 I don't believe in the story of the Garden of Eden, but sometimes I'll troll people by saying something like, the serpent did nothing wrong. You know, just for the snake of argument. You've probably been involved in a conversation where someone takes it upon themselves to play Devil's Advocate to pretend as if they disagree with some popular opinion to expose its flaws. The term comes from a discontinued practice in the Catholic Church, where a designated priest would give all the unpleasant reasons that some recently dead Saint-like person wasn't actually deserving of sainthood, just so the decision of whether to canonize them or not would be made fairly. It's an intuitive idea to manufacture dissent in situations where it seems like everyone agrees. Even if a majority of the group has secret doubts about the public consensus, if nobody's brave enough to voice an objection, those doubts will never get a fair hearing, which can lead to unwarranted confidence and disaster. What's more, groups that work through some amount of dissent while they're analyzing a problem tend to enjoy better outcomes. They cover more bases and come up with a more varied set of solutions that are acceptable to more people. A little debate seems to be a good thing. If there isn't any, why not fake it? Unfortunately, those benefits seem to evaporate quickly when the argument is artificial. A 2001 study by Nemet at all provided groups with a puzzle to solve, and compared the performance of those that were given a devil's advocate script to ones that came up with the same objections on their own. The results were striking, even with the same counterpoints to think about. Organic dissent resulted in more creative, diverse, and better solutions. It's kind of weird that there should be any difference in outcomes between genuine dissent and artificial devil's advocacy. Why should it matter if the folks who are raising objections are sincere or just playing a part? After all, the most obvious explanations for the benefits of dissent don't seem like they'd be affected by whatever the naysayer believes or doesn't believe. People still have to weigh the merits of alternatives and justify their position against criticism. From the outside, so long as the devil's advocate is playing their role effectively, it would be hard to distinguish an authentic dispute from a fabricated one. There must be something important happening when someone really believes their dissenting opinion that's not happening when they're just going through the motions. As far as I can tell from the bottom of my Google Scholar rabbit hole, there are a few different ideas about what makes a devil's advocate so much less valuable than an authentic disagreement, and I'd like to add one of my own. In episode 64, I summarized an interesting theory about why humans are so good at logical thinking, so long as they're trying to get some idiot on Discord to shut up. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber suggest that our species' incredible mental faculties have evolved to make us very good at argument, which is why their thesis is called the Argumented Theory of Human Reason. According to the theory, the various forms of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning that make individuals hilariously bad at simple logic puzzles are really good for group decision-making, temporarily turning the people who feel strongest about an issue into dedicated engines of rage-fueled research and analysis, while the group looks on, weighs whatever they come up with, and eventually finds consensus or compromise between the two based on their relative strength. It's a great way to divvy up the cognitive labor of finding the best arguments for and against different plausible positions. The thing is, motivated reasoning requires motivation. If you're not actually bought into whatever position you're arguing for, if you're just going through the motions of disagreeing but your heart's not really in it, you're not going to be desperately searching for proof of your position. This is more like playful rhetorical shadowboxing, or what philosopher Harry Frankfurt terms bullshitting, speech that is unconcerned or apathetic about truth. A devil's advocate has no skin in the game. They aren't arguing for anything and won't bring any new information to the table, so the group doesn't get to reap the benefits of a committed brain doing argument stuff. Not great for improving the quality of their final decision. Now let's talk about something a little less confrontational. In episode 135 I discussed finding from cognitive science researchers Fisher et al. that the framing of an argument's goals drastically affects what the arguers get out of it. If you direct someone to argue to learn, to engage in a discussion to figure out what their opponent believes and why they believe it, they tend to walk away from the argument with an open mind, like there might be a few tenable positions a reasonable person might hold. If you tell someone to argue to win, on the other hand, to give a more convincing argument that their opponent can manage, they'll emerge from the discussion utterly convinced that there's only one way of thinking about it, their way. On its own, not that surprising, especially in the context of the argumentative theory, but it does highlight how the context of a disagreement can shape what people get out of it, perhaps even more than the arguments they end up using. When you realize that you disagree with someone who's judgment you respect, rather than scoffing at their beliefs, there's a sense of confusion and curiosity. You don't just launch into a polemic to prove that they're wrong, you want to know why they think what they think. Maybe they have some bit of information that you don't, or maybe they thought of some angle that you haven't considered yet. Whatever the reason, you want to understand whatever's going on in their heads. On the other hand, if you're on a debate team, there's no puzzle of conflicting beliefs to unravel, no information that could pass between two debaters that would change anyone's position. The disagreement is just a rhetorical game. An argument with a devil's advocate falls squarely into the second category. Someone who doesn't actually dissent, but acts like they do out of some sense of obligation, doesn't have anything going on behind the scenes that requires unpacking or figuring out. There's no fact that once revealed will suddenly clarify why they disagree or sparks some sort of epiphany that leads to consensus. The only way out of the dispute is to mount a sufficient rhetorical case for the thing that everyone already believes. We now have two halves of a potential answer for why an authentic disagreement might improve a group's decision making, but devil's advocacy? Not so much. Argument seems to be an important part of how humans figure stuff out, but someone who's just playing a role as a contrarian isn't really invested in their position and won't harness the full power of bias reasoning to make the best possible case for a minority opinion. Meanwhile, because there's nothing to learn from someone who only disagrees out of a sense of obligation, the only recourse for responding to a devil's advocate is to defend the original position well enough. Not to uncover new information, not to explore alternatives, not to compromise, just what can I say that will make this person shut up? Now, of course, when we're forced to reason things through on our own, it's important to consider alternatives and question our intuitions to be sure we're not forgetting anything. It's a good idea to listen to that little voice in the back of your head that meekly asks, uh, but what if you're wrong about that? But in a group setting, maybe it's not surprising that people get annoyed or even angry at those who feel the need to roleplay dissent. The benefits of a pro-former contrarian seem to be outweighed by the advantages of an authentic disagreement, and there are more than enough real differences of opinion without making them up for fun. What do you think? Is playing devil's advocate a pale imitation of the power of real disagreement? Does the gap between the two give any reason to question things like debate club or adversarial justice? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. 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