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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.
Murphy's position seems quite clear -- selling sex for money is in her opinion inherently unethical due to the nature of sex -- she advances a few analogies like how rape is treated as more legally serious than non-sexual assault or theft. Destiny doesn't really give her an opportunity to do more than sketch this position, because he keeps derailing by asking stuff like "well what's so different about selling sex than making cheeseburgers"? Clearly she thinks that having sex is categorically different from those things -- this does not seem like an untenable position?!
I often like Destiny's debates, but he does this faux exasperation thing that is quite tiresome (and very bad cross-examination technique I should think)-- particularly this time it is very rich for him to accuse Murphy of too many tangents; his position on this one seems to be all tangents all the time.
I note that he never answers her question as to whether he thinks it would be ethical for him to pay someone who doesn't want to have sex with him enough to change their mind -- it's a pretty incisive question; he has lots of money, he could do this and maybe does. But he feels uncomfortable just saying "yeah that would be fine" -- which is in itself evidence for Murphy's assertion that something is different about buying sex from buying cheeseburgers; also that Destiny agrees with the assertion on some level but would rather play word-games to make it seem small.
He's very far from truth-seeking on this one unfortunately.
She also said she's against all prostitution regardless of the sex of the parties involved, which would presumably include a woman buying non-penetrative services from a male prostitute. But I can't figure out exactly why except maybe some guesses along the lines of "sex is sacred", buuut Murphy has no problem with casual sex. That doesn't have to be an inconsistent position ("ok to give but not sell" is the position a lot of people for organ transplants) but we're still operating in the dark and it's such an easy position for Murphy to clear up.
If I had to construct an honest form of the basic tenets of Murphy's argument, it might be something like this:
"Wage work has an element of coercion, because you're doing work you would otherwise refuse to do freely. Sex also has an element of violence and coercion for women in particular, given how much more vulnerable they are. Taken individually, neither is necessarily a problem because of [reasons]. But there's a symbiotic magnification of the harms that occurs when these two aspects are combined together into what we know as the sex trade. This crosses a line over what we should deem as ethical and acceptable behavior."
I may not agree with the conclusion but I think the argument is perfectly reasonable! If I had to guess, the reason Murphy doesn't adopt this framework is because it would necessarily require her to curtail some of her overall "all sex work is always bad" position. For example it would require her to concede at least some scenarios where the sex trade is not unethical (e.g. male prostitutes, OF model playing with toys, etc.).
This seems like a big counter-example to your post's thesis - it's a big disadvantage of cross-examination. Yeah, it would be easy for her to clear it up, as long as she was talking to someone just trying to understand her. She can hardly be blamed for not clearing it up during a conversation with someone insisting she explain the difference between selling hamburgers and selling sex.
...or you just got the basic tenets of her argument wrong, and there are perfectly reasonable (and perfectly reasonable to disagree with at the same time) arguments for all sex work being always bad.
The problem I often have with your top level posts, is that it's very hard to tell what you're trying to get at. Do you actually want to talk about how awesome cross-examination is? Do you want to talk about the ethics of prostitution and abortion, or the racism of the founding fathers? Do you want to figure out the best arguments for each of these issues? Do you want to psychoanalyze and dunk on the people you're using as examples? I suppose it could be possible to do all of the above, but I think it's pretty hard in general, and in the case of your posts these are clearly getting in the way of each other. I could give an example for a coherent "all sex work is bad" position, but given how your post is structured it would likely be met with a "that's not what she said, and it would be so easy for her to clear it up" response. On the other hand, you're using her performance in the debate to imply her position is unterneble, and that she should modify it, at least somewhat, and this does not follow at all. This is why I think that if you want to go for a multi-threaded approach, you should keep them separated, instead of trying to juggle them at the same time.
I agree there is a risk of getting issues muddled, and in this exchange I'm not trying to take a position on the sex work issue itself. I explained why I think Murphy is being evasive with her answers (she's acutely aware of the vulnerabilities in her positions) and cited to the particular pattern in her evasiveness as evidence for that thesis. I've dissected her interviews and even emailed her for clarification and that's what I have to work with. Even with that incomplete record, I also tried to construct what I think is an "honest" approach to what she seems to be getting at. If you think I might have gotten the basic tenets of her argument wrong, can you be specific about what my error is?
If I was analyzing your behavior the same way you're analyzing Murphy's, I'd likely come to the conclusion that this was deliberate.
I don't think you demonstrated her avoidance so much as you invented it. Your email exchange is a good example. If memory serves, you asked her how she ended up coming to her beliefs about prostitution, and, like a normal person, she recalled the events that made an impression on her - conversations she had with proustites. You then framed it as her admitting to following a data-driven approach, in supposed contradiction to her earlier statement that no data could change her mind, even though there is no contradiction between these statements.
This is another point against cross-examination being awesome: even when someone is being clear about what they believe, you can ask unrelated question, and frame the answer to imply they believe something they don't.
Sure:
The first error was implying that the "sex is sacred" view somehow contradicts her views on casual sex.
The second error was to use the first one to paint your version of the "basic tenets" as a more reasonable argument.
The third error was ascribe the supposedly more reasonable views to her, despite no evidence that she holds them.
The fourth error was declaring that the likely reason she did not express the views, which there is no evidence she even holds, was that expressing them would force her to adjust her position.
You are welcome to do so and I would be eager to hear your evidence. I would be curious to know how you'd address one of the first hurdles, namely that I do agree with Murphy that selling sex is qualitatively different than virtually every other job. If I'm discussing cross-examination deliberately as just a pretext, why would I be doing so to undermine my own position?
I don't know what else to say here, she literally refused to answer Destiny's question and walked off, and she ignored multiple questions I asked her (e.g. most prominent one was how she ascertains the quality of a study, to her credit though she answered most of them). That's my definition of "avoidance", I'm not sure if you have a different one.
'Sacred' and 'casual' are not direct antonyms, but it seems fair to say that they point to completely different directions. I readily admit that I don't know if this necessarily is a contradiction for Murphy, because I don't know how she'd reconcile the positions.
I don't follow. Is the problem that I used what you think is an erroneous premise, or that I declared my alternative argument to be more reasonable? If the former, my alternative argument doesn't rely on the "sex is sacred" premise so you can just take it out. If the latter, it would be helpful to explain why it's not reasonable rather than just assert it so.
This is very confusing. There's overwhelming evidence that she holds the premises that selling sex is coercive because money is involved, and that sex makes women vulnerable, she said exactly so in the video we're discussing. I have no idea how you would overlook that. If what you meant to say is that she doesn't hold the exact argument I just made, well yes, that's why I said it was my own reformulation attempt instead of attributing it to her. Please let me know if I should've have been even more specific.
Again, if you think something is an error, it helps to address the specific arguments I made for why I reached that conclusion rather than just assert it's wrong. "Is too" "Is not" is not a productive exchange.
I'd have to go through your posts, but I feel like establishing a pattern where you mix a bunch of topics during the course of an argument would be easy enough. The challenge would be to get evidence that you do it on purpose, in order to muddle the issues. Thankfully your approach does not require much in terms of evidence, all I'd have to do is write a plausible story, where your actions are interpreted in an uncharitable light.
Because you wouldn't be undermining your own position. It's pretty clear that the reason you disagree with Murphy is that she thinks all pornography and all prostitution is bad, and you think it can be bad, but in some cases can be ok.
Usually when you accuse someone of being evasive or avoidant, it means they are deliberately trying to not answer a specific question. Her hanging up on Destiny is not evidence of her avoiding a question. There are many other reasons that could explain her refusing to continue the conversation, including the ones she directly stated prior to leaving the stream, or Destiny's conduct during the debate outlined by jkf.
"Sacred" in this context just means "regarding it higher than other day-to-day activities", it can mean anything from "only between married couples" to "only if you feel an emotional connection to the person" (or what the kids these days call "demisexual"). "Casual sex" usually means "outside of a romantic relationship, and with no expectation of it leading to one" it too can mean anything from "sucking off random dudes in bathroom stalls" to "I met someone at a conference, they're from the other side of the world, so there was no chance of it going anywhere, but we were vibing so great together that I spent the night with them anyway". Between the corners of these extremes there's plenty of space for someone being ok with casual sex, but believing it's sacred enough to not be for sale.
It does rely on it. If the "sex is sacred" argument is kept on the table, you can't go on to declare that the likely reason she did not express the argument you outlined, is because it would force her to modify her position. There's still the possibility that that she's just going with the "sex is sacred" approach instead.
And these are all very different from what you wrote in your outline, so I'm not overlooking them, you're moving the goalposts.
"Women are vulnerable (during sex)" does not mean there's an element of violence and coercion in sex. "Selling sex is coercive, because there's money involved" does not imply the same logic holds for wage work.
If you didn't attribute it to her, it makes even less sense to claim that she didn't express these views, because it would force her to modify her position.
Yeah, but that's the problem with making claims with no evidence - it makes "is not" a perfectly valid response that needs to be addressed.
I understand that you're not convinced by my argument that there's enough evidence that Murphy is acting dishonestly, though keep in mind that I didn't claim my argument was conclusive or irrefutable. That's why I included an epistemological warning up top.
What you're doing here (noting how this specific behavior of hers can have an innocent explanation) is great pushback! I offer one explanation and you offer another, but unless you develop why your explanation is more likely, we're kind of left in the agnostic "who can know?" position. If that's your position then cool.
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