06/11/2017
Jordan Peterson: The coward in the strawman...
"This is lovely because you don't often get a technique from a therapist that actually works. You get sort of vague techniques…. like help the person lay the cards out on the table. Kind of like at a high level of abstraction. Something that you can actually do and if you do it a lot… it can teach you to listen.
Now that's so cool. Now here's the typical argument. We're arguing and I want to win so you tell me a bunch of things. And then I take those things and I turn them into the stupidest possible representation of those things. I weaken your argument, make you look like a fool and then I destroy it.
Then you're making your opponent into a straw man. That's the straw man argument. You take what their telling you and you caricature it. So you can make them look absurd and make them feel ashamed and of course you set up this skinny little opponent that you can just demolish with one punch.
It's really crooked and it shows that you are a coward. Because what it means is that you have to have an opponent who's crippled and thin and starving and inarticulate before you could possibly win. Before you could possibly progress. It's a pathetic way of having an argument.
What you should do is listen to the person and make their argument as strong as you possibly can… and then deal with that. Because then you're sure that you've taken them seriously…. to the speakers satisfaction… Well that's so cool."
~ Dr Jordan Peterson
2014 personality 56:20, Discussing Carl Rogers
"The next time you get into an argument with your wife, or your friend, or with a small group of friends, just stop the discussion for a moment and for an experiment, institute this rule. “Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.”
You see what this would mean. It would simply mean that before presenting your own point of view, it would be necessary for you to really achieve the other speaker’s frame of reference—to understand his thoughts and feelings so well that you could summarize them for him. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But if you try it you will discover it one of the most difficult things you have ever tried to do.
However, once you have been able to see the other’s point of view, your own comments will have to be drastically revised. You will also find the emotion going out of the discussion, the differences being reduced, and those differences which remain being of a rational and understandable sort."
~ Carl Rogers, "Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation"
https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/jennifer.vacca/engl1302/argument-research-project-essay-35-of-final-grade/carl-rogers-reading-communication-its-blocking-and-its-facilitation/view
Carl Rogers Reading: "Communication: Its Blocking and Its Facilitation" To print or download this file, click the link below: CarlRogers.pdf — PDF document, 82 KB (84451 bytes)
