LPT: Argue with the Best Possible Version of the Other Person's Argument

I had trouble thinking of one off-hand, though I'd love for other people to contribute because I don't think this is a great example. A Google search found this.

Here is a discussion I once had with a mother of an 18-year old I had just thrown off a high school varsity athletic team I was coaching. I was new so I did not know the kid’s reputation. But it was such that when I was asked by the principal how the team was going and I started to say, “There is one kid…” He stopped me in mid-sentence and said let me guess, then stated the name of the kid in question.

Apparently, he had been a pain in the ass in the local schools since first grade. So his mom comes in to tongue-lash me in front of the team about it. At one point, I list all of his transgressions on the team—transgressions she could not deny were misbehaviors.

Her response was to demand, “How did YOU behave when YOU were 18?”

“I was a cadet at West Point when I was 18.” I thought that was one of the world’s greatest answers to a woman trying to prove I, too, was a juvenile delinquent at that age. It wasn’t especially clever on my part. It was just a fact. She had committed the cardinal lawyer’s cross examination mistake of asking a question to which she did not already know the answer.

In a nanosecond, she shot back, “This isn’t West Point!”

Do you see what she did there? She knew the point he was trying to make. His point was that he was a very good kid at 18 and that not all boys are bad kids at that age. As the writer points out, she could have responded to his intent and replied that he wasn't a good example of the boys-will-be-boys argument; this would have (maybe rightly) defined him as an outlier. Instead, she changed around the intended meaning of what he said entirely. By responding, "This isn't West Point!" you may think she's making a great point, because it is impactful. It's natural to think, "What a jerk. He doesn't realize how privileged he was." While steering into privilege may seem like a good tactic, it's actually a straw man effort.

/r/LifeProTips Thread