When Persuasion Seems Impossible, We Have To Try
In favor of logic, argumentation, and demanding the truth from an unresponsive culture
I often talk on Twitter about how I love my Substack readers b/c you are not afraid to argue with me in the comments, or bring in new information, or challenge me on my thinking. I cherish this dynamic. Thinking in public is an incredibly important practice and engaging with contrary ideas not only sharpens the mind - it builds relationships.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed James Fishback about his work building a new institution for helping students learn the skills and practices of formal debate. We didn’t dwell much on the part of his story where he fought with the National Speech & Debate Association about how they have betrayed their own mission, but it was clear that this betrayal was too exhaustive for James to combat from within the organization.
Detached from the process, there is a remarkable irony here. Why couldn’t James, a national debate champion, be able to to convince his fellow debaters of the importance of maintaining logic, reason, and persuasion as the core values of a debate society? He’s clearly skilled at pulling together facts and logical argument into a compelling package and presenting it with the appropriate charisma and tone and for the purpose of changing minds. Why didn’t that work?
I grew up believing in the value of honest debate between two parties. I confess I’m not well versed enough in history to trace the origins of this ideal; still I absorbed through cultural osmosis that the individual mind was the birthplace of world-changing ideas, that our words bring those ideas into the open and spread those ideas to others, and that these concepts are refined into greatness in the fires of argument and debate.
But all these ideas mean nothing if they are not grounded in a fundamental and agreed-upon ideal: We must stand for the truth. The craft of wordsmithing and the skill of debate are only properly used in service to the truth. Two people can disagree about what they believe the truth to be, but they have a responsibility to make their arguments for it.
In decades past, we had a cultural and social agreement that this was how things operated because this was how we could make our ideas known and win allies. But along the way something has happened and it seems like people are less persuadable and less open to plainly presenting and arguing for the truth.
What exactly it is that has happened is hard to say. In The Atlantic, Jeremy Littau blames television and social media for the breakdown of reason and argumentation in favor of dunks and soundbites. But it does seem clear that people are less persuadable than they used to be and are simply not engaging in honest arguments with their ideological opponents.
“Shut up” He Argued
Of the many cases in the last few years of authority figures refusing to debate the truth, the most startling recent case has come from the debate over the origin of Covid. In March 2020, several prominent and influential scientists wrote the cornerstone “Proximal Origins” paper published in Nature in arguing that a lab leak was implausible and that zoonotic transfer was the probably origin with bats as the most likely culprits.
This last week, it was discovered that the authors of that piece privately agreed that the lab leak scenario wasn’t just possible but “so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.”
This newsletter isn’t about that topic, which has been covered exhaustively in the Substack above and by Alina Chan, who for over two years has been leading the charge for an true and honest investigation into the origins of Covid.
This is about the how, in the context of this debate, a huge number of scientists and researchers have communicated that they simply do not care if their colleagues are being honest. They don’t care about the rebuttals to their scientific reasoning. They call their critics “conspiracy theorists” and engage in clear intent to smear and falsify.
And yet they remain members in good standing in scientific fields that are supposed to hold truth and reason as their highest ideal. They don’t want debate. They want obedience.
Why Doesn’t The Truth Work?
Having been sunk in the world of Covid debate for so long, it’s become disheartening in the extreme. Some of the most honest, intelligent, hard-working people I know have made their case repeatedly and patiently, gathering careful evidence and presenting it cleanly. And yet, they have found little traction in changing minds on a large scale.
I think of
who has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the CDC is publishing false pediatric mortality data and yet they are still doing it and the New York Times continues to publish the incorrect information.Or the ongoing praise and awards given Apoorva Mandavilli, the New York Times reporter on global health and infectious diseases who claimed that the people who suggest a lab origin for Covid are doing so out of racism and has repeatedly spread false information and exaggerated claims. For her loyalty to the cause of spreading lies and dismissing the truth, she was an honored guest at Yale, giving a graduation speech on the importance of using government and corporate power to silence her critics.
It seems like the advocates of lies are succeeding all around us. Kamala Harris lies about about the Florida history curriculum, is completely and utterly debunked in a well-researched comprehensive piece, and her lies simply become the mainstream position.
Beyond the disgrace of this all, it is tearing at the remaining threads of cohesion in our social fabric. We may believe different things are true, but we should expect to defend our position. Debate and reason have long been the culturally agreed-upon way of bridging the gap between minds who hold to competing facts. If we abandon this coming together to confront one another, we are shutting the windows and bolting the doors in our own mind. We risk turning intellectual opponents into opaque caricatures. This makes them easier to demonize, which lends further justification for a refusal to open our minds to have our views and facts challenged.
For all these topics and issues, the lies are told, recycled, repeated, and reinforced even while they are repeatedly debunked and shown to be false. Why isn’t the truth winning? Why is reason triumphing? If all this hard work and diligence doesn’t persuade, then what is the point to it? What value does it have?
Let The Lies Take Hold, But Not Through Me
I’m reading a biography on Frederick Douglass, who was one of the greatest speakers and writers in the American saga. As I go along, I see him oscillating between hope and despair as he travels through history with the United States. In his most popular pieces, he sounds like a man who never doubted that truth and justice would win in the end, which the author attributes to his Christian millennialism. Douglas wrote “Our situation demands faith in ourselves, faith in the power of truth, faith in work and faith in the influence of manly character. Let the truth be told, let the light be turned on ignorance and prejudice, let lawless violence and murder be exposed.”
Douglass anticipated that the truth would win and, while he hardly thought words alone would be sufficient, he was confident they were an important to guide the hearts of men and to move history forward.
I don’t know how to speak the perfect words to bring about the results I want. But I know that talking through these issues is important. I know that refusing to debate is a sign of intellectual uncertainty. I know that the more an authority figure insists something must be true without explaining why it is true, the less likely it is to actually be true. That insistence is a counter-signal that they don’t actually believe their own words.
I also know that making the case for what I think and believe is important to my own mind and heart. I’ll talk with anyone who isn’t trying to play a word game with me and actually wants to drive at the core of the issues. I’m losing faith that this is a helpful way of getting what I want, but it is a vitally important part of being who I am.
My friend
recently pointed me to a quote from Secondhand Lions that I think is apt.Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies… No matter if they're true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.
I love that sentiment. I think it gives important motivation and emotional strength to just keep digging at the data, making the important cases, reasoning things through, and rebuking the lies.
But when the despair sets in, I fall back to an even more foundational principle: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn parting cry to his mother country of Russia, “Live Not By Lies”. In it, he carries no expectation of success or that the truth would win the day or that justice would prevail (which makes sense because he was Russian).
But he challenges his readers, to not be made a participant in those lies.
Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!
This is the rallying cry I find myself turning to because Solzhenitsyn not only makes this passionate plea to everyone, but tells us what that looks like. The man who will not live by lies:
· Will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth;
· Will not utter such a line in private or in public conversation, nor read it from a crib sheet, nor speak it in the role of educator, canvasser, teacher, actor;
· Will not in painting, sculpture, photograph, technology, or music depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth as he discerns it;
· Will not cite in writing or in speech a single “guiding” quote for gratification, insurance, for his success at work, unless he fully shares the cited thought and believes that it fits the context precisely;
· Will not be forced to a demonstration or a rally if it runs counter to his desire and his will; will not take up and raise a banner or slogan in which he does not fully believe;
· Will not raise a hand in vote for a proposal which he does not sincerely support; will not vote openly or in secret ballot for a candidate whom he deems dubious or unworthy;· Will not be impelled to a meeting where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place;
· Will at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda;
· Will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts.
It is clear from this list how far we have fallen from this ideal. This is a list of practices that will get you fired from your job if they demand you engage in mandatory performative DEI training. This is a list of principles that will bar all but the most dedicated partisans from most academic jobs.
There is a purge happening in corporate, government, and academic spheres. They are putting those who will not live by lies on notice that they will not be tolerated.
I do not expect short-term success among those who refuse, but neither did Solzhenitsyn. His primary plea was that we reject the lies not because we will be vindicated but for the sanctity of our own souls. And as for those who play along with it:
Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.
I once wrote a piece in which I called myself a coward. I wasn’t wrong. Since I wrote that, things got far worse at my company. Then they got a little better. Then I was let go (for reasons unrelated to any of this). While I miss my old job, I think that I’m doing better work with people who don’t expect me to bend a knee to their political golden calf in order to feed my family.
The freedom is intoxicating.
Classic Tex Avery: Little Johnny Jet (1959)
A follower recommended this one to me and it is astonishingly cute. In this short, an old airplane (a B29) is trying to find work in a post-war world and is in despair because the jets have taken all the jobs. His anxiety is exacerbated when his pregnant plane wife delivers a jet that looks just like him. To prove his worth to himself and his family, he enters a race as the only propeller plane in competition. This comes to near-disaster before his son comes to the rescue and the father-son team find success and glory together.
There is a lot to unpack on this one. The social commentary is quite similar to the story of the general in White Christmas: the story of a decorated war hero not being able to find his place back in civilian life. But it also an entertaining meditation on innovation and generational advancement. In the end, the old B29’s role is not to become what he once was (a decorated bomber) but to embrace his role as the mentor of a new generation that will quite appropriately surpass him.
When necessary corrections are prevented they ultimately occur but with more force. As Herb Stein observed, "if it can’t go on forever it will stop." Also called Stein's Law. I think we have to hold on to a commitment to the facts, dialogue, and discussion.
"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801)
Keep the faith. You may feel like a voice crying out in the wilderness but you are expressing the hopes and fears of many.
I came across a thought-provoking document by Peter Block called "Civic Engagement and the
Restoration of Community" at
https://web.archive.org/web/20170921045038/http://www.asmallgroup.net/pages/images/pages/CES_jan2007.pdf
here are two sections that I found particularly relevant to some of your concerns or perhaps our shared goal of civil discourse and dialog.
Dissent
Dissent is the cousin of diversity; the respect for a wide range of beliefs. This begins by allowing people the space to say "no". If we cannot say "no" then our "yes" has no meaning. Each needs the chance to express their doubts and reservations, without having to justify them, or move quickly into problem solving. “No” is the beginning of the conversation for commitment. Doubt and "no" is a symbolic expression of people finding their space and role in the strategy. It is when we fully understand what people do not want that choice becomes possible. The leadership task is to surface doubts and dissent without having an answer to every question.
The Conversation for Commitment
Commitment is a promise made with no expectation of return. It is the willingness to make a promise independent of either approval or reciprocity from other people. The distinction is between a promise made for its own sake and a barter agreement. Barter is an exchange of agreements that are contingent on the actions of another. I will do this if you will do that. This means that we hold an out for ourselves dependent on whether other people fulfill their part of the bargain. This reciprocity works as an element of commerce. It falls short of the level of commitment that creates a new future.