How to Win an Argument
Some tips and techniques
There is only one path to winning an argument — which I will cover at the end of this article, but most of this document will be about how to sway minds to your point of view, usually the minds of people not directly involved in the argument.
First, appeal to emotion but back it up with facts. Nobody is above appeal to emotion; it’s simply which emotional appeals work for you—an example I have used: My father (probably) died due to COVID-19 in February of 2020. When I have had debates over the reality of that particular disease, I often bring that up. It’s factual (he died of unexpected respiratory failure and wasn’t tested). It’s also a hard argument to get around — if you hit back at me in that situation, you come across poorly. You have to hit me with rational arguments, not ad hominem. Since I’m right, that makes it hard to do.
That brings me to the second method. Be right. Do your research, verify your facts, and vet your sources.
If you are right, the people reading can check your facts, and they match reality. I’ve been swayed by someone who came at me with better facts when others had worse facts. In the long run, it turned out that the ones using better facts were wrong… but because they had accurate facts, they convinced me of their point of view. More research and more…
