How to Argue with Fools

A friend of mine is an investment banker. She asked me yesterday: How do you argue with someone who simply states that he won’t invest in emerging markets? How do you reason him into not passing up on this chance?

My answer was: You don’t. It is impossible to force someone by reason into changing his or her fundamental beliefs.

In the discussion (as she described it) the two partners were using different premises to their argument.

I assume that they both had the long term goal of making as much money on an annual basis as possible. In their argument about how to achieve this goal they were starting from the premise that it is good to earn money. Of course they had additional values and goals like being legal, avoiding high risks et cetera.

Yet from the way she described the argument her partner acted as if he had an additional premise: Don’t invest in so-called “emerging markets”.

He was behaving as if his position was what philosophers call “basic” or “fundamental” (only indirectly connected to “fundamentalism” in its religious flavor). Basic facts are something like “I am” or “I have two hands”, you usually don’t argue about these.

Yet through all of history people have taken facts as basic that later appeared not to be basic at all. Aristotle took it for basic that women have less teeth than men do. Descartes took it as fundamental that God is good and wouldn’t ever deceive him. My wife Elli claims it to be a fundamental fact of the universe that men take out both garbage and spiders.

Most religions are based on the acceptance of certain fundamental facts. You convert to Islam by exclaiming that there is only one God and that Mohammed is His prophet. Christians have a whole set of creeds. Jews proclaim in the “Shema“: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God — the LORD alone.”

Problems in arguments begin when people are not aware of the fact that they are using different sets of claims or moral values as fundamental.

In the argument described earlier the partner was acting as if the fact that it is bad to invest in emerging markets was basic or fundamental. You can’t argue against fundamental facts. The only thing she could do was to point out the problem.

You can tell your partner: “Look, we are using a different set of fundamental facts and values here. We agree on X but you additionally claim Y as fundamental. I don’t see Y as basic and indisputable at all. That’s why this argument is bound to be fruitless. Why don’t we reevaluate our premises?”

Maybe your partner will start explaining why his position is reasonable. In that moment he has given up its fundamental status as you don’t have to argue for the validity of fundamental facts.

Most likely he or she he will find a polite way of expressing that you are crazy not to accept his claim as basic and obviously true.

Whatever your partner´s reaction is, spotting the difference in fundamental premises will help you understand the argument´s structure.