How to Win Arguments

This post would fall under the "advice" part of my blog. You probably guess that I have a decent sized ego, and rightly so in most cases. I have way too many talents, skills, hobbies and interests that I excel at but few are on par with my ultimate ability, persuasion.

I want to maybe help you, my loyal readers, with your persuasion skills. To give you a brief rundown of my persuasion experience:

I worked for a retail store for 4 years catching employee theft and interrogated HUNDREDS of employees into admitting theft, often with very little evidence or just on a hunch. I caught an accounting employee stealing cash who ended up admitting to stealing roughly $1 Million dollars over a number of years. After getting a cashier to admit stealing many items, I even drove her to her house while we recovered all the items conveniently gift wrapped under the christmas tree (that's how ruthless I was at one point). Here is a brilliant line I would say when I knew someone was stealing but I didnt know exactly what:

Me : "John, I know all about it, just be honest with me...how many computers have you gotten away with here?

John: "What!? Computers!!?? I never took no computers! All I ever took was a cd or two, but I swear that was it!"

Heh, tricked into an admission so easily.


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Then I ended up going into sales, where I really started profiting heavily. I convinced complete strangers to sign contracts for tens of thousand of dollars daily. Eventually I started my own businesses with one of them strictly dealing with negotiation.

Anyways, enough with the chatter, I want to help you win arguments. You may have to somewhat pay attention to this, and it will take some concentration and practice on your behalf, but it's worth it. An argument could be anything that someone questions you on or states to you. Maybe your friend says something like

"your blog is stupid."

Or they say

"why do you waste time blogging all day?"

The number one rule on any debate or argument is NOT TO GET DEFENSIVE. You cannot make the deadly mistake of trying to defend yourself at this point, you will lose. If you lose your cool or throw a tantrum, you have lost the argument as well. So stay calm, Mr C is gonna help you out.




If they make a statement like "Your blog is stupid."

You must at this point turn the conversation around, or clarify it. You may respond to this by saying something like "no its not, I have 1000 followers who comment all the time and love it!" That didn't win the argument did it? Also what you just said was a logical fallacy, but fallacies are something way beyond the scope of this. A great way to respond to a statement like this is, "What exactly do you mean?", or "Why do you say that?". This will force them to reduce their silly statement down to specifics, which will then either get to the real point of their thinking, or it will just make them implode trying to think of a valid reason they said that. Either way, you just continue to keep asking for more specifics by asking "How so", or "be more specific". This I guarantee you will frustrate the hell out of them, and have now managed to make them prove their own point, instead of you arguing theirs. :)

If they give you a question like "why do you waste time blogging all day?"

You cannot start giving reasons in order to try to defend yourself. Remember if you are arguing from their point, you will always lose. The proper thing to do is to shove the question right back at them and not take hold of it yourself. Answer these questions with "What answer would satisfy you?"

This throws them right off guard, clarifies the concern, and doesn't allow you to take ownership of the argument. They will probably respond with something like "I dont know, thats why I asked", and you just have to start clarifying and reducing the question down to specifics. "What answer are you looking for?", "How do you mean?", "Why do you ask?" are all great clarifying questions that will bring the argument down to specifics, and you will easily win everytime. Most likely the reason they said these things are because of one or two little concerns that probably had nothing to do with the initial statement where you can just simply turn it around by asking something like "what the hell does that have to do with blogging, can't you see your statement was ridiculous?" Then they have to argue their point, which they won't be able to and you win.

So remember...

1. Never get defensive.
2. Change the question. ("what exactly do you mean?", "what answer would satisfy you?")
3. Clarify and Reduce to specifics ("how so", "in terms of what?", "be more specific")
4. Make them argue their own point, which is hilariously funny to watch. (try saying "Are you not happy with yourself or something?" during this stage, it makes them feel like shit!)

Another great way to win an argument is to change the subject! Now its not the stupid idea of just blatantly cutting them off, but you have to throw a decoy out there. You may have done this before but didnt realize how powerful a tactic it is. Say you and your lover are fighting and he accuses you of cheating, just bring up the time you caught him texting that chubby girl he met at the store, and now he has to defend that point which will again be hilarious to watch! Once you throw a good decoy out there, the initial argument will be nulled so long as you let them both go.

You can also use the decoy tactic in everyday life. Lets say you are buying a car, and the salesman mentions something like "this car comes in green. blue and yellow." Maybe you secretly want yellow, but all of a sudden you could make the fact that it doesnt come in red the biggest concern! This now takes priority and you can now leverage the fact that it doesnt come in red to your advantage, by "I guess I would settle for the yellow one if it was wayyyyyy cheaper....sigh"

I hope this hasn't been too complicated for you, but I know that most of my bloggy friends here do seem intelligent enough to grasp these concepts. If this shit bores you, let me know and if you want more advice like this let me know too.