Tactics

Hey everyone! This is about a thing that my Uncle Dan taught I think it was last year actually... I'm kinda behind on writing about it, but whatever! So, anyways, tactics is simply a bunch of different tactics that we learned about with talking with other people about beliefs and whatnot. It was very interesting and very good! The first thing that we learned about is called the Columbo tactic. Named after the famous fictional detective who used the tactic of always asking questions to solve his cases. So it's pretty much the same thing for us! The basic questions are 1:"what do you mean by that?", "how did you reach that conclusion?", and the last one isn't so much a question as finding the flaw or flaws in the other person's reasoning and asking them questions about it until they figure out that it just doesn't work! I thought that this was really cool because that's what I like to do anyways! I've found that if you ask people questions they are much more likely to talk, and if you ask them specific questions you can get them thinking in the right direction! After all, not many people like being told what to think, but if they reach the conclusion themselves, they're much more likely to accept it and like it! So, the first question is simply for clarification, it's a stall tactic as well, giving you a little more time to think about whatever you need to figure out. And it also avoids confusion later when you're both saying the same thing, but meaning different things! The second question is to make the person defend their claim, after all, it's whoever makes a claim that has to defend his view. Anyone can make a claim, but for it to actually be worthwhile it has to stand up to scrutiny! So, the second question gets the other person to actually defend his or her idea and you know what's funny? A lot of the time they actually have no idea how they reached their conclusion! Usually it's just something they've been told and accepted without thinking about it! And if they do actually have a thought process, it gets you more information on what they're thinking and why, and also gives you a chance to look for flaws in their thinking. The last question depends on what the conversation is about but basically it's just finding the flaw in the thinking and bringing it to the other person's attention by asking questions about it. I found this to all be really helpful, but it's also kinda hard cuz if you're not careful it becomes a contest to try and prove the other person wrong instead of actually wanting to know what they think and why. The desire has to be there or you're just fighting instead of talking. Not so good. And that's pretty much the Columbo tactic! After that there was the suicide tactic, the "taking the roof off" tactic, and the steamroller tactic. I'll get back to those later!