How to Win an Argument
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 12.18.25
How do you get someone to agree with you?
When the issue in question is trivial, you have many options, but when it comes to politics, our views often reflect our most deeply held beliefs. It is not common for people to uproot their political identity after hearing a strong argument from the other side. Yet, we often approach political debate believing this is possible.
When we recognize how the other side is entrenched in their beliefs, we are quick to write them off as beyond saving. Without hope of conversion, we resort to insults and inflammatory rhetoric, which only reinforces our divides. If the point of political debate is to convince people to understand our point of view and come to a consensus agreement, hostility is not the answer.
However, our political disagreements have become so polarized that it is difficult to even begin the conversation. We are working with information from separate realities, perpetuated by our fragmented information environments. When operating off of different sets of facts, we can’t expect to have a productive conversation.
Even when we do have the chance to discuss our political ideologies with members of the other party, we often use it as an opportunity to present the best arguments from our perspective. While this sounds like the obvious best choice, we find that political polarization actually increases when people hear arguments from the complete opposite side of the spectrum.
This is no fault of our own, but a symptom of the incentive structures that underlie our current political landscape and the information environments that shape them. When we come across arguments from the other “team”, we immediately discredit them purely because they are from the opposing side — no matter the strength of the argument.
Instead, when we are optimizing for convincing someone to understand our beliefs, we should use the arguments and supporting evidence that most closely reflects our beliefs while still being acceptable by the other side. Each debate is not a finite game with a winner and loser, but an opportunity to convince someone to move closer to understanding our perspective.
The trend of political polarization in the U.S. has been ongoing for over 50 years. We cannot expect our division to resolve overnight. The process of reversing polarization will likely take decades, made up of marginal improvements in dialogue and collaboration to inch both sides closer to working from a shared reality.
To achieve this long-term reversal of political polarization, we must create forces that offset those that arise from our current environment. By aligning incentives to promote cohesion, utilizing bridging-based algorithms to open new lines of communication across ideological divides, and allowing readers and writers to freely explore and share nuanced perspectives, we can begin to cultivate the driving force that reverses polarization, creating a healthier information environment to support open discourse.
To be part of the solution, join Aemula for free to become part of the community on a mission to reverse polarization and rebuild trust in our media ecosystem.
This week is the third installment of book recommendations from the Aemula bookshelf. We encourage you to explore these titles to better understand the ideas underlying Aemula, and if you are looking for last-minute holiday gifts, view our complete book recommendation list here!
Defusing American Anger: A Guide to Understanding Our Fellow Citizens and Reducing Us-vs-Them Polarization
Written by Zachary Elwood
“Americans across the political spectrum are deeply afraid of the ‘other side’ — whether it's views that Trump is destroying democracy or views that the left has grown too extreme and intolerant of dissent. These anxieties are real. But when we view our opponents through a maximally pessimistic, ‘they're all the same’ lens, we'll often act in ways that amplify conflict and contempt. Ironically, our rage and contempt can help induce the very behaviors on the "other side" that bother us.
Defusing American Anger gives a roadmap for breaking the self-reinforcing cycle of toxic conflict. Zachary Elwood helps readers see their fellow citizens more clearly and compassionately, understand how toxic polarization grows, and recognize how small shifts in our thinking and conversations can dramatically improve our political climate.”
The Divide: How Fanatical Certitude Is Destroying Democracy
Written by Taylor Dotson
“In The Divide, Taylor Dotson argues provocatively that what drives political polarization is not our disregard for facts in a post-truth era, but rather our obsession with truth. The idea that some undeniable truth will make politics unnecessary, Dotson says, is damaging democracy. We think that appealing to facts, or common sense, or nature, or the market will resolve political disputes. We view our opponents as ignorant, corrupt, or brainwashed. Dotson argues that we don't need to agree with everyone, or force everyone to agree with us; we just need to be civil enough to practice effective politics.
Dotson shows that we are misguided to pine for a lost age of respect for expertise. For one thing, such an age never happened. For another, people cannot be made into ultra-rational Vulcans. Dotson offers a road map to guide both citizens and policy makers in rethinking and refashioning political interactions to be more productive.”
Undue Hate: A Behavioral Economic Analysis of Hostile Polarization in US Politics and Beyond
Written by Daniel F. Stone
“It’s well known that the political divide in the United States—particularly between Democrats and Republicans—has grown to alarming levels in recent decades. Affective polarization—emotional polarization, or the hostility between the parties—has reached an unprecedented fever pitch. In Undue Hate, Daniel F. Stone tackles the biases undergirding affective polarization head-on. Stone explains why we often develop objectively false, and overly negative, beliefs about the other side—causing us to dislike them more than we should.
Approaching affective polarization through the lens of behavioral economics, Undue Hate is unique in its use of simple mathematical concepts and models to illustrate how we misjudge those we disagree with, for both political and nonpolitical issues. Stone argues that while our biases may vary, just about all of us unwisely exacerbate conflict at times—managing to make ourselves worse off in the long run. Finally, the book offers both short- and long-term solutions for tempering our bias and limiting its negative consequences—and, just maybe, finding a way back to understanding one another before it is too late.”
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