Dave

“Facts don’t care about your feelings.” — Ben Shapiro

Gotta be honest with ya, I love a good debate. It’s great to see two really smart people go toe-to-toe, each presenting facts and packaging them into convincing arguments that lead me to see both sides of an issue, and think differently about it when they’re done.

Realizing that I haven’t seen one of those since the Internet was invented, I have to accept what passes as a debate these days: Twitter threads, or memes about political candidates, ad hominem attacks, or dripping condescension. (With a nod to the late, great Bob Newhart, condescension is when we need to lower ourselves to your level to explain something.)

Guilty As Charged

I lifted that meme from the Internet. If you’re following this particular thread, apparently, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who is Donald Trump’s running mate, may have made some positive comments about Diet Mountain Dew at one point, thus drawing the ire of anyone who (1) leans Left and (2) likes a good meme.

To prove we’re equal-opportunity here, let’s share something from the Right: Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking with reporters after the release of hostages a couple nights back.

Neither of these above memes are arguments. They’re both…just…things. One’s a meme, the other’s a tweet. Neither are gonna help you do anything other than cement the thinking of BOTH your argument — “Vance is a douche!” “Harris can’t speak on her feet!” — and your opponent’s — “Vance is cool, not a douche.” “Harris brings the calmness the moment demands.”

So now that the “Both Sides” presentation is out of the way, time for the point behind this here article: you have tools at your disposal to be really REALLY good at winning your argument. We’ll share two of our favorites here, and we’ll use a current controversy to do so.

Let’s get to work.

Tool #1: Being Dispassionate

“What are you passionate about?” Heck, I don’t know. And I’m not sure that’s your business, anyway.

If faced with an issue to dissect, and an argument to win, maybe it’s time to channel your inner Ron Swanson, remove any feelings, and figure out what’s going on in the most laissez-faire manner possible.

In other words, become “dispassionate.”

So our example is ripped from the headlines:

A boxer from Algeria, Imane Khelif, won a preliminary boxing match in the Women’s Olympic boxing competition against an Italian boxer named Angela Carini. The match ended abruptly after Carini withdrew from the fight at the 43-second mark.

Carini claimed later that she had never been hit so hard in her life; the reason was that Khelif had previously been banned from competition for “failure to meet eligibility criteria for participating in the women’s competition.”

If you’re not familiar with the rest of the back story from the Olympic boxing controversy, you can read up at this link from a site called Reduxx. Also worth reading is the statement from the International Boxing Association. Some careful study of the issue is necessary and, to borrow from the line above, find some facts that don’t care about your feelings.

Using logic, here’s our best Occam’s Razor explanation.

First, how did we get to this week:

• The Algerian Boxer was banned from competition because testing by the IBA revealed that the boxer had male sex characteristics
• The boxer in question was raised as a female by her family, but
• Algeria, being an Islamic country, would not have allowed for a transgender individual to compete
• Therefore, the boxer, while raised as a female, has enough of something (either testosterone or XY chromosome or actual genitalia) to be technically biologically male.

Having been declared “male” by a governing body (the IBA) that is charged with protecting competitors, the International Olympic Committee, bowing to PR pressure, decided to reframe the argument:

• The boxer was raised as a female
• The boxer’s passport reads “female”
• The IBA is not qualified to make a determination; or, more accurately, we are deemed more qualified to make a determination
• And we cannot keep females from competition against other females.

It’s then possible to draw a dispassionate conclusion:

The Algerian Olympic Boxing Team went along with the assumption that, despite testing from a recognized governing body, they had a potential medalist on their team. The IOC went along with the assumption that keeping people from competing — despite compelling reasons to do so — is not right.

The blowback from this decision has been…severe.

That particular “tweet” (which is what we used to call a post on X, now it’s a…”post on X”) has nearly 300 million views. (Or, accurately, some people are really passionate about the issue.)

Removing Empathy, Replacing it with Logic

One explanation of a dispassionate argument is this: take out any and all empathy, replace it with logic.

Empathy, here, may ask you to feel bad for the Algerian boxer — how must she feel to be subject to this negative publicity? — and the Algerian team and the IOC for having to deal with all the scrutiny.

Logic, though, can still have you feeling bad for *at most* the Algerian boxer; it is highly likely — based on the available evidence and the recent testing from the IBA — that Khelif has something called “Differences in Sexual Development,” or DSD. Khelif should not have been allowed to proceed to the Olympics if it was determined that rules for qualification could not be met.

Tool #2: The Steel Man

You’ve heard of “Straw Man” arguments — where one side completely misrepresents what the other is arguing, or refutes a different argument from the one being presented — but you may not have heard of “Steel Man” arguments.

The easiest way to explain is this: if a “Straw Man” is flimsy, think of a “Steel Man” as the opposite of flimsy. Try to find the strongest case on the opposing side of your argument, and see what holes you can poke into that case.

Using our current events example, a Steel Man argument for the Algerian boxer might go like this:

• Khelif has been female from birth, as evidenced by photos of Khelif as a youngster wearing female clothes and presenting as a female
• Khelif’s passport identifies her as female
• The IBA test has remained secret and, despite the IBA ruling against Khelif’s eligibility, the IBA has since been discredited by the IOC
• The IOC, as the governing body behind the Olympics, should be the final arbiter of fairness
• Any perceived differences in fast-twitch muscles, strength, or stamina should be attributed to superior athletic ability and better training.

The important thing here is to use the Steel Man to try to figure out whether the other side has a good argument, and to use what you learn to potentially bolster your own.

Where To Next?

My goal here is not to tip my hand too much about how I feel about this particular situation — though you can probably guess where I fall on this issue; it’s a shame that Olympians have lost out on opportunities to compete when the IOC has failed to recognize the IBA testing, especially in a situation that logically looks like they’re letting a male compete against females — but to ask you to do two things with the next argument:

1. Become Dispassionate. If you remove feelings — knowing that someone’s will always be hurt — and thing logically, you’ll likely have more clarity around your own point of view.
2. Consider the Steel Man. The other side has to have some benefits to their argument, right? If you poke around and look for them, you’re likely going to find out why the other side thinks like they do. And you may even find ways to beef up your own argument.

Here’s to some clarity for us all.