How To Win An Argument With An Idiot

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By Jessica, September 18, 2008 9:51 pm

Everyone has been in an argument with an idiot.  It is that person who runs out of speaking points after the first round and deflects every single point you bring up or every question you ask back to that one thing that they support and understand; like having a political debate with someone who gets all of their information from 30 second TV advertisments.  And the worst part is that most of the time this person will not give into their opinion being incorrect, no matter how much support you show them supporting your opinion.  So how can you win an argument agains an idiot when you logically should have?

Admit to yourself that you probably will not win the argument because it is impossible to argue with an idiot, they simply do not follow reason (if they did they wouldn’t be arguing with you).  You must find a way to either (a) call a draw or (b) convince them that your opinion really is their opinion to.

If this argument has came about to kill some time, is with someone you will probably never see again, or isn’t worth fighting anymore it is best just to end it with no winner.  This can be done as easily as saying, “well we obviously disagree so lets just leave it at that” or something similar.  The key is to return the situation to a positive one by then talking about something you both agree in, like how awesome Wisconsin is.

If this is someone that you have to work with or deal with on a regular basis and you need them on your side then convincing them that your opinion is really theirs may be the best option.  There are a lot of people in this world who believe that the only good idea is their idea.

When I was a sophomore in college I was involved with our 1/4 Scale Tractor Design team where I had the honor of working with one of these persons, we will call him Doofus.  After 5 months of building a tractor from scratch we took it to competition where we failed our safety check because out exhaust was to loud.  Doofus was incharge of the exhaust and he wanted it to “sound sweet” so it was loud, no mufflers or anything.  We went out and bought mufflers to put on the tractor so we could still compete and he threw a hissy fit because then the exhaust wouldn’t sound sweet, but without the mufflers we wouldn’t be able to compete at all.  He cared more about his idea then the group goal and was willing to throw all of our hard work away because it wasn’t his way. After half an hour of arguing we convinced him that the mufflers were his idea and glorified him for saving the group because he welded the mufflers on. We ended up taking 22nd because Doofus also was in charge of the gas line which came off during the competition.  Our design took 5th, he had no part of that.  At the end of the day Doofus celebrated saving the team with his mufflers while we drank to him graduating and never having to work with him ever again.  Other teams knew what happened, they could see the truth and that was good enough for us.

Idiots tend to argue about stuff they don’t understand because they want to feel superior then others, and most of the time they only way to win an argument is to convince them that they have really won.

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Leaders Don’t Make Changes

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By Jessica, September 16, 2008 9:48 pm

I am currently taking a professional development course with instructors from the Centre for Applied Leadership where the ongoing theme of this course is ‘learning how to be courageous followers’.  After hearing this for the eight time I started getting a bit skeptical about what I would be able to get out of this class until I head the statement, “we are teaching you how to follow because when you graduate you will go into the corporate world as a follower.”  My neighbor and I looked at each other with uneasy faces and I commented, “Why are we learning how to be followers when we’re suppose to be learning leadership skills?”  I want to leadership skills, not how to be a good follower which in my mind entails a life of menial work and servitude all in hopes of someday having a cubical with a view of a window (not necessarily a window view).  I was not ready to consider that my possible fate after graduation, that’s not the real world I signed up for. But as soon as that fear of neutral colored walls and dim fluorescent lights set in I had an epiphany, I don’t want to learn how to be a courageous follower because it is a skill that isn’t in my set yet.

I took on presidency of my Greek organization this semester and in preparation for the duty I read many books on team building, leadership, facilitating meetings, and spoke with many people about their leadership styles.  One piece of advice which I kept hearing was that in order to lead one must first learn to follow.  I thought I had that down, I haven’t had a lot of formal leadership experience but I sure have a had a lot of following experience.  It was a valuable piece of advice that I had ignored because I thought that I had already mastered it, that is thought in the past tense because I have indeed not mastered it.

You can’t grow if you don’t know what you don’t know.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or said that, and its great advice but I’d like to offer another piece of advice, you can’t grow unless you’ll admit that you don’t know what you think you know.

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