I’m always interested in ways to avoid arguments. Every time I accidentally argue with someone (a rare occurrence, thankfully!), I reflect after the fact on what went wrong and how I could have better seen the trap before I fell into it.
Here’s a new technique I’m developing for figuring out if a discussion is worth having early on: asking if the other person wants to be “locally right” or “universally right.”
It’s just a weird way of saying “is this an opinion debate or not,” without using those words. (I find that novel phrasing tends to take people out of the mindset of embedding words with meaning that the speaker did not intend.)
For example, let’s say I tell you that the novel Wuthering Heights is a brilliant work of gothic fiction and well worth the read, and that the recent film adaptation is wild, hot garbage. You contend that the movie is a brilliant work of cinema that transforms a dry, unreadable book into something enjoyable.
In this instance, I am of course right. But you can be right as well, in another frame of reference, because this isn’t a matter that has an objective, universal answer. For my frame of reference, you’re “locally right” if you agree with me, and you’re “locally wrong” if you don’t. The further away from me you move, socially speaking, the less wrong you become. If you hang out with other people with terrible taste (ha!), then your opinion can be “locally right” over there.
Now, if you say that the novel Wuthering Heights is set on the planet Neptune in the year 3000 AD, then you’re universally wrong. That’s not a matter of taste, opinion, etc. So if you’re wrong about that here, there’s nowhere else where you’re right.
An important note: people can have incorrect beliefs about universal truths, because people have free will and imperfect information. This fact does not mean that all debates are local matters of opinion! It just means that people can be both universally wrong as well as locally wrong. You can even be universally wrong but locally right, and vice versa! You can say things that everyone around you agrees with, making you locally right, even if that thing is objectively untrue.
So my question is framed in that way – before getting into a debate, I want to find out if the other person believes the subject to be a matter of local or universal debate. Are they arguing about whether the Atlantic or Pacific ocean has better beaches, or are they arguing about which ocean is bigger? A very critical piece of information I’m looking for here is whether or not the other person understands which category we’re in.
If the person says that the Atlantic is bigger than the Pacific and then doesn’t believe me when I tell them otherwise, I don’t want to go one step further before I establish whether or not the other person even believes that there’s an objective answer to that question. While that’s a simplistic answer, I’ve discovered that lots of people believe they’re engaging in a local debate when the subject they’re arguing over has an objective, universal answer.
If they recognize that the subject does, in fact, have a universal answer, then the discussion might (might) be productive. But if they don’t – if they think that it’s a matter of opinion and they’re just trying to persuade you to their side – then you might as well end the discussion. Even if you aren’t sure that you’re right, you’re much better off researching the topic further on your own to seek the correct answer, rather than argue with this person.
If you do choose to argue anyway… well, you can decide what kind of wrong you are later.