The NEW Art of Being Right: 38 Ways To Win An Argument In Today's World

63 Pages·2016·3.019 MB·English

by  Min Liu

THE NEW ART OF BEING RIGHT:
38 Ways to Win an Argument in Today’s World
by Min Liu
http://www.artofverbalwar.com
© 2016 Art of Verbal War. All Rights Reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One - Introduction
Welcome
What Is "Dialectic"?
The Framework for Arguments
Setting the Table
Chapter Two - The 38 Strategies
Chapter Three - Conclusion and Special Bonus
How to Defend Yourself From Dialectic
Special Bonus Announcement
Chapter Four - About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Welcome to THE NEW ART OF BEING RIGHT: 38 Ways to Win an
Argument in Today’s World!
This book is a reboot of Arthur Schopenhauer’s 1831 classic treatise “The Art
of Being Right”, a book I had purchased online. As a corporate attorney, I
purchased the book because I’m always looking for ways to sharpen my
sword. I couldn’t wait to read it! However, because I opted for the physical
book and the free shipping option, the book took quite the circuitous route to
get to me. Not only did it take me a long time to receive the book, but even
after I received it, it was a difficult read and it took me a long time to fully
grasp the messages inside. Sure, I may be a little dense, but after multiple
attempts, I was finally able to digest Schopenhauer’s tome.
There is a plethora of useful knowledge in Schopenhauer’s book, so I decided
to rework it in order to make it easier to understand and more relevant for
the modern era, an era that is close to 200 years after his original version was
published. I even solved the slow shipping problem, because this book is
Kindle only (for now)!
If we can’t comprehend Schopenhauer’s valuable strategies, it would be
impossible to make use of them. Therefore, in this book, Schopenhauer’s
stratagems (as he called them) are rewritten into modern, and most importantly,
layperson language and whittled down into bite sized pieces. You know those
wordy philosophers!
In addition to summarizing his strategies into easy-to-understand language, I
also added a few more contemporary examples of the strategies since
Schopenhauer either did not provide examples for many of the strategies or the
examples he used were too dated for anybody who is not a historian to
understand almost 200 years later.
I also added commentary to some of the strategies explaining their usage and
my assessment as to their usefulness in today’s world.
I am doing this because there is great value in some of Schopenhauer’s
strategies, but his writing style shrouded them in unnecessarily complex and
obscure language. I want people to be able to easily understand and make use
of his strategies in the numerous battlegrounds they face in life today. The goal
of The New Art of Being Right is to “lift the shroud” for you.
For Schopenhauer and his contemporaries, the battlegrounds they did battle on
were in person and face-to-face. I imagine Schopenhauer and his philosopher
friends (and frenemies, or whatever they were called back then) heatedly
debating various topics at coffee houses all across Europe in the early 1800s.
Perhaps they also faced off in town-hall environments standing behind podiums
and in front of large audiences debating the issues of the age and time.
However, the battlegrounds of modern society are now quite different. While
people still debate in the same ways as Schopenhauer and his contemporaries
did to an extent, people today also argue and battle each other online. They
battle wits in online forums, website comment areas, they tweet and retweet
each other and they even engage people who didn’t ask for a fight! On top of
that, a lot of these battles are done anonymously.
In addition, it seems like every time you try to do anything online, you also
have to worry about and deal with keyboard jockeys and trolls, as they are a
fact of life these days. They weren’t called trolls back in Schopenhauer’s day
and they weren’t online, but Schopenhauer already had a term for a troll’s
favorite activity two hundred years ago (see Strategy #38)!
The counter to Strategy #38: Don’t feed the trolls!
You see, the strategies are still relevant, very relevant. Only the battlegrounds,
participants, topics, and dynamics have changed. Schopenhauer wouldn’t be
able to foresee the technologies we have nor the society we live in today, but
the “art of being right” is just as relevant, if not more important, now than ever.
This book is imperative in today’s world, much more so than in
Schopenhauer’s time. Without delving too deep into politics, we live in an era
of victimization and political correctness where it is almost impossible to say
the “right” thing. You are just a keystroke or an uttering away from being
attacked by underhanded arguments or unwarranted accusations.
We also live in an era where you can face attacks multiple times a day from
strangers across the globe, and this fight can be brought to you even if you
aren’t seeking one out. If you want to do anything online, in business, in the
workplace, or even in social interactions with people, you must know how to
skillfully debate others and defend yourself from others; by others, I mean
haters.
And sometimes you need to know when to ignore!
You certainly need to learn how to use these techniques in order to be “right”,
but maybe even more importantly, you need to learn to defend yourself from
these techniques being used against you, so you do not end up in the “wrong”.
Knowledge of these tricks is imperative both from an offensive and defensive
perspective, and because of the world we now live in, I consider knowledge
of these techniques an essential life skill.
Believe it or not, this essential life skill is not logic. Sure, you need logic a lot
of the time, but that’s not all you need. “The Art of Being Right” was not about
logic. Instead, this book focuses on what Schopenhauer called “dialectic”, the
art of debating to win, a field of knowledge that disregards logic and is
dedicated to defeating it.
If you are looking for a book on logic, you should ask for a refund from
Amazon because this is not the book for you. However, if you want to learn
how to win arguments, then let’s get started!
Cheers,
Min
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DOWNLOAD your special bonus “7 More Ways to be Right: The Art of
Winning Online” at www.artofverbalwar.com/aobrbonus
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learn to EXCEL in verbal skills at www.youtube.com/artofverbalwar

CONTACT me at [email protected]
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What Is "Dialectic"?
So, what exactly is “dialectic”? It’s not someone who lacks the capacity to
produce insulin. I know “dialectic” sounds a bit like a medical term, but the
word and its definition is crucial knowledge.
Apparently, at some point in history the term “dialectic” was understood by
people to mean “logic”. However, “dialectic” started meaning something else
around the time of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 1700s, who
started using the term “dialectic” as a term for something darker.
This book is about this darker type of “dialectic”, the darker arts of
“sophistry”. And what is sophistry? According to Wikipedia, sophistry is a
“subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of
reasoning”.
In order to avoid debate over the meaning of the term “dialectic”,
Schopenhauer coined a new phrase to describe what The Art of Being Right
was about, which is “Controversial Dialectic”; in other words, Controversial
Dialectic is “the art of disputing in such a way to hold one’s own”.
The truth is: You can be completely right and logical about something, but
come off completely “wrong” in front of others if you do not know how to
argue to your advantage, and your opponent can also be in the right and
completely logical, but if you are skilled in Controversial Dialectic, you can
make your opponent come off “wrong”.

To Schopenhauer, logic is important, but it isn’t enough. You need to learn
how to “hold your own” and that’s where Controversial Dialectic comes into
play. This book is about the latter part of that equation.
Schopenhauer’s view of human nature is cynical but realistic. Even when we
are faced with truth, it is human nature to continue trying to “win”. Our
opponents have the same nature, and so any realist will realize he/she needs to
master “Controversial Dialectic”.
Most people are not deficient in logic (okay, maybe that’s not true, but that’s
not the point), but most people are not naturals at dialectic. If you have realized
this and this is why you are reading this book, I applaud you.
Logic is concerned about getting to the absolute truth while dialectic is
concerned about defeating logic. We have to separate trying to find absolute
truth from winning acceptance for what we are saying. Winning acceptance for
that we are saying is the aim of dialectic. We do not usually know where
objective truth lies, so you need to see that there is nothing wrong with learning
and using dialectic.
You may even desire to be straightforward in your dealings with others, but
you need to accept that if you don’t use dialectic to your advantage, it will
most certainly be used against you to your detriment. If you disagree with this
opinion, this book may not be for you.
The bottom line is: Even if we do not want to use “dishonest” strategies in
trying to achieve our aims, we cannot deny that at a minimum, it is absolutely
crucial to learn these strategies so they cannot be used AGAINST us.