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Don’t Blindly Use Statistics in Dialogue

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A few years ago, I used to enjoy watching popular political commentators debating or responding to questions from college students after speeches. I gained a lot from the videos because they provided me with new ways to think about complicated political issues. The arguments and responses I watched tended to include a barrage of facts and statistics.

That is all perfectly appropriate for debates, where your goal is to beat your opponent and move the audience. But when I tried to replicate that approach in my dialogues, it didn’t go as well as I had hoped.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Responding to the Question of Rape

One day at work, I struck up a conversation with Jeff*, a coworker. It eventually turned to politics. He began by saying, “In some issues, I don’t care what people do, like in abortion.” I responded with, “Well, it’s not a casual thing, like an appendectomy; it’s the killing of a child.” To this, Jeff grinned widely and snarkily shot back, “Oh yeah? What about rape?” I immediately fired back, “That only has to do with less than one percent of abortions. What about the other 99 percent? Are you fine with those?” Jeff admitted that he was fine with them so I suggested we discuss those first.

Point for me, right? Not really. As great as it felt to turn this common and rhetorically charged objection on its head, I don’t see how it helped Jeff. I’m not sure he’d ever heard a good response to that objection, and I had just perpetuated that streak. Sometimes people bring up marginal cases because they think it will be a winning argument; they want to throw something difficult in your face so they don’t need to defend their own position. But that isn’t the only reason that pro-choice people ask about the question of rape. In fact, most of the time they ask this because they want to know if the pro-life person cares about people or understands the consequences of restricting abortion access for women. To them, as to us, abortion is a human rights issue, and you can’t get around questions involving human rights by responding that such-and-such issue only concerns a small minority of humans.

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Our Take on the “AKA Jane Roe” Documentary

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Estimated read time: 8 minutes.

You’ve likely heard about the documentary that premiered on FX, AKA Jane Roe, claiming to offer the true story of Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade. Pro-life and pro-choice people are interested in this story, regardless of how relevant it actually is (or should be) to our beliefs about abortion. Even if it feels off-topic, we need to be prepared to talk about this, and shifting to another topic too quickly will likely hurt your conversations about abortion.

I’m explaining our main thoughts below but feel free to use these links if you’d prefer to watch or listen to our discussion on the documentary that covers all of the points below, albeit in more detail.

Why does this matter, especially if our views on abortion shouldn’t be influenced by whether Roe was pro-choice or pro-life? The question this documentary poses isn’t what people should believe about abortion, but rather whether the pro-life movement is corrupt. We then need to answer whether it contains an accurate depiction of the modern pro-life movement.

ERI-Dialogue-Principle #36
People are much more willing to change their minds in the course of gracious, casual conversations where they feel safe enough to talk through issues with someone they trust.
 
For more of the context of this quotation, visit our blog to read the full article, “Debate vs. Dialogue: How Do They Differ?”: 
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Our Take on the “AKA Jane Roe” Documentary

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Download Audio MP3 | 01:03:10

After the entire ERI staff watched the “AKA Jane Roe” documentary, we processed our thoughts together and in this nearly unedited discussion, Josh and Rachel offer their analysis of the film, including:

  • Why this story is relevant to pro-choice people and shouldn’t be brushed away by pro-life advocates.
  • A video editor’s take on whether the documentary was deceptively edited or merely biased.
  • Why getting paid speaking fees or through “benevolence gifts” doesn’t prove that your statements are entirely insincere.
  • How the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are adding confusion to this particular discussion.
  • What we believe is the most plausible explanation for Norma McCorvey’s statements in the documentary.
  • Considering several alternative explanations and why they seem less plausible to us.
  • Responding to some of the other pro-life and pro-choice reactions to the documentary.
  • A few lessons that pro-life advocates should take from this situation.

“AKA Jane Roe” can now be seen on Hulu.

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One Easy Step to Avoiding Confirmation Bias: Interview with Tangle Founder Isaac Saul

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Download Audio MP3 | 01:25:02

Josh Brahm interviews Isaac Saul, political journalist and founder of Tangle, an independent, ad-free, non-partisan politics newsletter that offers both sides of the biggest news stories every day.

They start by discussing Isaac’s background and the experiences that led him to attempt to create a truly non-partisan, fair, political newsletter. They then talk about common problems in the media, how to avoid confirmation bias, and how easy it is to fall into the game of snarky tweets, including Isaac admitting that he had published a snarky tweet from his personal account that morning, which they then analyze. Finally Josh asks Isaac for a list of his favorite sources from both sides of the political aisle for people who want to subscribe to at least one source from the opposite side.