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Why Cross-Examination Is So Damn Great
There's an obvious solace within the written medium. You get to carve out a space safe from constraints and take as much as you need to fully express yourself. Words are neat! I mean, just look at the torrential avalanche I regularly shit out just on my own.
But still, I don't want people to forget about the benefits to real-time adversarial conversations, benefits which cannot be as easily replicated with writing. I recently wrote (ahem) about how humans have this nasty aversion to admitting error. You'll rarely ever get someone willing to outright say "I am a liar" and the roomy comfort that we all love so much about text also provides bad faith actors the ability to build up elaborate defensive ramparts in peace. Nevertheless, even in instances where a smoking gun confession is missing, I cite to a few examples to outline how you can still construct a damning indictment using only a few minor inference hops:
Of course, this gets way easier to accomplish in a real-time confrontation. Chalk it up to the stereotype but yes, I fucking love cross-examination and I want to explain why. Lessons From The Screenplay had a fantastic video analyzing the climactic cross-examination from the movie A Few Good Men while using the vocabulary normally reserved to discuss physical duels. The story's hook is watching the military lawyer protagonist (Kaffee) figure out how he can elicit an outright confession from a notoriously disciplined and experienced commander (Jessep) using only the 'weapons' found within a courtroom. The primary elegance of cross-examination as a weapon stems from the fact that, when done successfully, you can fabricate a solid cage for your opponents using only their own words as ingredients. Kaffee does exactly this by asking questions that appear superficially innocent but, when joined together, weld into a formidable trap Jessep is unable to escape.
I want to highlight a few other recent examples, running the gamut across the political spectrum. My aim here is not to ignite a debate about the specific issue that happens to be discussed (though a toe dip is inevitable) but rather to comment on the rhetorical maneuvers at play and see what lessons we can impart. And a strong word of caution is warranted here: It's true that some this veers dangerously close to mind-reading, which is obviously prone to confirmation bias and erroneous conclusions. With that in mind my goal is to ensure that any conclusion I reach is both solidly grounded within the available evidence and appropriately qualified (with any alternative explanations highlighted). I think the utility is worth the risk of error, and the harm can be mitigated by a commitment to acknowledging one's own mistakes.
First up is Nathan Robinson interviewing Christopher Rufo, specifically the part where they discuss whether the Founding Fathers were racist hypocrites — extolling the virtues of liberty while also owning slaves:
So Rufo finds himself in a bit of a pickle. He's fully aware that he can't say "Thomas Jefferson, the man who believed blacks were inferior and held 130 of them in bondage, was not a racist" with a straight face. But simultaneously he also expends a lot of acrobatic energy trying to dodge answering a straightforward question. The italicized portion of his statement above explains why. Although Rufo has made his career as a stalwart opponent of Critical Race Theory (however you define it) he reveals that he might accept one of its core tropes — that the United States is indelibly and irredeemably tainted by its original sin of racism. Notice that Robinson did not ask "Should we discredit Jefferson's work in advancing equality?" he simply asked if Jefferson was racist. But Rufo looks past Robinson's question and sees the warning beacons coming up on the horizon, and so he charges forward in an effort to preemptively maintain a defensive line on ideas he suspects would next be attacked.
According to his own words, Rufo divulges that he thinks racism is potentially grounds to have your accomplishments discredited. If you accept that framework then it makes sense why he would expend so much energy avoiding admitting that Jefferson was racist; the fear is that this concession would cause the rest of his favored structure to crumble. It's not likely we would've gotten this admission in writing; he had to be cornered by his own statements in real-time for this to slip.
I am going to now praise Tim Pool of all people. A few months ago he invited Lance/TheSerfsTV to his livestream to be grilled on a range of topics. On the abortion question, some of the more enthusiastic pro-choice activists have staked their position on legalizing elective abortion not just at the "viability" line (~22 weeks) but up until the millisecond the fetus exists the birth canal. Lance affirms this is his position, claiming that the mother should always maintain full and absolute autonomy over what happens with the pregnancy. But as the real-time discussion evinced, it's not clear if he actually believes this:
Such a spectacular reveal would not have made it through the cognitive filters had it not taken place in real time. If someone's position is that a pregnant woman can do whatever she wants with her body, up to and including terminating the life of the fetus, it logically follows that such an expansive authority would also include less fatal harms. But as Lance discloses in the moment, he doesn't believe that a pregnant woman has the right to take meth and so he offers a justification that is on its own eminently reasonable, but only after it's too late does he realize the self-inflicted rhetorical leg sweep he tripped into.
The rest of the conversation gets bogged down on the legality of certain drugs but to Lance's credit, he does eventually bite the bullet and concede that although he may not agree with the decision he still believes a pregnant woman has the right to take heroin. The eventual consistency is commendable, but the fact that he so reflexively resorted to the commanding ethos of "do not intentionally kill a child" should call into question how much he really believes in the "absolute dominion of the mother" position he insisted upon.
Lastly is our old friend Meghan Murphy again. I already wrote extensively about the numerous logical fallacies deployed in her conversation with Aella on the ethics of the sex industry. Murphy also discussed the same topic with professional debate bro Destiny and he describes the fundamental issue after she had walked out in frustration:
That's a fair question! If someone says they don't like X because of reasons A/B/C, and you get rid of A/B/C but they still don't like X, then it inevitably follows they have other reasons for disliking X they're not divulging. What Destiny has outlined here is an effective method to uncovering pretextual justifications — the false reasons someone provides as a bid to keep the true reasons hidden (likely because they're too unpalatable or unpersuasive to say out loud).
Destiny spends an agonizing amount of time trying to get Murphy to explain what her precise objections to the sex industry are and gets nowhere, and their final exchange illustrates why. They're discussing one of Murphy's argument that the sex trade is unethical because of women's particular vulnerability during penetrative sex:
Take note of the italicized responses; that kind of evasion is not a generally pervasive reaction for Murphy. She speaks for a living and within other moments in this debate and elsewhere, Murphy has demonstrated a clear ability to confidently answers questions with immediacy and relevancy. It can't be just a coincidence when acrobatics are prompted only by these vexing questions.
Murphy's responses make a lot more sense if you assume that her true objections to the sex industry are really borne out of an aesthetic or disgust aversion, and specifically only when men are the patrons. Murphy is evidently aware that this argument can't be spoken out loud because it's likely too vacant to be generally persuasive, so she instead cycles through a rolodex of pretextual (read: fake) arguments that she's willing to unhesitantly discard whenever they risk becoming a liability to her core thesis. That's why she dodges the male prostitute hypothetical to instead reiterate her dislike of men paying women for sex. That's why she laughs off the female client hypothetical as implausible instead of grappling with its implications.
I'm comfortable accusing Murphy of dishonesty here because her acrobatic evasions are selectively deployed in response to concrete threats to her position, rather than the result of random chance.
It's unfortunate that human beings sometimes lie, and it's too bad that they also refuse to admit mistakes. Such is life. Given the examples I outlined above, some generalizable heuristics is to be suspicious of anyone who refuses to answer straightforward questions (in writing or otherwise), or who refuses to engage in anything but the most sympathetic of conversations. A lot of our contentious interactions have and continue to migrate over towards asynchronous text exchanges, but hopefully I've made a case for why talking is still cool. Also I host The Bailey podcast and I'm always delighted to talk to people I vehemently disagree with, so reach out if you want to butt heads!
As a parting bonus, here's the journalist Beth Rigby interviewing Iain Anderson, chair of the LGBT organization Stonewall. It's quite the bloodbath.
The mistake all these people made was in being forced to defend their positions.
The Socratic method, employed adversarially, makes fools of us all. Instead of accepting the frame of their interlocutor, they should have flipped the script.
"So you think that up until the baby enters the birth canal, the mother is free to kill it?"
Instead of answering directly say: "And you think that the second a sperm fertilizes an egg, it's a human? What kind of position is that?"
"Answer my question".
"You answer mine first and then I'll go".
Or maybe some people make fools of themselves?
Tim Pool hardly pulled off some brilliant or devious maneuver here. Nothing here would be out of place in an early philosophy seminar.
He simply asked Lance a couple of questions to tease out his position, and Lance admirably admitted something a lot on his side probably believe: "bodily autonomy" is the strongest legal argument for abortion but the point of abortion is to avoid this issue. If tomorrow a 5 week-old baby was viable that basic, pressing issue of work that helps the pro-choice movement would remain.
Of course, in politics people stay on message and avoid traps like this (god bless audience-captured Youtubers). But that doesn't mean it's not actually a legitimate tension to try to bring to light and that its not a good thing for people to know
Not playing because you don't think you can answer in a way favorable to your cause is actual bad faith, as opposed to asking questions to tease out an opponents position and discovering he simply holds incoherent combinations or even answering and then launching your own questions.
Honestly, I kind of think it’s the opposite. Trying to trap your opponent between heresy and concession is a dick move in my opinion. If the position were genuinely hugely unpopular that might be a bit different. But in this case the debater is resorting to vox stasi rather than vox populi.
Personally I don’t think you can have a truly fair debate in any position where there’s an audience. Two people, in a pub, with a beer. Anything else is grandstanding and manipulation.
Another way to frame it is "trying to find out your opponent's basic beliefs and how they interact . Which is essential to debate. Not even for "gotchas"; you have to know why Lance is pro-choice and why to even have a productive discussion.
It's Lance's fault he's so bad at organizing his beliefs that he trips when he has to consider them holistically.
As for whether it's "heresy": I mean, whose fault is it if your side considers it so? Not Tim's issue.
Maybe not. But we'll have to make do.
I think there’s a problem when those beliefs are widely considered heresy. Then you have the problem of having been asked to publicly commit to positions that poisoned the well. Asking if the founders are racist is asking a person to pre-commit to the idea that they were (and are thusly tainted) or deny it (and thus discredit yourself). In the case of the abortion debate, it’s about committing to frames (a woman’s choices are her alone to make, even while pregnant, or that the woman should have no choices while pregnant that might endanger the fetus).
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I was thinking of Rufo. His opponent is not conducting a good-faith investigation of his beliefs in preparation for constructive discussion, he’s forcing him to admit to having taboo opinions in an environment where that will destroy him. Of course, I can’t know this with certainty but I feel pretty sure.
By contrast, with the abortion case, admitting that you think there are times it’s okay to force a woman to do something for the sake of her unborn child is pretty bad for the guy’s specific argument but it’s not going to get you unpersoned or debanked.
If you're referring to "Jefferson was a racist" why is that taboo and how would admitting to it destroy Rufo?
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Ad hominem attacks don't become not dick moves, just because they are based upon characteristics of its victims and not aggressors. That it isn't Tim creating the enviroment which considers valid arguments immoral, but merely exploiting it, doesn't make him in the right.
It's not an ad hominem. It's simply things inconvenient to admit in the target's milieu.
If that counts as a dick move in debate then the entire concept is a dick move. It's an absurd standard.
No religious debate could ever happen if one party couldn't poke the other's beliefs because they might have to choose between sticking with incoherency and saying something that's unpopular.
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