How To Argue With Someone | Buster Benson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 122

Buster Benson 0:00 ... it's considered like backfire effect or the boomerang effect where in a particular context, and if the context is a battle or a tug-of-war or, you know, you're leaning back, you know, and, and if someone pulls on their side of the rope, you don't, you don't, you don't like, "Oh, cool, let's go over there."

Chris Williamson 0:14 (laughs)

Buster Benson 0:14 You're like, "No, I'm gonna pull on my side of the rope harder." (laughs) Uh, and that's just the game, right? That's the game you're playing in that context. It's, um, you know, it comes from fight or flight. It comes from our survival instinct to be like, "Hey, if I'm losing, that doesn't mean I surrender, that means I fight harder." Um, and, you know, psychologically, it doesn't make sense, um, in a r- if you just look at it from like, "Oh, you know, why am I not hearing the information and, um, updating my mental model about reality, um, and then instead choosing to fight back?" Because oftentimes, your survival is at stake, at least historically, you know?

Chris Williamson 0:48 (wind blowing) You ready to go?

Buster Benson 0:54 Ready.

Chris Williamson 0:54 Lovely. Well, what if I'm not ready? Maybe we should have an argument about it. (laughs)

Buster Benson 0:58 (laughs) Sure, we can.

Chris Williamson 0:59 Uh, we, we can indeed, and we're going to today. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Buster Benson. Buster, welcome to the show.

Buster Benson 1:07 Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.

Chris Williamson 1:08 As you might have heard, we've been practicing our arguments ready for you to tune in today, but we are talking about the art of productive disagreement today.

Buster Benson 1:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:17 Hmm.

Buster Benson 1:18 Yes. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:20 Or are we?

Buster Benson 1:20 A nice easy topic.

Chris Williamson 1:21 Or maybe we talk about something else? Maybe I argue with you and we talk about something else.

Buster Benson 1:25 I'm open for whatever you got.

Chris Williamson 1:26 (laughs)

Buster Benson 1:26 You know, I love having a good disagreement. Uh, part of the re- you know, the most interesting part of research for this book was basically approaching disagreements in all parts of my life, and (laughs) you know, I can tell you that that has led to, you know, all kinds of just like weird side effects of its own. So, um, I like going down those rabbit holes and, and seeing where they end up. But yeah, so if you have any like pressing like, like, "Why is this thing so hard to talk about in public?" we can talk about that. Um, but yeah, the, uh, I'm happy to also just like give a quick summary of the book too, if that's helpful.

Chris Williamson 1:57 Amazing. Yeah. I think I've got, uh, I've had some difficult discussions recently with people, not difficult as in we were at odds, but more, um, why is it difficult for us to have this discussion when it's-

Buster Benson 2:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:09 ... not in as much of a collaborative environment? So, uh, your new book, Why Are We Yelling?, why did you write it and what's it about?

Buster Benson 2:16 Yes. Okay. So I wrote it because I really needed to read this book. (laughs) I think there's a lot of people that go out and, you know, write the book that, you know, they, about what they know. Um, my, my career has been in project development, and engineering, and entrepreneurship, and, you know, I was at Amazon, on Twitter, and Slack, and had a couple of my own startups, ran a bar for a while. I just, all kinds of random things. Um, and so I have a pretty personal relationship to arguing and disagreement that I'm, you know, I think everybody has (laughs) um, in their own way. Um, but it has been my job for a long time to facilitate sort of dig- diverse groups of people that have different incentives, different goals, different skill levels, and helping them all come together and get something done. Um, so that's sort of, you know, I've been interested in it for a long time in a professional sense. Um, and, you know, I think part of what had came out of that was, uh, um, an acknowledgement that we're biased. We have blind spots. We don't see everything. We oftentimes fight for being right instead of fighting for, you know, the truth. Um, and we don't really have, you know, as our, in an argument, when our heart rate starts to spike and our blood pressure starts to, you know, go up, our capacity to reason goes down, our capa- our interest in collaboration goes down, all these things. Uh, well, basically it's like here's the time when you need all these skills and we're gonna just remove them all from you, uh, very conveniently and turn you back into like the fight or flight, you know, animal that you, you were billions of years ago or whatever. Um, so my, my goal in writing this book was to take all of the knowledge in the world (laughs) from all the experts, 'cause there are so many books about this, about negotiation, about persuasion, about rationality, about using, um, you know, there's just like, there's a lot of stuff out there, and it's all very good. It's all very... some of it's really dense, and some of, some of it's really useful. But it's really hard to understand how that applies to our regular lives, and how do we use it at the dinner table? How do we use that in a one-on-one? How do we use that when we're fighting with our spouse or our, you know, our partner? How do we use that when we're, you know, just frustrated and angry and we have, we're tired and, you know, when everything seems to be falling apart? All these things that like seem to compromise us and, um, and so I just decided to take a deep dive, immerse myself in all that stuff, and try to synthesize it, 'cause that's what I love to do. I like to synthesize things and make it practical. So, that was the hope.

Chris Williamson 4:37 I think that that's one of the most interesting things that we can do, especially as we get older and we can draw from multiple different bodies of knowledge, different subject areas. (coughs) Intellectual hero of mine, Naval Ravikant, talks about the fact that he thinks joining these things is one of the greatest pleasures that there is in life. And I have to say-

Buster Benson 4:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:55 ... that the same is true for me. Interestingly, I spoke to Professor Paul Bloom from the University of-

Buster Benson 4:59 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 4:59 ... Yale, um, uh, the other day, and he recently-

Buster Benson 5:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:02 ... wrote a book called, uh, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.

Buster Benson 5:07 Right. Okay. Yep.

Chris Williamson 5:07 Um, and it s- it sounds like you're pushing towards rationality here. How unbiased can we make ourselves? How appropriate can we make our responses?

Buster Benson 5:16 Not, not necessarily. So I wouldn't... I'm not pro-rationality or against it. I think that they are, they're disciplines. You know, rationality is a discipline. Empathy is a discipline. Um, persuasion is a discipline. Um, we need to find the thing that's actually the most practical for us to use. Um, and I think that any of these disciplines when taken to an extreme and applied, you know, they could be or are very useful in a very constrained sort of sphere of, um, sort of debate, right? Like if, if you wanna be, apply science to all of your arguments, you can do that, but you need a laboratory. You need research grants. Um, if you wanna apply empathy to all of your disagreements, you really need to be super healthy and emotionally like (laughs) sort of thriving in a way that you're, you could actually spend all this stuff.

Chris Williamson 6:01 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 6:01 Um, and if you wanna use rationality, you need to be talking to someone that also-... you know, wants to play by that rule.

Chris Williamson 6:07 Mm.

Buster Benson 6:07 Right? You can't take rationality to a basketball court and play-

Chris Williamson 6:10 (laughs)

Buster Benson 6:11 ... you know, play- play basketball. You have to take it to a rationalist and- (laughs) and then you're sparring. But, so I'm not, like, for or against them. I think there's a time and a place and a context for all these things. Um, but there is also this huge context of our everyday lives that, you know, where these things don't necessarily work.

Chris Williamson 6:27 I understand. So, we're talking about disagreement and the art of productive disagreement, specifically. At some point, did you- did you define what you consider to be an argument or a disagreement?

Buster Benson 6:39 Yes. Yes. So, I have a, you know, an official definition, which is, "A disagreement is basically a difference between two perspectives that you find unacceptable." So, it could be, I think A is better than B, you think B is better than A. If we're both cool with that, then no disagreement. If one of us thinks, "A, I don't- I don't think it's- it's okay for you to think that A is better than B, because B is definitely better than A," um, then we have disagreement. (laughs) Um, so it's really the unacceptable part. It's like, what is it that- that's what sparks us into the, you know, the need to prove someone right, or the need to actually con- converse with them about this.

Chris Williamson 7:14 Mm. It comes from a good place, I think, sometimes.

Buster Benson 7:17 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 7:17 It's that we want, we think, "You, person A, would benefit from my view, person B. If you had my view, your world would be better and my world would be better. Therefore, I should get you to do it."

Buster Benson 7:29 Yeah. Yeah. There's- there's a selfish aspect to it, and there's a selfless aspect to it. You know, this is how we learn about the world, right? We have to go out and talk to people that know things we don't know, and we have to take their knowledge and link it up to what we do know, and that's inevitably gonna cause differences of perspective. That- that's what we want. We want to go talk to people that know things we don't know. Um, the process of integrating differences is a skill that we have not, um, been taught (laughs) very well. We haven't been taught ways to... Like, we- we- we tend more to the anxiety we feel about like, "Okay, well, I've got this B ver- is better than A thing in my head. I'm not ready to change that yet. That makes me uncomfortable. How can I mash their version of things into my head in a way that I can keep that?"

Chris Williamson 8:16 Mm.

Buster Benson 8:17 Which oftentimes requires you to say, "Well, A, this person thinks A is better than B, um, but they're wrong. And so, I'm gonna put that ... That's how I'm gonna, like, link it up. I'm gonna put it into like, there are some people out there that are wrong, and then there's me." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:28 (laughs)

Buster Benson 8:29 Right? And it- now it's co- coherent, um, versus trying to actually decide, like, which one is the best, um, or- or is there a possibility that they're both, you know, it's okay for you to think that and me to think this, and that's totally fine.

Chris Williamson 8:42 I understand. So, do you have a- a framework that people can follow, that they can look at? Where- where do we start with the book?

Buster Benson 8:48 Yes. Yes. Yes. So, um, this book is framed around eight things to try, and meant to be things that, you know, are each in their own, um, a big practice, a- a big way to ... And it pulls together lots of experts and a lot of research and my own personal experiences, and, um, all of that into something that's like, "Hey, try this." And those eight things are, um, I mean, you know, we don't have to cover them all, but they are- they're a thing... The first one is watching how anxiety sparks in your head. So like, when you enter a disagreement, um, try to notice what sparks that anxiety, so that you can work backwards and think, "Okay, well, what was threatened? What was my- my value or my identity or my feeling, or what felt threatened?" And then you can use that to, um, ask that person like, "Did you mean to threaten this or did you- were you saying that for some other reason?" Um, because most disagreements are oftentimes mistaken threats. They- they're not actually trying to threaten you. They're actually just ranting about something, or they're s- you know, trying to say something, but they're saying it in a very sloppy way.

Chris Williamson 9:48 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 9:48 Um, so that's one.

Chris Williamson 9:50 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 9:50 Um, and I have like, tips around how to do that with like, disagreement journaling and- and sort of private journaling and that kind of thing. Number two is to talk to your internal voices. So, a lot of us think with our- you know, with voices in our head, and we- we- we find ourselves sometimes like, when we're- when our blood pressure is up, we get angry, and we tell people to shut up, and we just try to stop the argument. And when we're with, uh, friends or we're at work, we're trying to be more professional, we use like, logic. We're like, "Okay, well, what's the evidence for this? And how would you prove that? And let's see what happens." Um, and there's another one that when those two things don't work, um, is like, "Oh, I just- I'm gonna opt out. I'm gonna avoid this conversation because there's no point in me talking to you. You're not gonna listen to my reason. I don't wanna be overbearing, and- or you're being overbearing to me. I'm just gonna escape. I'm gonna avoid everything." Um, and I call that the voice of avoidance, which is the one that, um, tends to have creeped into our lives the most, turns out. Like, there's so much in our lives where we just decide, you know, to avoid the problem, um, for some reason or another. Sometimes it's because we wanna keep the peace. Sometimes it's because it's- you think it's useless, and that's where the frustration comes in, was like, we o- we would want to be effective here, and we're choosing not to. That sort of annoys us.

Chris Williamson 11:03 Mm.

Buster Benson 11:04 Um, and so really giving names to these voices and- and starting to think about which ones talk up when and when are they most applicable is one of those chapters. Um, chapter three is to develop honest bias. So, um, really thinking about cognitive bias and how you, um, can both see it in yourself and, um, learn to see it- see- see how it creates, um, problems around you, and how to address the problems without having to necessarily diagnose everyone as biased, um, 'cause that's sort of what tends to happen is like, we point- we go around trying to say like, "You're biased for this reason, and you're biased for this reason." Meanwhile, the things are just getting worse and worse. I- I- I advocate for just like, focus on the effects of bias and try to fix the damage that's being caused, because that's something that's tangible. It's, you know, it's right in front of you. It's also the thing that's hurting people. Um, and then over time, you can sort of work backwards into, you know, um, what caused this? How do we prevent it from happening in the first place? But, um, so those are three that we start the book with, and then there's five more, but I won't go into them 'cause I've been talking a long time. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:09 (laughs) No. Hey, I'm- I'm absolutely-

Buster Benson 12:11 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:11 I'm absolutely loving it. I'm sure that the listeners will be as well. I think it'd be ... Once we've had a little chat about those, I think we- we definitely-

Buster Benson 12:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:16 ... go through the remaining chapters.

Buster Benson 12:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:17 'Cause I don't wanna- I don't wanna leave that open loop. Um-

Buster Benson 12:20 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:20 ... one of the- one of the interesting things you said there, I- I certainly know that for myself, as someone who-... likes to think about things in a more of a cerebral way, um, and you can sometimes break down a disagreement, um, very cerebrally, you know, just go back through Thinking Fast and Slow and start just picking up Daniel Kahneman quotes and studies-

Buster Benson 12:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:43 ... and throwing them at someone, going like, "No."

Buster Benson 12:45 Yep. Yep, yep, yep.

Chris Williamson 12:46 Like, "Self-serving bias." Uh-

Buster Benson 12:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:48 ... "Argument from authority." Like, you just... (laughs)

Buster Benson 12:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:50 Do you know what I mean? And it's like-

Buster Benson 12:52 Love that.

Chris Williamson 12:52 ... "Well, hang on a second." Like, you- you've totally bypassed the actual purpose of using biases, uh, and working out-

Buster Benson 12:57 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 12:57 ... where logical fallacies come from, which is to use them to progress the argument forward, not to break the fourth wall of the argument and turn it into this weird sort of dick-measuring competition about-

Buster Benson 13:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 13:07 ... who knows the most biases.

Buster Benson 13:09 Right, right, right. Yeah. That's, that's the danger I would try to avoid. And, you know, f- full disclosure, like, that's how, that's where I started too. You know, as a PM at Twitter, we were always, we were obsessed with the list of biases, and we would always try to, like, pick them out in other people's arguments, and it was a game. Um-

Chris Williamson 13:24 What's a, what's PM? Sorry.

Buster Benson 13:26 Oh, a product manager.

Chris Williamson 13:27 Okay.

Buster Benson 13:28 So I was, I was a pro-

Chris Williamson 13:28 What's, briefly, what does that mean?

Buster Benson 13:30 Sorry. (laughs) So, um, you know, the teams, the, the, there was that s-, I was at Twitter at the time. Um, you have engineers, you have designers, you have a marketer. Uh, the, the product manager sort of works with them all and, like, comes up with a strategy.

Chris Williamson 13:43 Ah.

Buster Benson 13:44 Um, tries to identify which things are launch blockers, which things ha- are, are bugs that need to be fixed first. Whether or not the quality's high enough. Um, you also have to wrangle with, like, the execs and other teams to figure out, you know, how do you get your resources, how do you, uh, prioritize your projects and that kind of thing. So it's, half of it's like, you know, managing your team and sort of figuring out like, "How do we all work together effectively?" And half of it is sort of managing your relationship to the rest of the company.

Chris Williamson 14:08 That must be a very good breeding ground to develop negotiating skills, uh, finding middle ground, compromise, uh, ensuring that different stakeholders, uh, are, are satisfied, et cetera, et cetera.

Buster Benson 14:23 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely, that's, um, where I realized I wa- I had s- particular skills in there, and also that I had a long way to go, (laughs) early on. And not everyone likes that role. So, it was something that I was really drawn to, is like, this is a meaty challenge. I'm never gonna, like, master this, uh, to the extent that I get bored, right? So-

Chris Williamson 14:41 Mm-hmm. And was-

Buster Benson 14:42 Um-

Chris Williamson 14:42 Was it a similar role at Slack as well?

Buster Benson 14:44 Slack as well, yep. And I had that at Tw- at Amazon, and, uh, most recently at Patreon. So it's, it's a role that is pretty common here in the Bay Area, um-

Chris Williamson 14:52 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 14:52 ... and, but it's also ambiguous. You go to every single company, and it's slightly different. It's always-

Chris Williamson 14:57 Yep.

Buster Benson 14:57 ... a, a function of the culture and how that, that company works.

Chris Williamson 15:00 That's a, a very interesting sample of some huge, quickly growing companies for you to have developed these skills in.

Buster Benson 15:09 Yeah, it's definitely a crucible of, (laughs) of like, excitement and torture and, you know, a lot of-

Chris Williamson 15:14 Baptism of fire and water.

Buster Benson 15:15 ... everything between... Exactly. (laughs) Yeah, I was at Amazon in '98, when it was just like books and music, uh, tabs were up and then the video tab was gonna come up soon, and auctions was gonna come up. Um, and that was right outta college. I remember being like, "Wow, this is so... I'm, I feel like I'm in the middle of some, like, weird, weird wild hurricane that's, like, happening." (laughs) Um, yeah, but yeah, I got, I feel really lucky with being in the right place at the right time in a, in a lot of, in a lot of ways, so.

Chris Williamson 15:43 It really s- it really sounds like you have been. So, you know, the listeners all know, but you won't, uh, I'm a club promoter, so my job, uh, involves me mediating between, uh, the venue owner, which we're not, um, our staff, there's about 500 of them that work for us, 14 of them are the managers, and then there's teams below them, uh, the customers, the police, the council, licensing authority-

Buster Benson 16:05 Oh, yeah, yeah. Similar.

Chris Williamson 16:05 ... uh, marketing, you know, and we, we cross all, all different sectors of the business. So me and my business partner will do accounting, we'll do projections, we'll do the marketing, we'll do the copy, we'll do the HR, we'll do the hiring and firing. We'll do literally everything. So, you know, juggling-

Buster Benson 16:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:22 ... juggling these, these particular skills, um, is something that I enjoy. I like, I like the challenge, which-

Buster Benson 16:29 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:30 ... you know, given your track record of companies that you've been at as well, I think that you must have that too.

Buster Benson 16:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:35 Um, so we've had-

Buster Benson 16:36 Very similar. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:37 We've had the, the first, the first three, there was one, uh, I think it was number two that you mentioned about where you were talking to your internal voices.

Buster Benson 16:44 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:45 Uh, checking yourself on your internal voices.

Buster Benson 16:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:47 So, there's an Eckhart Tolle quote, um, from The Power of Now, where he talks about conceding the, uh, conceding that your point is wrong in an argument is tantamount to the ego's destruction.

Buster Benson 16:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:59 And I often think about that when I'm having a discussion with someone, and the listeners at home will know this as well. You're having a discussion with someone, and you think, "Right, this is irrefutable proof that what you're saying is wrong," and they don't change their mind. They're like, "No, hang on a second. Like, I've just, I've literally, I've given you it. It's there, there's the, there's the thing."

Buster Benson 17:18 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:18 And rather than that, they dig their heels in further, and they double down-

Buster Benson 17:21 Right.

Chris Williamson 17:21 ... on that position.

Buster Benson 17:22 Right, right, right. Right.

Chris Williamson 17:22 Is that the sort of thing that you, that you discovered in that?

Buster Benson 17:25 Absolutely. Absolutely. That's, you know, it's considered like backfire effect or the boomerang effect, where, um, you know, we don't... In a particular context, and if the context is a battle or a tug of war or, you know, you're leaning back, like, and if someone pulls on their side of the rope, you don't, you don't, you don't, like, "Oh, cool, let's go over there." You're like, "No, I'm gonna pull on my side of the rope harder."

Chris Williamson 17:46 (laughs)

Buster Benson 17:46 (laughs) Uh, and that's just the game, right? That's the game you're playing in that context. It's, um, you know, it comes from fight or flight, it comes from our survival instinct to be like, "Hey, if I'm losing, that doesn't mean I surrender, that means I fight harder." Um, and, you know, psychologically, it doesn't make sense, um, in a, if you just look at it from like, "Oh, you know, why am I not hearing the information and, um, updating my mental model about reality, um, and instead choosing to fight back?" Because oftentimes your survival is at stake, at least historically, you know?

Chris Williamson 18:18 It feels like that, right?

Buster Benson 18:18 Evolutionarily. Right.

Chris Williamson 18:19 You know, anyone who's been in a really heated argument knows that, that feeling when it's-

Buster Benson 18:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:25 ... you really get going and you almost...... you're no longer listening. It's a game of tennis. It's a verbal-

Buster Benson 18:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:30 ... game of tennis. You wait for that person to s- finish speaking, or sometimes you don't, and you just, single-minded, you got the blinkers on like a horse in the race and you, you're just going for it.

Buster Benson 18:40 Yep, yep, yep. And we're all, yeah, it's, it's, it's like really hardwired in our brains, that we are really, uh, we benefited a lot from it over time, um, because there are so many arguments that can't be resolved with reason, you know. If, if something is like, "Hey, you know, I want to have my house right here on this hill, and you want it too, but I'm bigger, I have more s- I have, you know, I have more str- swords and soldiers on my side, so I get to have my house here," um, or you know, like, "I want these goats. These are my goats," (laughs) you know. You don't, you don't resort to property rights, you don't take it to the court of law, you just settle it right there.

Chris Williamson 19:14 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 19:15 Um, and so this is how we settle most of things. Like, if you look at a two-year-old and, that has their favorite toy, they don't, you know, reason about why they should keep the toy. They just yank it and start screaming. Um, these are, they work (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 19:27 (laughs)

Buster Benson 19:28 In, in a pre-verbal, um, sense even. Even a precognitive sense, they work.

Chris Williamson 19:32 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 19:32 Um, so they're, they're deeply down there, but, you know, what, what gets us into that battle mode is interesting, because we don't have to operate in that battle mode all the time. We don't... And most of the time we're in that mode, we're not actually fighting for our survival. We're fighting for something stupid (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 19:48 (laughs)

Buster Benson 19:48 ... or something very abstract, um, and even if we're wrong, we're not gonna die, we're not gonna be kicked out, we're not gonna, you know, starve in the, in the cold, you know. So, um, we should look at like, that's why I start with, like, where does anxiety spark and sort of listen to the internal voices because that's the point where there's this crossroads. You could be like, "Am I gonna go down, am I gonna turn on my battle mode or am I gonna turn on my friend mode?"

Chris Williamson 20:12 (laughs)

Buster Benson 20:12 Um, "Or am I gonna turn on some other mode?" Um, and you don't have to go into that mode.

Chris Williamson 20:17 So, is there, there's a, a choice at the beginning. I'm gonna guess that turning on or not the anxiety mode forms the foundation for the other elements and the, the chapters. Is that kind of right?

Buster Benson 20:29 Yeah, I mean, I, I think I try to spend time, um, helping build the instincts and the practices to avoid the mode altogether, because most of the time, you don't need it. If your, if your health or your safety is in danger, yes, uh, resort to the voice of power and just be like, "Uh, just yank it and try to hold onto it."

Chris Williamson 20:47 Yeah.

Buster Benson 20:47 Um, whatever it is, but, you know-

Chris Williamson 20:49 (clears throat)

Buster Benson 20:49 ... most of the time we're arguing with each other right now, we're not, we don't need to do that. We, we actually benefit from learning, um, something new. We actually benefit from building a relationship. We actually benefit from enjoying the conversation and building new connections. So, all these other things that we could get out of a conversation, um, can be productive, uh, can make it productive in a way that's way more rich and way more enjoyable, way more fulfilling than who's right.

Chris Williamson 21:16 Yeah.

Buster Benson 21:17 Um, so there's a, there's a bunch of that around, like, what are the other fruits of disagreement that we can focus on that, um, it turns out are, like, way more interesting and fun.

Chris Williamson 21:27 Yeah. The conversation I had with, uh, Professor Paul Bloom from the University of Yale, we finished talking about why we think that, uh, the podcasting platform is, um, so enjoyed and seeing such growth at the moment, and it's a cliché to say it's the fastest-growing platform on wor- on Earth-

Buster Benson 21:44 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:44 ... after Twitch TV. I mean, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, but (clears throat) is that just 'cause of AirPods or 'cause Joe Rogan's a boss or whatever, whatever? Um, but I think one of the main things is that it's, it's one of the few places where you can have two plus two equaling five with regards to a conversation.

Buster Benson 22:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:00 You know, I don't want... The best podcast is some, some bad podcasters do this, but I don't want to come into this conversation with you, I don't have an agenda for me to come out looking like the cooler guy, right? And, you know, that's not your agenda.

Buster Benson 22:14 'Cause we're middle-aged mates, that's-

Chris Williamson 22:15 I think, yeah.

Buster Benson 22:15 ... what's up. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:16 What we want, what we want, I mean-

Buster Benson 22:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:17 ... you know, you, to think you, you're pretty cool as it is, living in the Bay Area, so I'm in the NorthEast of England, I'm in Winterfell.

Buster Benson 22:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 22:24 Um, and, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to have a conversation. It's one of the few places, the last bastion of where conversations aim to make two plus two equaling five.

Buster Benson 22:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:35 Where it's like you, you know some stuff and I might know some stuff, and then together, we, we create and we're like, "Oh, wow. Both of us have come to a new conclusion." And the weird thing about it that I think is important is that we know that we're being held to account by an audience that's going to be rigorous at checking us on our bullshit.

Buster Benson 22:54 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:54 Because if it was just a conversation between the two of us, you might be able to lie more or bend the truth-

Buster Benson 23:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 23:01 ... or I might be able to, I could tell you that I was, like, an ex-professional football player or whatever-

Buster Benson 23:05 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 23:06 ... whatever, but I can't do that, because I know that someone out there is gonna go, "That's, that's bullshit. You can't say that."

Buster Benson 23:10 Yeah. Right, right, right.

Chris Williamson 23:10 So, you're actually held to this incredibly high level of intellectual rigor-

Buster Benson 23:14 Yep.

Chris Williamson 23:15 ... and honesty and dignity and virtue and integrity and all that stuff.

Buster Benson 23:17 Integrity, yeah (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 23:18 So it is, I, you know, the, uh, I suppose, what's, what are your thoughts on these sorts of long conversations and stuff like that as being a breeding ground for productive disagreement?

Buster Benson 23:27 Absolutely. In fact, you know, even through my own experience as I've been on a few podcasts now and every single podcast host I, I meet, um, is so g- like, intuitively understands these points, um, because you're on a, you know, daily or weekly, you know, cadence doing them, right? And you, so you know, you know that, you know, asking good questions is important. You know that, you know, enticing people to sort of fill in their own arguments for something, um, show that, share their own perspective and share their story is important to the conversation. And you have the time, the context and the circumstances to allow space, if you don't, you're not looking for the soundbites, you're not looking for the zingers necessarily. So, as far as I'm concerned, like, yeah, th- the book could've just been like, "Be a podcast host."

Chris Williamson 24:12 Mm-hmm (laughs) .

Buster Benson 24:15 (laughs) And, and be fine. We all just need our own podcasts and we all just need to be on more podcasts, 'cause e- everything about it, I agree, is just like, it's conducive to longer... Maybe this is why they're happening right now when we need this kind of thing, and why they're, you know, growing so fast, is because this is, this is the antidote to-... you know, the, the breaking news and the headlines and the, you know, the rants and all that, hot takes and all that stuff, so.

Chris Williamson 24:38 Yeah. It is, uh, you know, it's one of those things that I'm hearing from so many different angles at the moment, that long form conversation is something which is lacking. We need to allow people time to voi- think out loud and voice their thoughts with nuance and subtlety and error without jumping on them and saying it's this and saying it's that. And, you know, I mean, we, uh, I asked, um, Paul Bloom essentially, why is it unmoral to be racist the other day. Like, that's a very difficult question to ask someone-

Buster Benson 25:08 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 25:08 ... without them going, like, looking at you like you're a Holocaust denier or something. I was like, "No, no, no, like, really, I'm fascinated, what, what is the evolution?" And he, he gives you-

Buster Benson 25:17 Wow, I'd love to hear that episode. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:18 ... he gives you time, do you know what I mean? He gives you time-

Buster Benson 25:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:20 ... to go through it, and he questions himself, and the audience get taken on that journey. So, yeah, you know, uh-

Buster Benson 25:25 That's awesome.

Chris Williamson 25:25 ... everyone that's listening, I've said it a million times, I think that it is a good, uh, tool to use to sit down with someone that you know well for about half an hour once a week, put your phones outside of the room, and just talk about anything. Talk about something you see in the news, don't have anything else on, and just have a conversation. Because for me, I get so fired up knowing that I get to speak to someone like yourself or Aubrey Marcus or James Clear or whoever it might be.

Buster Benson 25:49 Right. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:50 And if you don't have that outlet, you don't realize how much you're missing it.

Buster Benson 25:55 Yeah. Uh, and I'm, I'm being swayed. I was originally for this book gonna make a podcast, and it seemed like so much work and so hard, and I, and I know that it is a lot of work and it is very hard-

Chris Williamson 26:04 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 26:05 ... but I see the benefits in, in like just the, um, the people that are drawn to it and do the work. You know, you're all very open-minded, uh, gracious. You can see both sides. You're oftentimes like not polarized extremely on one side or the other. You can... You have a perspective that's large enough to, to hold, you know, invite guests that disagree and, you know, uh, have, have conversations that are difficult. Like, all these things are exactly what, um, you know, is said in the book. And we, we may not all be able to be podcast hosts, but we are all people that have dinner with people, and we're all people that go on walks with each other. We're all people that have conversations and write letters and all these other things that we can do. So, yeah, I think it's great. Um, and I'm definitely, you know, reconsidering my, my choice to not have one. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:49 Good, good. Well, I would, uh, definitely you'd have a subscriber at least, you'd have one. So we've got-

Buster Benson 26:53 Nice.

Chris Williamson 26:53 ... we're three chapters in.

Buster Benson 26:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:55 What are we on to next? Number four, what are we, what's, what are we working on?

Buster Benson 26:58 So number four is to speak for yourself. And this is sort of... You can always bring this back, um, to the other ones too. Each one sort of builds on the, on the past ones. But speaking for yourself, I found especially online, um, is an easy guardrail to help keep tr- conversations on track. When you start speaking for other people or imagining what, you know... How often do you say like, or do peop- you hear people say, um, "I can't understand why you would believe this or why you would do that. Well, you must be an idiot or you must be a racist or you must be a terrible person."

Chris Williamson 27:30 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 27:30 Um, there was a question, there was a question, like I ca- I don't understand something, but you don't ask it, right?

Chris Williamson 27:35 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 27:35 All you do is you take your, your uncharitable stereotype of that person and you plant it into their head and you say, "Okay, well, you must have this terrible projection that I have, and therefore I can judge you and underst- I think I understand you, but I really only understand my stereotype." And so if you ask, ask people to speak only for themselves and they are trying to talk about something that they can't talk about from their own perspective, you're forced to go find someone that can go and do that for you. Um, and so find the person that can speak for themselves about the thing you want to understand. Um, and so use that person to give you information instead of your own imagination to do that and... Yeah. So that leads into the next one, which is sort of paired with it, which is like asking questions that spark, um, surprising answers. So once you have that person there, like how do you... You don't just say like, you know, "Are you a terrible person? You know, s- speak for yourself. Try to convince me that you're not a terrible person." Those are terrible questions. (laughs) Um, you can ask questions that are much more open and be like, you know, you know, "How did you form this belief? Do you even have this belief? How would you, how would you articulate your position to me? Um, how are you misunderstood by people like me?" When, you know, "Wha- how, how have your beliefs been useful in your life? Who, who do you look up to that has this quality?" And just try to like start try to see the world through their words. Uh, again, you know, using the fact that they come from a different life as a source of information and have curiosity about it. So ask really big, open questions.

Chris Williamson 29:08 Wow. Yeah.

Buster Benson 29:09 Um...

Chris Williamson 29:09 That, that little batch of questions that you've suggested there would elicit, you know, hundreds of hours of interesting conversations between people.

Buster Benson 29:18 Yeah. And even people that you hate. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 29:20 Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, there's a lot of people that I disagree with that I think-

Buster Benson 29:23 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 29:23 ... you know, I want, I want to know. In fact, the people that you agree with more likely have similar motivations to you because you've already selected for one thing that's in common between the two of you. Whereas if you don't even-

Buster Benson 29:36 Right.

Chris Williamson 29:36 ... have that thing in common, you're like, "Oh, wow, you must have a really different worldview."

Buster Benson 29:40 Yeah, yeah. It's really quick to see that, you know, to see that if you ask the right question. Like, "Oh, yeah, my, you know, I grew up here with these circumstances, with these, you know, this environment." Um, and you're like, "Oh, wow, tell me more because like I don't know anything about that." Right?

Chris Williamson 29:57 Mm-hmm. So I'm, I'm coaching, uh, a company out in Germany and one of the particular guys that I'm working with at the moment, he was asking about how to be a better conversationalist. He's quite forthcoming. Um, he's got a lot, uh, a lot to say and he's clever and he's quick. Um, but he, he knows that he grates on people. He knows that he can come across a little bit abrasive. And he asked me for some sort of heuristic or rule to use, and I was like, "I want you to ask one question for every statement that you make when you have a conversation with one of the guys in your office." Like, so-

Buster Benson 30:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:31 And even you can put what you want them to do into your question. So you can say...... "Okay-"

Buster Benson 30:36 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:36 ... "what do you think is a solution to this?" Or, "How would you go about doing this?" Or, "Can you tell me why you think that?" You know, and if you realize that, it- it- not only does it help you to understand their point of view, and if you can ensure that you're letting go of your ego, and that you haven't got your battle mode on, and that you're not pulling too hard, and do the things that we've discussed beforehand-

Buster Benson 30:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:57 ... and you're- you're prepared to be sort of moved by the tide of the conversation, you can just-

Buster Benson 31:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:03 ... sway from left to right, however it goes, you, again, you two plus two equals five in that conversation.

Buster Benson 31:10 Absolutely. Yeah. It's- it's a- it's a skill, and again, I don't think people have been intentionally practicing this or being taught this skill, but the actual skill is not... You- you don't have to go and get your PhD in asking questions. Um, you can actually just put, you know, write down five questions, put it in your pocket, and next time you go out, you know, and talk to someone, just, like, review it really quickly before you go in and be like, "Okay, I'm gonna ask those questions." (laughs) And then ask them (laughs) and then see where it goes. And it's self-reinforcing, because once you start doing that, you realize how enjoyable it is to hear people talk about something that you weren't expecting them to talk about, um, and to hear someone's own words to- to- to describe something, uh... Um, and so I like this one because it is, like, one of the first, most, like, obvious reinforcing loops, where you get instant gratification from a good question.

Chris Williamson 31:56 Yeah. You really do.

Buster Benson 31:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:57 I think certainly before doing this podcast, I'm an- I'm an only child, and that meant that I had a very, very single-minded, solitary, selfish worldview, uh, which I probably still do.

Buster Benson 32:07 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:08 And my- my friend- my friends would probably accuse me of still having that. But it's- it's a lot better since doing the podcast because I have a genuine curiosity of what other people say, and I can't- I can no longer turn that off. Um, so someone will get kicked out at the front of one of our club nights, and I'll be stood at the door, and this person will be shouting and screaming about why the door staff have kicked them out, and I'll be asking them, like, "Oh, so, what were- were... Like, tell me about what you do for work." And they're like, "Fuck off, mate."

Buster Benson 32:27 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:27 "I wanna get back in." Like, "Aah, uh, very interested in your backstory, please." Um-

Buster Benson 32:32 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:33 ... but, (coughs) yeah, the- the-

Buster Benson 32:34 That'd be a good podcast series right there.

Chris Williamson 32:36 Oh, God. Standing at the front door... Honestly, if I had one of those body cams on that the police wear, it would be- it'd be savage. We had Halloween last night in Newcastle, and, like, w- there's nothing better than seeing a guy dressed up as a Ghostbuster fight a guy dressed up as a Power Ranger and the door staff trying to split them up.

Buster Benson 32:52 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:52 And me being like, "Excuse me, gentlemen."

Buster Benson 32:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:53 "Can you tell me about where the moral virtue that's starting this, uh, situation has come from, please?

Buster Benson 32:59 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:59 "Chris, go back, go back to your- your-"

Buster Benson 33:00 You're from different universes. I mean, how are they gonna resolve anything?

Chris Williamson 33:02 Yeah, I know (laughs) They are from different universes. Really correct.

Buster Benson 33:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 33:07 Um, but yeah, the asking questions thing, super easy heuristic. Um, moving on, number six, what we got?

Buster Benson 33:15 Okay, so number six is building arguments together. Um, so once... So this is another thing that I like to practice, and then, you know, I think it's- you have to get good at the questions first, but, um, building arguments together is basically like, let's just put aside my position for a while and let's really work on making your argument, or your side of the position as strong as possible. And I can help you by both seeing- by seeing it from the outside as well, and you can help from seeing it from the inside. We can look for the answers to my questions together. Um, we can look for... I can look at the evidence that you have and sort of y- help you explain it in language that I can hear better, um, all these things where you're now, um, rather than trying to tear apart their argument, you're trying to build it up. Because in an ideal world, a disagreement would be something that you can learn from, and you can only learn from the best version of the argument. You- so that means you need to find the people that can best represent the argument and help them make it stronger. And, you know, this is a collaborative exercise, and you can just do this with almost anything. There's a best argument for even the most wrong positions.

Chris Williamson 34:19 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 34:20 And, you know, you can make the best argument for flat earth. You can make the best argument for-

Chris Williamson 34:23 Yeah.

Buster Benson 34:24 ... you know, the world being on top of a stack of turtles.

Chris Williamson 34:26 Yep, yep.

Buster Benson 34:26 I mean, but, um... And by doing that, you're, like, suddenly you're- you're back into your creative mode. You're back into your, like, "Okay, well, let's make this work." Um, and you're doing it with somebody that has a lot to contribute. 'Cause our enemies and our opponents actually are the best at spotting our own blind spots, and we're the best at spotting theirs. And if we're actually working together, there's a huge amount of benefit from using that knowledge of each other, um, to make each other stronger. Um, ultimately, you might build up the argument and be like, "Okay, well, I still don't believe the earth is flat, but, you know, I had a lot of fun doing that." You know?

Chris Williamson 35:00 (laughs)

Buster Benson 35:00 And maybe they, during the process, they might be like, "Okay, well, I..." And I had an experience where I talked to, uh, a globalist, and they, you know, they didn't try to hurt me or tell me I'm an idiot.

Chris Williamson 35:09 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 35:10 Um, I open the door to them asking you questions about your argument or, like, how you got to your side 'cause that... You know, I gave you, you know, some of my time, they might eventually want to give it back.

Chris Williamson 35:20 Yeah. So I- I'm thinking of two examples here, which you might be familiar with both. I think it is Charlie Munger who says that he refuses to have a position on anything unless he can state the other sides-

Buster Benson 35:32 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:32 ... better than they can.

Buster Benson 35:34 Right. Right. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 35:35 That- that- that's an amazing heuristic. And then you might have seen the, uh, Pangburn Philosophy discussion between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris.

Buster Benson 35:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:42 And they started...

Buster Benson 35:44 They tried to do this. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:45 They- they did a st- they did what's called steel manning. Is that right?

Buster Benson 35:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:49 Steel manning?

Buster Benson 35:49 Yeah, steel manning. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 35:50 Can you explain what steel manning in argument is?

Buster Benson 35:52 Steel manning is a s- is a version of this, which is, like, "I'm gonna try to articulate the, you know, the best case of this argument." It doesn't necessarily require the other person to be involved, which I think is a- a crucial part of it 'cause they actually have a lot more of the information than you do. Um, but yeah, it's- it's basically saying, "Hey, if I don't think that, um, it's moral to, um, you know, not vaccinate your kids, um, I could create the steel man argument of that, of the other person's side-"

Chris Williamson 36:21 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 36:22 "... by trying to use evidence in as good of faith, you know, notion as pos- possible." So like, "Imagine someone like this and this and this," and in that case, um, you know, I can see why... "You know, they don't have time to go give their kids vaccinations and that's why they don't do it," or, "They live in Nigeria, there's no access to clinics," you know, whatever it happens to be. But taking everything on as good of faith as possible.

Chris Williamson 36:43 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 36:43 Um, sometimes it's also called the principle of charity, um, of just, you know, helping them. I think the crucial thing that they all sort of triangulate on is that...... we're usually in the mode of trying to tear people's arguments down, and that, um, makes us not see the strengths. Versus when you steel man, you, you sort of do the opposite. You look for the strengths and you look to make them stronger, and you look to, you know, try to imagine 'cause that's, when we're arguing on behalf of ourselves, that's what we're doing. We're imagining it in its best light. We're not imagining its flaws. Um, so it helps you with that empathy a bit.

Chris Williamson 37:18 Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And again, to come back to the, the asking questions part, a lot of the guys that work for us, you can imagine there's a million micro decisions that need to get made about club nights. Who's working this week? What are the hostess outfits? Should we do confetti or should we do bubbles or should we do whatever? And everyone has different point of view. And a lot of the time I've noticed that the guys that work there maybe, uh, 18, 19 up to 21, 22, and a lot of the guys like to make statements about things as, as fact, but then they're never actually prepared to look at what the other side is saying and understand that.

Buster Benson 37:55 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 37:56 Um, and then another thing, I wonder whether you've come across this, you probably will have done, people are a lot more prepared in a disagreement to say why another thing is wrong than to offer a solution.

Buster Benson 38:08 Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is always the case. I, I call this, like, arguing at the gate. Um, so for, I mean, take any issue, we're often just trying to point out the flaws of the other side. We're not talking about, um, what our, what we would do if we were allowed to go do the thing that we're trying to do, right? Like, um, there was an example today of, like, you know, with the Facebook ad policy, I don't know if you follow that or not, but they're trying to say like, you know, Facebook should ban political ads that are blatantly lying about stuff. Um, and, you know, there's a good case for it, and, you know, there's a lot of, you know, heat around this right now. But no one's talking about what that policy should be. Like, what... how would we censor political ads in a productive way? Um, there are plenty of countries that do, um, and some of them are tyrannical countries. (laughs) So we, we know that it's not just enough to censor ads, but we also have to create a good policy. Um, and that's so you don't... you can leave the gates. Like say, imagine that we resolve this disagreement somehow, what would we do with that victory? What we... how would we actually, um, be, um... how would we execute on the, on the answer? Um, and it's, it's, it's surprising how little we actually think about that.

Chris Williamson 39:19 I think that's, that's certainly something that I see. Arguing at the gate, is that what you called it?

Buster Benson 39:23 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:24 Yeah. Yeah. That... so arguing at the gate, it's, that's just all that Twitter is to me.

Buster Benson 39:28 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:28 Um, I don't know whether it's a, a result of the character limit that a lot of the time you are restricted to just put in, like, "This is my point. This is the hardest hitting bit of it." Which is usually a criticism of your point. Um-

Buster Benson 39:42 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:42 But yeah, we default, we default to that, don't we? Because recently, uh, Twitter said that they're banning all political ads. Is this, is this a second order effect, this Facebook pressure, a second order effect, do you think, of the Twitter thing?

Buster Benson 39:55 I think they're both sort of swirling in that same, same discussion. Facebook more so because they're much bigger. But yeah, Twitter and I know LinkedIn and Pinterest also recently came out saying that, you know, even before Twitter, that they are gonna not have any political ads. Um, and it's applauded by a lot of the critics of Facebook. Um, but it also opens up a whole nother question of like, okay, well how will you draw the line, um, between-

Chris Williamson 40:18 Where do you define a political ad? Yeah. What if Donald-

Buster Benson 40:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:20 What if Donald Trump's undergone a body transformation and he wants to sell you his, his, like, six-week beach body program or something?

Buster Benson 40:26 (laughs) Right. Yeah. So like now... wait, we're moving, like, we're moving into another gate and we're, we're now have to, like, what counts as an issue, a political issue, and, and can I advertise about it? Um, and it's gonna be just as heated. It's a little bit more nuanced, which I think is good. Um, but it's still gonna be a hard one, I think.

Chris Williamson 40:46 (smacks lips) Yeah. This... the fact that people are so prepared and, you know, I am as well. I, I, you know... there's inflammatory stuff that I see online and I get a visceral reaction and I want to reply or say that he's stupid or whatever. But a lot of things, it's... everything is so complex. Everything's so, so difficult. The real world's incredibly messy, incredibly chaotic, and it's... increasingly, we're just not having very good conversations about things. It doesn't, it doesn't really seem, on the whole, to be getting that much better. I'm aware that I live in this wonderful podcast utopia where it's just me and some person that I've had a bit of a chat with over email chatting about something that, that fascinates us both. For the vast majority of people, it's not that... especially for the guys at the top of the tree, you know, like if you're someone who's real, real, like, typical normal mainstream media, you got your 30-second snippet, sat in a panel with like-

Buster Benson 41:39 Right. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:39 ... five other people who all disagree with you.

Buster Benson 41:44 Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's hard. I mean, we weren't ever in this situation before where we had a giant audience and, um, n- no context (laughs) for who we are, what we, what group we're in, all that kind of thing. So I think it's really... it's sort of, you know, the... we're, we're in this learning phase of a new technology-

Chris Williamson 42:07 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 42:07 ... a new environment, and we're making all kinds of mistakes. We don't have the skills. Um, but it is an opportunity to step back and, and first, you know, have a bit of sympathy for everyone that's sort of flailing and failing in this context because none of us are good at it. Um, and give people a chance to develop as people and to learn from mistakes and, um, to learn from each other. Um, and I, I think, you know, having one-on-one conversations is, is a lot easier than having one-to-a-million-person conversations. Um, and so we can build that skill up from smaller, smaller circles and s- smaller situations and build our confidence and create new cultural norms about how to disagree. I, I think that's just part of the process we need to go through as a culture, is like, let's learn these skills starting from the very basics. Um-... and, uh-

Chris Williamson 42:55 Yeah.

Buster Benson 42:55 ... you know, it's, we're, it's still very early in our, in our evolution on terms of, like, how do we exist on- online as humans.

Chris Williamson 43:02 Very much so.

Buster Benson 43:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:03 Have you, have you seen those political debates, I don't know whether they have them in the States, I know they have them in the UK, where the audience members have a button that tells them, that, uh, shows at the bottom of the screen, I think it's called the worm, so you can imagine there's lines for each of the candidates moving across the screen like that, and then they go up and down as they-

Buster Benson 43:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:22 ... say different things, and you can track, and it's like, "Oh, red's, red's said something really bad," or, "Blue's made red silly, so red looks worse," and blah, blah. Have you seen those things?

Buster Benson 43:31 I have, yeah. They do it for debates, yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:33 Okay.

Buster Benson 43:34 Um, and I've seen them also done, um, in, like, a town hall kind of situation.

Chris Williamson 43:39 Okay.

Buster Benson 43:40 Um, like, th- th- there's a, there's a, there's a methodology around it. I don't think it's great 'cause it turns, it turns conversation into a sport, right? It turns it into who can score points, who can, like, get the zingers, who can, you know, sort of make the other person look like a fool. Um, it's definitely not about coming to (laughs) an agreement or seeing things eye to eye. Um, and so I-

Chris Williamson 44:02 Hmm. It's very adversarial, isn't it, doing it that way?

Buster Benson 44:04 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think the intentions are good. I think there's a bunch of, you know, and t- you know, perhaps in a court of law or, you know, when you're talking about policy and very specific problem spaces, it would work, but I think at a national level, political debates, that's not good.

Chris Williamson 44:20 Yeah.

Buster Benson 44:20 Um, it turns it into a g- a football game.

Chris Williamson 44:23 Yep. I think, uh, again, another Sam Harris-ism, I think he was talking about when he either does debates or just generally panel shows, so this could be either adversarial or collaborative, and he was saying that a lot of the time, the person who comes out feeling like they were the best wasn't the person who was the most lucid or the person who articulated their argument the best or whatever it was, it's if you get one huge raucous laugh from the crowd, like if you got the biggest laugh, you won.

Buster Benson 44:53 Right.

Chris Williamson 44:54 Which is bizarre-

Buster Benson 44:54 Right.

Chris Williamson 44:54 ... because, you know, some, some could be talking about some real contentious, serious topics, like the, the reality of Islam in the West or, uh, the, the, um, laws surrounding abortion or the, the concept of consciousness or whatever it is-

Buster Benson 45:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 45:07 ... and then someone makes a funny joke and it's like, "Oh, he won." You're like, (laughs) ...

Buster Benson 45:13 (laughs) I know, I mean, that, 'cause it, you're there to be entertained, so ...

Chris Williamson 45:15 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 45:16 Um, if that's n- if that's what you're there for, then the laughs will definitely give you the points.

Chris Williamson 45:20 Yeah.

Buster Benson 45:20 I mean, I call them zingers, where-

Chris Williamson 45:21 Yeah.

Buster Benson 45:21 ... there's a whole science, I think, to zingers where, you know, you're not actually talking to that person, you're just trying to make them look foolish. You're mostly talking to your own side about, like, you know, "How can I be the best sort of soldier or the best, you know, um, flag bearer of my side and, like, say things in such a way that just, you know, create, um, bewilderment or confusion on the other side?" Um, or taunt them, or, you know, all these things where it's very social but tied back to warp behavior again, where-

Chris Williamson 45:50 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 45:50 ... you know, the, the goal is definitely not to get along. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:53 Yeah. It's a, there's a, Andrew Doyle, uh, and Konstantin Kisin, who are two, uh, comedians, political comedians in the UK, uh, I've spoken to them both recently, saw them at the Edinburgh Fringe, and both of them said the same thing about, I think they call it, um, applaud comedy, which is where the comedian doesn't necessarily say something funny, they just say the thing that the audience agrees with the most, and then they get these big-

Buster Benson 46:18 Right, right, right, right, right.

Chris Williamson 46:18 ... like, "Yes, yes, yes."

Buster Benson 46:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:20 And you're like, "Well this wasn't-"

Buster Benson 46:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:21 "... even funny. It wasn't, it wasn't funny. You just said something that you think-"

Buster Benson 46:25 Right.

Chris Williamson 46:26 Like, "You can't say that anymore." Like, that's a classic one, you know, like, and it just, oh, well, anyone who thinks that free speech is being attacked is like, "Yeah, ha ha, yeah, of course." (sucks in breath)

Buster Benson 46:35 Yeah. Or he was like, "Who here is from New York," you know? It could be anything that's loyalty based about, like, you know, "What does, what does, how can my tribe be, be heard right now?" Um, and that will get the applause, right? So it's-

Chris Williamson 46:46 Paul, Paul Bloom the other day, when I was talking to him, you may have heard of this particular experiment. So he said that you put people into a room and, uh, you get them all to flip a coin. So, like, 100 people in a room, you get them to flip a coin, roughly 50 are heads, 50 are tails or whatever it might be, um, and then you put them on opposite sides of the room. And you go up to the tails people and you go, "So what do you, what do you think of heads?" And they're like, "Oh, they're a bit sort of stupid, aren't they?"

Buster Benson 47:08 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 47:08 "Like, they're just not as clever as us," and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, "You have been selected by the most arbitrary random chance. It li- literally the most arbitrary random chance that you can get, and we're still drawn towards being tribal."

Buster Benson 47:23 Yeah. Yeah. There is something emotionally rewarding about being part of a tribe, right? We want to belong. And the way that we b- we re- we s- we build status within a tribe is by, you know, um, being a good member of it, which means, like, sort of protecting the tribe, um, you know, projecting confidence, um, all these s- sort of safety re- increasing traits that, um, s- signal that our tribe is going to be okay. Um, even if we were on two sides of a cliff in the winter and, like, you know, who knows why the bridge broke but we, you know, we were on two different sides. We want our, we want our side to survive the winter. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 47:58 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 47:59 Um, and, um, you know, it's, it's, it makes sense if you just think about, you know, how many, you know, generations of our society have benefited from these preferences, um, that's, if we ended up preferring, like, if we're like, "Oh, the other side probably doesn't have blankets, let's go give them our blankets," um, you know, your, your tribe's not going to survive

Narrator 48:20 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:21 Yeah. I suppose as well this probably highlights where the difficulty with subtlety and nuance comes in as well. Because if you're part of X tribe, they want you to f- swallow the ideology wholesale. And any, uh, give that you might not be singing from the same hymn sheet is actually, "Oh, well, maybe b- m- maybe Buster d- maybe does- maybe doesn't belong-"

Buster Benson 48:46 Maybe he's not on our side. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 48:47 Yeah, yeah, maybe he's on the other side. And that's why, again, Paul was talking about, for instance, someone who's, um, very, very left-leaning but has, uh, contrary views to do with abortion law, or someone who's very, very free speech but thinks that the internet needs to be policed more heavily or whatever it might be. Um-

Buster Benson 49:05 Right.

Chris Williamson 49:05 And you know, that, that-

49:07 ... again, it's hard for everyone to try and work out what their views are, and we need productive disagreement for you to help me understand what I think and for me to help you understand what you think. So, right.

Buster Benson 49:17 Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 49:17 We've got two, two chapters left. We've got seven and eight.

Buster Benson 49:21 Yes.

Chris Williamson 49:21 What are we doing?

Buster Benson 49:22 Yes. I wanna say one more thing about that, though, 'cause I-

Chris Williamson 49:23 Lovely.

Buster Benson 49:24 There is, there is so much to say about this tribal stuff. It's really the underpinning of, of all of our thoughts around disagreement, which is, like, um, if you even just look back at birds. You know, birds can't... will kick members out of their flock if they're caught stealing. Um, if, if there are times when there's scarcity and one bird is eating all the food and never going out hunting, um, that bird'll be exiled or ostracized from their tribe. And so, this sense of like, in order to stay in the group, you have to contribute, and the worst punishment of any group is to be removed from the group. Like, that's how we enforce all of our laws is like, if you don't follow the rules, we kick you out. Um, and that works as long as, you know, in the past, you know, you kick someone out and they probably end up dying, right? 'Cause there's no other group that's gonna take them in. Now, we kick people out and then they're like, "Oh, hey, troublemaker, come over to our trouble tribe. Um, we're gonna help you become stronger, and we have all these other weapons we can, you know. And we're building this new, you know, argument that's gonna... and we're gonna go attack them next, next year or, you know, in 10 years." Um, and so the things that worked in our tribes in the past of like, you know, follow the rules or else, um, now in a world where everyone can find a community, no matter how, um, sort of fringe you are, um, and those fringe groups can become stronger and more angry at you. Like, the, the feedback loop is now-

Chris Williamson 50:47 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 50:48 ... what, what you kick out is gonna come back, you know, 10 times stronger, um, in the future.

Chris Williamson 50:52 Yeah.

Buster Benson 50:52 So, it's an interesting dynamic that requires different instincts (laughs) for us to, to manage. Um, so anyway, the last two are sort of relevant. So, one of them, the second to last one is to cultivate neutral spaces. So, spaces, you know, so speaking of tribes, where you don't have to always signal loyalty to the group. You don't always have to repeat the ideas of the o- your authority figure. You don't always have to, um, even like, you know, be productive in that group. But like, so imagine a dinner table or, you know, something where anyone can bring s- an idea to the table. Um, it could be a bad idea, it could be a good idea. Those kinds of... That, that makes it neutral on terms of ideas, wh- no one has to endorse the idea, um, just by... in order to talk about it. You can talk about it, you know, and be critical of it, but it's welcome to the table. Um, and the second level of that is like, who's allowed in the room? You know, can, can anyone arrive into the room and, and present their ideas? Can we allow, you know, terrorists and Trump supporters to the room to tell us, like, what's wrong... what's going on with them? Um, the, the danger that we fear is that like, if we invite them to the room, they're gonna come in and, and, uh, attack us. And, you know, we'll give them val- validation and all the stuff that, you know, that they came to do in bad faith. But, um, a truly neutral space would allow ideas to flow in and out, good and bad ones, and allow people to flow in and out, good and bad ones, um, over time. And some places can, can cultivate this, and others, it becomes obvious that that's not gonna ever happen. Um, when, when other interests like, you know, um, revenue or, you know, uh, costs are involved, you have to make choices about who can be there and who can't. And slowly, over time, that creates systemic problems where people are undervalued and unhappy and marginalized. And, you know, whether it be, you know, um, the poorest people in the country or the most disenfranchised people in the country or it be the people that were previously, you know, in the ruling class, but are now being neglected. You know, like, everyone can feel outcast in that sense, um, and unwelcome to the main group. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:55 Um, you know, how there's all this talk about, like, elites sort of like criticizing the common people. Um, the common people are feeling displaced, and they're not... they don't feel like it's a neutral space. So, I think there's ways for us to work on that. Um, and then the last one is sort of a meta point. It's sort of trying to wrap up the whole thing, which is to, rather than reject reality, um, or reject that the world is like this, just like accept that, you know, we have our problems. No one's, no one's perfect. We all have a, you know, a, a thread of... between good and evil that goes between us. Um, none of us can be perfectly one or the other. And we have to get into the fray regardless with people that are imperfect, because we, too, are imperfect. We don't need to use purity tests to like, uh, test loyalty. Um, but rather, get a, get sort of working on the problems and start, you know, getting, um, making progress on that stuff instead of trying to just make sure that the whole world is perfect before you agree to go touch it. You don't have to wait for politics to be completely revamped to become a politician. You don't have to wait for, you know, the tech industry to be completely revamped. You don't have to wait for any industry to be fixed before you go in and try to help make it better. Yeah. So, the, the first point that you've talked about there, I suppose, with cancel culture and, um, blockades around particular rallies or speeches, where they... Uh, one of my o- ex-podcast guests and a friend, Alex, who's at the University of Oxford, uh, Steve Bannon was going to go and talk, and some students had just blocked the street. They were like, "No, no, you can't go, you can't go listen to him. We're not gonna let anyone through to listen to him."

Buster Benson 54:31 Right.

Chris Williamson 54:31 And you're like, well, I mean, if his ideas are that bad, you should be able to say, at the Q&A at the end, just zinger the hell out of him, make him look a fool. But-

Buster Benson 54:42 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:43 ... it's easier, it's easier to just t- try and shut down the argument entirely. But bizarrely, it always... it almost always seems to work against people. You know, Ben Shapiro needs like 14 security guards with him whenever he goes to go speak on campus and all this sort of stuff.

Buster Benson 55:00 Right. Yes. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:01 Uh, and then, yeah, the... with the, with your final point there, the, the fact that you need to accept the world as it is, I'm finding that mechanism appear in so many different areas of life at the moment.

Buster Benson 55:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:13 Um, and it's a good piece of advice for anyone who's listening.

55:16 ... if you are continuing to come up against the same problem, you know that the world shouldn't be that way, but it continues to manifest. It's like, "Sorry, but the world isn't changing as fast as you want it to-

Buster Benson 55:26 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 55:26 ... and you just, you just need to account for that." So, we say all the time with the, with the managers or with some of the staff that work for us, or whatever it might be, we wish that they would be sufficiently autonomous with X task that we don't need to remind them. But after three weeks of them not doing it when we don't tell them, despite the fact that we scheduled for them to do it, you're like, uh, that this is just a thing where the world is the way it is, and I'm gonna have to send them a message on the morning that reminds them to do the X task or the Y task or whatever it might be. Um-

Buster Benson 55:55 Right. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:55 And that, that, that appears to be rolling forward for everything. 'Cause we want the world to just happen, right? We want it to be this autonomous-

Buster Benson 56:04 Right.

Chris Williamson 56:04 ... beast where we do the work once and it just scales beautifully as this like evergreen, uh, utopia (laughs) .

Buster Benson 56:11 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 56:11 Just rolls out in front of us.

Buster Benson 56:11 We have all these ex- expectations. We don't want it to, you know, we have an expectation and when it doesn't line up, that, um, makes us a little bit anxious. Um, and so we can either decide like, "Okay, well, there's something broken over there. I'm gonna stay away from it. You should fix it yourself." Or we're gonna help develop that and help them improve, um, and get involved ourselves. But, um, yeah, it is a hard instinct to overcome. Um, it's very tempting to, um, want to just hide the problems over there and say like, "Hey, you're, you got a problem, go fix it."

Chris Williamson 56:44 Mm-hmm.

Buster Benson 56:44 Um, versus being the- it's part of the, of the solution.

Chris Williamson 56:48 I suppose that manifests as one of the, as the third option that you spoke earlier on, which is just to exit the conversation thing as well, right? It's like, "Oh, well, look, like this is, this is just pointless. I'm not even gonna bother, not even gonna bother engaging." You know, well ...

Buster Benson 57:00 Right.

Chris Williamson 57:01 I mean, if there's one surefire way of in- of making the- certain that the world's not gonna change, it's doing that. Um.

Buster Benson 57:11 Exactly, yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:12 So, to wrap up, if you were to give the people that are listening your one favorite single, uh, heuristic or rule or piece of advice when it comes-

Buster Benson 57:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:23 ... to having a productive disagreement, what would it be?

Buster Benson 57:28 Well, I mean, I think that the, the overall, um, desire, uh, that I would sort of wanna plant in people's heads is that we can get better at this. Like, we can become, you know, 1%, 5%, 10% better at disagreeing productively. Um, and the only way we can do that is by practicing. So, find the arguments out there that, you know, the disagreements that you're avoiding currently, um, and s- one that's within like the, you know, the s- the skill level, not too hard, not too easy, um, you know, e- especially at first if you don't know where you are on that scale. Um, practice it, and intentionally try to get better at it. This is a, this is like going to the gym, right? This is how we get along with each other is a skill we need to develop in ourselves. Because once we develop it in ourselves, we can feel it in ourselves, we can sort of remember what it's like, we can expect others to also have that. And I think that's one of the only ways we can en- enact change in the world, is to expect our leaders to be better, expect our, you know, the people above us to, to be better. But we can only expect that of them once we know what it is ourselves. Um, and so, you know, I think we can start there to begin. And, you know, once, once you get hooked on it, I think, you know, you'll, you'll find every conversation to be like a little adventure that, you know, it's, it's gonna ... you don't know where it's gonna go. It's gonna be s- it's gonna be unpredictable because you're no longer just guardrailing it or trying to shut it down, um, and it leads to really interesting things. It's highly rewarding. So, um, I just, you know, I hope people turn this into a practice. It's, it's, uh, that's my goal.

Chris Williamson 59:02 I like it. I think we've, we've used a, a really lovely framework today. It's certainly something that I think will challenge a lot of people. They've got a lot of biases to overcome, visceral responses to things, emotion, the ego, all the, the, the things that manifest themselves, burble and pop inside of our brains.

Buster Benson 59:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:20 Um, but yeah, I, you know, like I say, go, go and have a conversation, have a long conversation with people, have a think about what we've spoken about today.

Buster Benson 59:27 Yeah, go on a podcast.

Chris Williamson 59:28 Do a, do a-

Buster Benson 59:28 Start your own podcast.

Chris Williamson 59:29 Honestly-

Buster Benson 59:29 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:29 ... I'm telling you.

Buster Benson 59:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:30 Well, the st- the s- the stupid thing now is that you can do an IG Live, a dual IG Live with someone else. So, I'm actually gonna start doing this for the podcast. I'm gonna do, um, just a weekly 15-minute chat with someone else. It's not, not as structured, not published on any of the platforms, but it'll just exist. But you can, anyone can do that. Everyone got some form of social media. And you're like, "Okay, well, so what was it that, that Chris and Buster said? Oh, I need the, I need the external accountability of someone else that's going, that's gonna be listening to hold me to like high level of rigor and blah, blah." There you go.

Buster Benson 1:00:04 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:00:04 Like, you know, just press, press a button, press Go Live button and get one of your friends to join you, and you know, that, that might-

Buster Benson 1:00:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:08 ... that might, uh, nourish the, the particular, um-

Buster Benson 1:00:11 Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 1:00:11 ... thing. Um, so-

Buster Benson 1:00:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:00:13 ... Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement will be linked in the show notes below. And it's @Buster on Twitter. I mean, that's the advantage of being one of the first guys on Twitter, isn't it?

Buster Benson 1:00:22 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:22 When you get to get @Buster.

Buster Benson 1:00:25 Yeah, I guess so. Yep, yep, yep. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:27 I love it.

Buster Benson 1:00:27 I had @Instagram too, but then I accidentally canceled the account. Oh, well. But-

Chris Williamson 1:00:30 No way.

Buster Benson 1:00:32 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:32 You had @Instagram?

Buster Benson 1:00:34 Yeah, yeah. But, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:00:35 Oh, that's so

Buster Benson 1:00:36 A little sloppy. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:37 It was so ... You could have held, you could have held them to such a ransom for that, or just used it to shamelessly promote your own book.

Buster Benson 1:00:45 Exactly, yeah. Well.

Chris Williamson 1:00:47 (laughs) I love it.

Buster Benson 1:00:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:00:48 Um, if there are, uh, any other places, are you mostly on Twitter? Is that where it's best to find you?

Buster Benson 1:00:53 Mostly on Twitter. I, yeah, I have a blog at busterbenson.com. I'm on Medium @Buster as well. Um, so, but Twitter is really the g- the best place to start. Um, and I'm open, you know, any at mentions will, will get replies. So, I just like to talk to people.

Chris Williamson 1:01:06 Fantastic. Well, as I've said, everything that we've spoken about will be in the show notes below. Of course, Why We're Yelling: The Art of Productive Disagreement is linked. And as always, if you follow that link, you'll be supporting this podcast at no extra expense to yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, go follow Buster online, hassle him. He's got a great handle on there, on Twitter, like, share-

Buster Benson 1:01:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:01:24 ... subscribe, you know, all of that good stuff. But for now, thanks very much, Buster. It's been awesome, man.

Buster Benson 1:01:29 It's been great. Thank you so much. (instrumental music)