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Sean's grandfather had passed away just two days earlier. Though they weren't especially close, it was still very affecting for Sean. His grandfather, who was a military veteran, was a highly regimented and disciplined individual. This was quite a contrast against Sean's personality, as someone who prioritized fun, casualness, and going with the flow. Most of their conversations together carried some undertone of his grandfather attempting to urge him toward greater self-control and discipline. This made it all the more unsettling when, just after midnight, the shaker bottle Sean used for his post-workout drinks fell off the top of his fridge and crashed onto the floor, seemingly by itself and out of nowhere. He could barely sleep the rest of the night.
The next day, when he met up with his girlfriend, Marie, he of course told her about the incident the first chance he got. "I'm telling you, that was my grandfather," Sean said, sitting across from Marie at a small table just outside of a café. "I think it was his weird way of reminding me to focus. On my health. To go back to the gym. He would literally always say that. Isn't that crazy?"
Marie thought to herself for a moment. She didn't want to dismiss Sean's theory outright, but she was a hardened materialist and was far from convinced. Her and Sean's relationship was still somewhat new, and so, Marie felt like this was perhaps a good opportunity to see if and where she and Sean aligned in their worldviews, and to test out the malleability of their conversations. Marie reached across the table and held Sean's hand. "Yeah, that's super weird. So unsettling," she said. There was a short moment of silence before she continued. "But don't you think maybe there's a simpler explanation? Maybe the bottle was already sort of on the edge of the fridge, and as you opened and closed the door more over time, it just sort of slid to a spot where it would likely fall with just the slightest movement or draft? Just a really weird coincidence."
This moment embodied something profound about not only Sean and Marie's dynamic but also about beliefs and disagreements more broadly. Inside nearly every explanation and every disagreement between explanations are the mechanisms and principles through which individuals decide what they believe is true, how we navigate between and around perception, meaning, and evidence. And Sean and Marie were, for the first time, revealing their mechanisms and principles to each other. Regardless of whether Marie realized it or not, here, she was using what is known as a philosophical razor, a rule or principle for determining the explanations for things by cutting away all the less likely ones. Specifically, she was using what is known as Occam's razor, which suggests that the simplest explanation for something that requires the fewest assumptions is most likely to be the correct one. This principle has long been used in science and philosophy as a way of cutting through confusion and complexity. Though, of course, the simplest explanations aren't always the true ones. They just tend to be more likely. The more assumptions or premises an argument requires, the more complex the alignment of factors must be, and the less likely it will be true compared to simpler alternatives. For Marie and Sean, the argument that the bottle falling was due to gravity and natural, explainable movement is far simpler and requires far fewer assumptions than a supernatural event.
"I've had that bottle up there forever," Sean said. "It's never fallen. Nothing's fallen. Then, two days after my grandfather dies, that specific thing falls? Come on. That's a little too much of a coincidence for me. I know this stuff can seem crazy to people who have never experienced it, but I'm telling you, it's real."
"Hmm," Marie uttered. "I've just never experienced anything like that … supernatural … in my whole life. Why would I never experience anything like that?" she asked earnestly.
"I don't know. Not everybody does, I guess. But I think if you accept it as a possibility, you start to notice instances of it."
"But how would someone accept it without ever having any evidence of it? Personally, I think for a claim that big, that there are supernatural entities and phenomena interacting with the physical world, there would need to be super clear evidence. All I've ever encountered are other people's personal anecdotes and maybe some ambiguous, very questionable videos online."
Here, Marie pulled out another razor, this one referred to as the Sagan standard, popularized by astronomer Carl Sagan. It states that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In other words, to make large claims about what is true, particularly when the claims undermine expectations, norms, perceptions, or scientific understanding, then the evidence for the claims must be proportionally large. Like with how Marie is applying it, it's not meant to discount extraordinary possibilities outright but, rather, help provide a standard of measurement for a claim's burden of proof. If Sean is going to suggest something otherworldly happened, his evidence, at least for Marie, must rise to meet the implications of that claim.
"But how can you just dismiss people's experiences? Isn't that evidence in and of itself?" Sean said. "I'm telling you, this was beyond explanation. And we have no way of proving it wasn't something supernatural, right?" he continued.
"Yeah, you're right," Marie responded sincerely. "But doesn't that also mean you have no way of proving it was? If you can say something is supernatural without evidence, can't I say that it isn't without evidence?"
Sean thought to himself for a minute, looking away.
His argument had just been sliced with another razor. This time with Hitchens's Razor, named after popular British author Christopher Hitchens. It suggests that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. As Marie alluded to, the burden of proof always rests on those who make the claim, and without that burden being met, a productive discussion becomes very unlikely.
"But isn't the absurdity of the event evidence of something supernatural?" Sean finally said.
"I think absurdity is evidence of expectations being undermined but not necessarily what they are being undermined by. I totally get why you might add greater significance to it, though. And I'm not saying other explanations are impossible. I'm just saying less likely, I guess."
"So, if your cup just started floating right now and then flew across the street, what would you say?" Sean said matter-of-factly.
"I would say something very weird happened, but I would need to be able to know and test all the variables to say why."
"And what if you couldn't? What if nothing was testable or knowable?"
"Then I guess I wouldn't claim I knew what happened," Marie said.
"Hm," Sean murmured with a little concession in his tone. "I suppose this stuff can be debated then, but just not settled," he continued.
"Is it really worth debating, then?" Marie responded.
Here, Marie used one final razor to shave the entire discussion down to scraps: Alder's razor, popularized by mathematician Mike Alder, which says that what cannot be settled by experiment or observation is not worth debating. Though this is a powerful way of narrowing in on only what can be practically engaged with, like in the case of Marie here, it can also risk taking everything down with it. Because, of course, so much of reality cannot be settled by clear experiment or observation. And in the words of Alder himself, referring to his own razor: "While the … insistence on ensuring that any statement is testable by observation ... undoubtedly cuts out the crap, it also seems to cut out almost everything else as well."
"Maybe not for the purposes of truth, but … for wonder and the openness to possibility, I think it is worth debating," Sean concluded.
Marie thought to herself for a moment. Then, she smiled. "I agree with that actually," she said.
"Good," Sean said, smiling back. The two lifted and clinked their coffee cups together.
Here, Marie and Sean, together, pointed at something perhaps more important than the dynamics and methods of argumentation. That is, how and why we might argue to begin with, what arguments are worth having, how we might go about them successfully, and what the ultimate goals of an argument are, or should likely be. Fundamentally, an argument arises when two or more parties hold and express conflicting beliefs about a phenomenon. Being a species that sees reality through the tiny pinhole of its consciousness, whose view is significantly skewed by time, place, culture, and personal psychology, it is only natural that people often see, feel, and believe different things. Moreover, our sense of identity is largely built on these experiences and beliefs, so any challenge to them can feel like a challenge against us. Being wrong, or admitting to being wrong, is an existential threat. It hurts to be wrong in general, but it is unbearable when it is about something we've built our identity, life, or worldview around. In these moments, it is revealed to us just how fallible, ignorant, and brittle we are, that part or all of our source of meaning or truth, which we have used as an anchor against the currents of futility, is weak or touching nothing.
As a result, for many of us, we don't see arguments as opportunities for new understandings or more optimal outcomes. Instead, we often see them as opportunities to reaffirm ourselves and feel the pride of ownership over some material of reality, regardless of the material's use or validity. But of course, the irony is, in arguing chiefly to win, and in holding so tightly onto our belief anchors, we only work to perpetuate the depth of our ignorance and our susceptibility to being wrong. We remain stuck in place as the world flows by us. This is why it is so crucial to learn how to argue well. Not to always win, but to always be improving how we think and see the world, to maintain greater openness to possibility and the adoption of new, better ideas. To paraphrase world champion debater Bo Seo, intelligence is knowing how to win an argument. Wisdom is knowing whether an argument is worth engaging in, which parts, if any, and why.
In a world that is increasingly fragmented by technology and algorithms, where information abounds but shared truths have seemingly been eroded by the overflow, there is no shortage of things to argue over. Everything has always been up for debate, but now, there is so much more of everything. More optimally dealing with this condition of the world does not involve winning more arguments but participating in them more selectively and thoughtfully. Seo suggests a simple framework for this, called the RISA framework. Before engaging in any disagreement, we should ask the following four questions. One, is it real? That is, is the disagreement based on a genuine divergence, or is it a simple misunderstanding? Two, is it important? Does the subject warrant time and effort, and could debate around it produce a meaningful, productive outcome? Three, is it specific? Is the disagreement over something clear and concrete? And four, are we aligned? That is, are all parties aligned on the goal of the argument, specifically, one that is fair and results in resolution? For Seo, if the answer to any of these questions is "no," then the argument is likely best avoided, or at least paused and reframed until those conditions can be met.
Though this is a solid framework, of course, things are rarely that simple or clear. And Seo recognizes this. He says: "One of the limitations of the RISA Framework that I worry about is that it is increasingly difficult to find the right kind of alignment in people's interests for wanting to engage in a disagreement. So, if you have two sides that simply want to hurt one another's feelings, that's some kind of alignment, but not the right kind that leads to productive conversations." Moreover, our goals can often be hidden, from others and even ourselves. We might think we want resolution, but what we really want deep down is to hear our own voice be the loudest. And more broadly, who defines what is important, real, or productive? Are those not also up for debate? What framework might we use for debating the meta layers of frameworks themselves?
Needless to say, no matter what we do, we have and will continue to find ourselves in disagreements of all kinds, big and small, serious and trivial, worthy and irrelevant, between friends, family, groups, communities, cultures, and nations. Frameworks like RISA are useful for determining what arguments are worth getting into, and philosophical razors are powerful tools to help parse which ideas and explanations are worth taking seriously within an argument. But perhaps more important than any framework or tool are the sensibilities and attitudes we carry in and out of arguments. Ultimately, so much of the world, of selfhood, of existence cannot be explained, tested, or known, at least not yet, by us. And so much of what can be tested and seemingly known can and often does change or reveal itself to be wrong or incomplete, whether through the flux of reality or the improvement of our ability to interface with reality. And so, we will win more arguments and debates not by having the last word or by walking away with the prize of an opponent's concession, but by recognizing and embracing perhaps the only knowable, consistent truth: we almost never know what we are talking about.
But just as Sean and Marie ultimately realized, this matters far less than the fact that we are talking, that, together, we are continuing to wonder, and question, and explore; that we are expressing and listening; that we are knowing and not knowing; that we are trying and improving. More than winning for the sake of winning, the true prize of the game of debate is becoming better and more capable in our thinking. Carving away our errors or unawareness. Considering things through this game-like perspective is perhaps the most effective way to improve in just about any area of life. That's why this video sponsor boot.dev is such a fantastic fit for this video and such an incredible platform for learning software development. In a world dominated by technology and distraction, the best way to learn is one where you never get bored. And one of the smartest things to learn is the very technology that underpins the world. Boot.dev embraces these truths and connects to the game lover in all of us. Functioning as a programming RPG game, it uses modern game design to help you on your real-world journey of learning to code from beginner to expert. Go on quests, fight bosses, earn XP, levels, and achievements, all while building actual projects. You can learn Python, SQL, and Go, build book bots, static sites, explore cryptography, and so much more. Boot.dev also recently launched the training grounds, where you can endlessly practice coding challenges before embarking on your next quest. In the end, you'll be able to embark on your ultimate quest, taking what you learn and applying it to passing technical interviews, creating your own web apps, or building a career in software development. And the median salary for back-end developers in the US in 2024 was well over $100,000. So, it's a fantastic path to pursue. Go to boot.dev and use code wonder to get 25% off your first annual plan.
And of course, as always, thank you so much for watching in general. And see you next video.