How Not to Suck at Nuanced Debates

I found these points by Krish Ashok to be very useful advice as to how people like us (“privileged, urban, middle class”) should avoid dealing with fraught topics, be it “demonetisation or Jallikattu or whatever tears us apart next”:

1)      Remind yourself that the media will only highlight the rare/out of the ordinary event:

“What would you report on? That most Jallikattu events are largely injury and death-free? Or on the one instance where chillies, lime juice, and alcohol were involved?”

2)     Resist the urge to take a side:

“After being misinformed in the first place, we now take that misinformation, add our confirmation biases, and grab the pitchforks to battle for the stance we’ve decided to take.”

3)     Remind yourself that, quite often, you are hardly qualified to understand the topic, let alone form an opinion:

“I have zero emotional attachment with rural life or the remotest appreciation for its cultural milieu and traditions.”

4)     Avoid expanding the scope of the topic to other things, even when the connection seems “obvious”:

“If we are protesting against Jallikattu, what about the anti-dowry law? Oh yeah, what about horse racing? I see, what about Bakr-id then?”

5)     Recognize witty and catchy statements for what they are; don’t get carried away by them:

“A bull is like a woman and Jallikattu is therefore rape… Analogies tend to work like astrology. The moment one or two things are serendipitously accurate or similar, we begin to trust all the rest of the bullshit.”

6)     And remember, when everything is a debate on TV or social media, nobody changes their mind about anything:

“There is a fundamental problem with debates – a debate participant first and foremost wants to win. That can never ever be good for learning.”

Unless we change this tendency to take a stand on every issue, he warns that we’ll continue to “suck at nuanced debate”. I couldn’t agree more.

P.S. To avoid misinterpretation, the point here is NOT to say that we shouldn’t have opinions on topics where Jallikattu is the backdrop rather than the main issue. By all means, let us have opinions about the difficulties for a government in pushing for social reform even when that is not what people want. Or the “rightness” of passing new laws in a tearing hurry just to handle one scenario, without thinking through the other consequences of such laws or such precedents. But let us also learn to hold our horses about having opinions on every specific issue by reminding ourselves of points 1 to 6 above.