Our Logic Differs

In an argument with a colleague, I came to the understanding of why I often get into such heated debates with others and why it's so difficult for me to get my point of view across to others. The subject of the debate isn’t really important, what matters here is the fact that we both could not get through to the other. This led us to a 2-hour-long argument where each party presented their points, and it was not convincing enough to sway the other from their position.

After that debate I pondered for a while on what happened and how I may have gotten through to that person, maybe I could have said this differently, or maybe I should have used this argument instead. Was I the one who was wrong? Or maybe the subject was flawed to begin with? So many questions like these went through my mind and that’s when it struck me, I realized that time and time again he used a very specific statement, he constantly stated why he was right; “I am right because of X”, even when I disproved what he said, or it didn’t even make sense for him, he would just use circular logic and get back to his original point “I am right because of X”.

I had an epiphany, our misunderstanding was coming from our logic and not from the arguments which were being made at that moment. I realized that our incapacity to come to an understanding was because we had different logical conclusions or, to put it simply, our logic was totally different.

How do you know what you know.

In school, we learn logic and how to arrive at logical conclusions, but the logic we learn is a very basic and biased one based on so many other factors which influence the conclusions we arrive at. What made it impossible for us to agree wasn’t the fact that the arguments we both provided were right or wrong, rather, it was because the logic we used to get to those conclusions were biased.

By this I mean that his experience with the subjects of our debate was totally different from mine, and this both prevented us from thinking objectively about the whole situation.

Let's take, for example, we are having an argument about the price of milk. If I had a good experience with milk, of course I am going to be rooting for it, but a person who had a bad experience with milk will be rooting against it. In those instances, it's very difficult for us to draw an objective conclusion.

The information & experience we have about certain things influence the logic we use to evaluate those things, and really prevents us from drawing the same conclusions. The closer you are affected by a certain circumstance, the harder it would be for you to stay objective. Therefore, winning that debate was already flawed for both of us because the subject was something we both had very different experiences with. When you think of it, a lot of the debates we have often come down to this, you had a good experience you are for, you had a bad experience you are against.

Conclusion

It's quite complicated and difficult to find common grounds with persons who have had a very different experience from us about a specific subject. When we all hate someone, it's easy for us to agree on that person being bad. When we both love something it's easy for us to agree about that thing, but when we’ve had different experiences with something then we tend to fall on opposite sides, and it makes it complicated for us to agree. I can’t possibly judge something as being good when I had such a negative experience with it, and this applies to a lot of things in our lives;

• Football, you had a bad experience with a team they are a bad team from now on
• Politics, you had a bad experience with a politician they are terrible from now on
• Services, you received poor customer service, they are terrible from now on etc

The conclusions we draw are based on the logic we used, so when this logic is flawed because of the experience we had, then that means we are going to reach the wrong conclusion and arguing becomes pointless.

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Thanks for reading 😊