything without it being used against them. As a general rule, the best way to point out contradiction is with a question. Not a rhetorical one, either. Something like "what's the difference between A and B". That way you're setting a tone more along the lines of analysis than debate.

Of course, you may feel that there is a time for anger and vitriol. That's perfectly fine, I'm not here to argue against that, far from it. Let me drop some Shakespeare and then explain:

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.

You do not want to end up in an argument when you didn't plan to. If that often ends up happening, you are falling victim to escalation. You need to be deliberate about when you're discussing and when you're yelling at somone. If you blur the line, you can be easily outyelled or outargued.

Any other tips or feedback, throw 'em in the comments