On losing an argument gracefully

I lost an argument last month. I mean this in the ordinary sense: I was wrong about something, someone showed me I was wrong, and I changed my mind. This should not be remarkable. I am recording it here because, in the current political climate, it feels remarkable — and that feeling is itself the problem I want to address.

The argument was about the effectiveness of a particular border policy, and the person who corrected me did so with evidence I had not seen and an analysis I found genuinely compelling. I said so. The conversation ended without rancour. We remained, as far as I can tell, on good terms.

I am describing this in such detail because I have noticed, in myself and in others, a growing difficulty with exactly this sequence of events. Not with being wrong — everyone is wrong about things — but with saying so. With treating the acknowledgment of error as a normal social transaction rather than as a defeat or a capitulation.

Numbers don't change minds. Being heard does.

The political culture that has developed over the past decade — and I am speaking of cultures across the spectrum, not any particular tendency — makes it very difficult to lose an argument gracefully, because it treats all argument as primarily performative. The point is not to reach the truth but to be seen winning, to demonstrate loyalty to the tribe, to accumulate the social currency of correctness.

This is bad for obvious reasons. It makes honest inquiry almost impossible. It makes policy worse, because policies based on arguments that cannot be challenged or corrected will be bad policies. And it makes political life ugly in ways that damage not just the people involved but everyone who has to live with the consequences.