Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together by Ian Leslie (2021)

In this book, Conflicted, Ian Leslie draws essential lessons on how to disagree well from world-class experts: interrogators, hostage negotiators, divorce mediators, diplomats, and addiction counselors.

It tells inspiring stories of productive disagreements, from the invention of the airplane to the success of The Rolling Stones, and combines them with fascinating insights from the science of human communication.

Conflicted | Ian Leslie and Russ Roberts

We don’t have a good word for engaging in a non-hostile disagreement with the shared aim of moving the participants towards a new understanding, better decision or new idea.

• Debate implies a competition with winners and losers.
• Argument comes tinged with animosity.
• Dialogue is too bland.
• Dialectic is too obscure.

We talk about argument as if it is war: we say that her claims are indefensible, that he attacked the weakest point of my thesis, that I demolished his argument, that she shot down my idea .

We see the person we are arguing with as an enemy who must be defeated.

It's possible though to experience argument, very differently.

Instead of finding it stressful and unpleasant, we can find it stimulating and enjoyable.

Instead of driving us apart, it could draw us together.

Credit: Ian Leslie

Resources

• Aeon: A good scrap

 

 
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Posts where this book is embedded

•  Disagree Constructively How to disagree well
•  The Argumentative Theory of Human Reason We did not evolve to reason individually but to reason socially

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Book Purchased: 19 July, 2021


Tags: conflict (5) | constructive disagreement (17) | disagreement (12) | Ian Leslie (5) | reasoning (53) | social reasoning (19)

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Photo Credits: Midjourney (Public Domain)