Avoid the Counterargument Collapse

Selective listening is a real problem. It’s really hard to listen to someone when you think you already know what they’re going to say; the words get filtered through our biases and expectations, and sometimes those filters remove the important bits. I want to talk about a specific way I’ve seen this happen. I don’t know if there’s a name for it already, so I’m going to call it the counterargument collapse until someone suggests a better term.

The pattern I’m talking about is three levels of progression through an argument, followed by a misunderstanding that collapses the discussion in an unpleasant way.

Level 1: A naive but widely accepted statement (“Eat less fat if you want to lose weight”.)

Level 2: A more sophisticated counterargument (“That’s a myth, fat doesn’t actually make you fat, it’s eating too many calories that makes you gain weight”.)

Level 3: A counter-counterargument. (“Actually, fatty foods tend to be more calorie-dense, so avoiding them can be beneficial if you’re trying to diet”.)

Collapse: If someone didn’t follow the whole reasoning chain, then they’ll often confuse Level 3 with Level 1 and think you’re dumb. If you’re not paying attention, then the third argument sounds a lot like “fat is bad”, so people lump it in with outdated diet myths and judge you for believing something so clearly false.

Here are a couple more examples:

I’m a chemical engineer, and many of the other engineers in my program ended up going into petroleum. I wanted to do something that had a positive impact on the world, and I thought that petroleum would be the opposite of that because of the negative effects on the environment (Level 1). But then a professor explained that engineers make oil extraction and utilization more efficient by reducing unwanted emissions, which is good for the environment overall (Level 2). I agreed with them for a while. But then I learned about the Jevons paradox, where increased efficiency leads to lower cost, higher demand, and increased resource consumption, which is bad for the environment after all (Level 3). It can be difficult to convey the idea of the Jevons paradox if the other person isn’t listening closely, and so I’ve had conversations where people think I just don’t understand the Level 2 argument.
There was a Reddit post a long time ago that now I can’t find, but it was what inspired me to write about this pattern. It talked about tire traction. Wider tires are known to have better traction (level 1). But basic high school physics shows that the force of friction is independent of surface area, so using wider tires should have no effect (level 2). But, among other reasons, higher friction tires are softer, and so they are generally made wider to improve their durability. This means there really is a correlation between tire width and traction (Level 3). But if you try to make this argument, people will often assume you just don’t understand the Level 2 argument and tune out the rest of what you say.
Finally, here’s an outline of a discussion around the importance of recycling.
Level 1: “Recycling plastic is not worth the effort.”
Level 2: “Recycling is good for the environment, and every little bit helps!”
Level 3: “Many types of plastics cannot be recycled effectively, and attempting it can contaminate recycling streams and cost the city thousands of dollars, doing more harm than good.”
Collapse: “You’re just trying to justify your laziness.”

Again, it can be really hard to listen to the other person if you think you already know what they’re saying. Yes, sometimes the counter-counterargument is just a weak justification for not changing your behavior, but a good conversation partner will still take the arguments seriously instead of just dismissing them. Ideally, the conversation might instead continue like this:

Level 4: “Recycling is a habit that can encourage other prosocial behavior by helping you build an identity as someone who cares about the environment, and those benefits are enough to make up for the waste caused by the inefficient recycling of plastic.”
Level 5: “But recycling can also create a moral licensing effect. A focus on recycling distracts from larger issues, like how a single transatlantic flight releases more greenhouse gasses than several years of recycling does.”
Synthesis: “Then wouldn’t the best result be to recycle only the things that can be recycled efficiently (i.e., metal and glass and paper and some specific types of plastic), while making a special effort to avoid justifying excessive flights and other effects of moral licensing?

This type of synthesis is what we should be aiming for in our conversations, because it’s where we actually learn and grow and arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the world. To get there, you actually have to listen to what the other person is saying instead of assuming you already know. Ideally, they will also reciprocate, but I’ve noticed that, unless you have a really good conversation partner, that doesn’t always happen. I would be interested to hear if anyone has found a good way to help your conversation partner lower their filters and actually listen to what you’re saying. The best I’ve found so far is some of the discussion around the double crux technique.

Another thing that can happen (which is equally important to watch out for) is falling for the counterargument collapse during a later step of the argument. Say your partner gives a Level 4 argument, but you’re distracted and confuse it with the Level 2 argument they gave before. Because you think they are just reiterating their previous argument, you become concerned that they might not have understood your Level 3 argument, and so you reiterate your point to make sure it came across clearly. This can stall the discussion and potentially make the other person feel like you aren’t arguing in good faith. What’s the best way to get the discussion back on track after this kind of misunderstanding? The only advice I have right now is that if you notice that the discussion has stalled, it’s often a good time to paraphrase the other person’s argument back to them, to double check that you’ve actually understood them.

Maybe it’s inevitable that there will be misunderstandings of the counterargument collapse type, but I hope that recognizing that the pattern exists can help us avoid it.