 Were you ever frustrated by trying to prove a point to a person who lacks critical thinking skills? It is a difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible task, but there is a way. Hey PCTs, in this video I'll introduce seven methods inspired by world-renowned critical thinking expert Peter Bergogian on how to debate with people who lack critical thinking skills. Focus on a specific question Take a lesson from Socrates. Focus your conversation on a specific question as opposed to a general topic. Socrates is most famous for his ability to shake people out of erroneous beliefs. He mostly did this not through careful argumentation, but with thoughtful, targeted questioning. When your questions are open-ended, meaning questions that allow your partner to talk at length about their thoughts in their own words, not give single-word answers like yes or no, they invite conversations. These types of questions usually start with how or what. How and what questions don't lend themselves to yes and no responses, as do questions beginning with can, is, are, does, and do. For example, ask how does this seem to you, as opposed to does this look good? This will set up the conversation to go in a more productive way, and will open up different options presented next. Be sincere in your questions. Do not make quagestions, a suggestion in the form of a question. Too many times we want to lead the other person to our own conclusions, but forcefully trying to do so may only lead them to become defensive and hunker down even deeper into their beliefs, where they find even more counter-arguments, even if not logical, in order to defend their positions. If you want the other person to consider that they may be wrong, no matter how deeply you believe that you are right, you have to be willing to consider the option that you may be wrong too, and ask questions from this perspective. Be sincere in your questions, allow yourself to doubt, and that may lead the other person to open up to a discussion and follow your example too. Figure out how people know what they claim to know. The most common mistake in a conversation is focusing on what people claim to know, beliefs and conclusions, as opposed to how they came to know it, their reasoning process. For example, if someone claims that abortion is murder, that is a conclusion. You may be tempted to argue or agree with this person about his belief. Don't. Instead, ask yourself how this person came to this belief. The best way to figure out how they concluded that abortion is murder is simply to ask calibrated questions centering on how they know what they think they know. For example, hey Fred, how do you know that abortion is murder? Then listen to their response. A significant benefit on focusing on epistemology, how the other person came to their conclusions, as opposed to engaging conclusions, is that people have developed practiced responses to having their conclusions challenged. Often referred to as talking points, these are rehearsed statements, messages, given in a response to frequently heard arguments. Focusing on their reasons helps people explain how they arrived at their conclusions, getting a fresh route around rehearsed messages. Further, if you challenge someone's beliefs, then you're far more likely to evoke a defensive posture than if you question their reasoning that led them to their beliefs. Challenging beliefs risks your conversation partner becoming defensive and hunkering down. Focusing on epistemology avoids many of these issues because people are less threatened by having their epistemology probed than having their beliefs challenged. Introduce Scales Introducing scales into your conversation can resolve places where the conversation got stuck, encourage new reflection and belief revision, and provide a means for you to track the success of your interventions. Ask on a scale from 1 to 10, how confident are you that X, the belief, is true? Let's suppose they say, I'm at an 8. Rather than asking, why not 6? Or even, what would it take for you to move to 6? Immediately follow up by asking about a higher number. Say, just out of curiosity, why didn't you say 9? Doing so will help them reveal their doubts. Another option is to say, I'm not sure how I'd get to where you are at 9. I want to see what I'm missing. Would you help walk me through it? Used in this way, scales are an opportunity to have someone guide you step by step through their epistemology. This is effective because they are explaining the epistemological gap without you having to think on your feet and generate questions. That is, they are clarifying what you're missing, which may decrease their confidence and may even reveal their own ignorance in the process. Better still, if their confidence in a belief is justified by the epistemological process that brought them to it, then you learn something and you can adjust or increase your confidence accordingly. Turn to outside information to answer the question, how do you know that? This method is called outsourcing. Outsourcing is a broad strategy turning to outside information to answer the question, how do you know that? The goal is to help your conversation partner become curious enough to want to know how they can justify their knowledge claims or to help you realize something you haven't had access to. One option is to use this method at the end of the conversation. See, I'm not sure about that. If I could be shown reliable data, I'm open to changing my mind. Bring it back next time we talk. If it's persuasive enough to change my mind, I will. This will lead the other person to reconsider their positions and will open up new options for discussing next time. Do not offer evidence yourself unless explicitly invited to do so. Even then, ask questions and make sure they genuinely want you to provide evidence. Presenting conflicting evidence may cause the backfire effect and further entrench your conversation partner in her beliefs. Do not bring facts into a conversation. The most difficult thing to accept for people who work hard at forming their beliefs on the basis of evidence is that not everyone forms their beliefs that way. The mistake made by people who form their beliefs on the evidence is thinking that if the other person with whom they are speaking just had a certain piece of evidence then they wouldn't believe what they do. Yet, many people believe what and how they do precisely because they do not formulate their beliefs on the basis of evidence. Not because they're lacking evidence. Offering evidence, facts, almost never facilitates belief revision for any belief with moral, social, or identity level salience. Instead, ask questions that expose problems and contradictions. For example, if Sam believes the soul weighs 7 pounds, ask, do you think 4 pound babies have 7 pound souls? Focus on epistemology. Once you have a thorough understanding of why someone believes what they do, you can offer targeted questions that severe the link between their conclusions and how they claim to know their conclusions. Combine these approaches with disconfirming questions. That is, ask what evidence would cause them to change their mind both about the soul's weight and the reliability of how they know it has weight. Today, what if that experiment couldn't be replicated? Would you change your mind? If the person says that nothing would change their mind, that is a clear sign that you shouldn't have high expectations on changing their minds. At best, you can continue to ask questions which will hopefully bring up a doubt in the other speakers somewhere down the road. If the other person states what would make them change their minds, this could plant a seed of doubt in them as a natural result, since they recognize on their own how their belief could be false and start contemplating it. Stop when reaching their first doubt. If you succeed in asking a question that makes the other person stop to think for 10 seconds or more, stop the debate there. This is most likely a sign that they discovered a doubt which is a huge achievement. Very few people are capable of radically changing their strong opinions in the midst of the conversation on the spot. Discovering a doubt in the other person may create a temptation to keep pushing, but this, yet again, would only lead them to become defensive and to hunker down even deeper in their beliefs, losing the benefit of the discovered doubt entirely. Instead, stop the conversation and leave the other person with a doubt. They will continue to think about it on their own, and many times this new contemplation may later lead to great change in their perspectives. Click on this playlist here if you want to learn more techniques and methods on how to effectively talk with difficult people. Also, check out Peter Bogotian's book, How to Have Impossible Conversations, which covers the subject in detail. This was Rokas, and let's keep creating a culture of critical thinking together.