Leveling the playing field

by Tom Amarque

There is an aphorism by the incomparable Nassim Nicholas Taleb, reminiscent of the wisdom of Don Vito Corleone, that goes like this: Don’t threaten when you are angry.

This is important. Apart from arguing on Facebook being a mixture of bad taste and bad education anyway (you don’t even see the famously combative Mr. Taleb engaging on Facebook—same goes for Mr. Schmachtenberger or Mr. Wilber), we all know by now that the algorithms are feeding off of conflict. We are not becoming better people by engaging on social media platforms. Never in the history of Facebook have we ever changed somebody’s mind that is already made up.

Yet we do it, in the glaringly misguided hope that we can make a point, justified or not. What we are doing is basically hoping for a lottery win. Or we just like to scream. We are all hatin’ on Trump, but on Facebook, we act like him. (That’s why we are hatin’ him—it’s called projection.)

Communication normally consists of a multitude of channels—language, body and eye movement, gestures, intonations, and so on. Digital communication reduces it to signs. No wonder Facebook & Co. are basically the Tower of Babel.

Recently, our beloved metamodern mountain muezzin Hanzi Freinacht pointed to something worth expanding. He wrote (on Facebook, by the way, because he still has hope for us):

“Establishing next level norms.

The concepts of 'cheap-scoring' and 'semiotic smear' that I have mentioned yesterday and the day before are examples of next level social games. Such power games emerge as good norms are established that preclude cruder versions of the same (ad hominems, talking behind one another's back, interrupting and willingly misunderstanding, pinning your Freudian analysis on them and peddling it to others, and so forth).”

With this, he pointed to deeper structures of social games.

He is not the first to notice. Back in 1831, Arthur Schopenhauer, who influenced Freud to a great degree, wrote a short essay called Eristische Dialektik: Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten—that is Eristic Dialectic: The Art of Winning an Argument.

Genius that he was, he found out that every argument presented is a reduction of sorts and consists of semantic and structural malformations. Therefore, you can deconstruct and counter it and win every argument, if you are so inclined. Every one. Exactly because it has a semantic structure.

He wrote down 38 stratagems—that is, rhetorical devices. He didn’t invent them, technically speaking; he condensed them. These are basically culturally embedded. They come with the tool of language itself. And through cultural osmosis of sorts, everybody knows a bunch of them intuitively. Uses them, intuitively. Unconsciously.

With a little effort you can attribute specific stratagems to certain personality traits with which they jive well, and you can also show that the lefties on the political spectrum tend use different ones than the centrists and conservatives.

All these lists of sophistic arguments (like ad hominem, etc.) that are floating around on the net derive from or are influenced in some shape or form by Mr. Schopenhauer. The (indeed postmodern) argument can be made (and has been made) that these power moves are so integral to communication itself that the expressed hope to have a “rational discussion between well-meaning individuals” is not only misguided, but itself a result of a maneuver and stratagem to score some points. I don’t believe that.

Now, in order to win every argument, you need to know these 38 stratagems and use them in the proper way.

The whole (ethical) point of learning these stratagems, though, is not to use them. To recognize those patterns in yourself. To abstain from them. The secondary effect: not to get “triggered” when you recognize them used against you. (You have already lost when you are triggered, because you fell victim to one of the stratagems. Or, in the words of your local high school bully: You’re a loser when you’re triggered.)

Sometimes, people use these stratagems unconsciously, and they don’t know any better. So give them a break.

But if you really want to fight—cold-hearted and with distance and with surgical precision—then fight to win, and take no prisoners. Like Nassim or Vito.

Problem is, of course, that everybody knows these rhetorical devices and stratagems now.

So good luck.