Sarah Paine

I'm going to give you the best one.

That's my thesis.

And I'm going to go into that.

And it's incredibly valuable, particularly in our own fraught political times, where we need to hear each other out.

You need to hear out the counterargument of what the other side is saying.

And then what you'll often find out in a counterargument is that there are actually some very valid points in it.

And it leads you to think, oh, well, maybe I need to adjust my own argument.

So changing your mind's a good idea if the data comes in.

Also, it gets you away from monocausal explanations where you come up with one cause, you think that's it, time to quit.

And if you're thinking about the counterargument, you might get other causes as well.

Also, if you're going to do something like on a job,

and you have to recommend a course of action, your thesis, you had better anticipate what the counter argument is going to be.

And then the third part of this is the rebuttal, because you better come into that meeting your boss with a rebuttal in your back pocket so that you can deal with people who are saying you're wrong.

And the rebuttal cannot be a repetition of the original argument because you know what?

That's annoying.

Don't do that.

Really annoying.

The most effective ones are coming at the problem from a completely different direction from either argument or counter-argument that then shores up your argument.

And my other direction is I've got a Sino-Japanese problem and I'm going to come around with a Russian angle.

So this is my game plan of what I'm planning to do and the analytical reasons for doing it.