The Ted Talk that I chose to watch and listen to is Daniel H. Cohen's "For Argument's Sake." Throughout his Ted Talk, Cohen disproves the misconception that there is always a winner and loser to every argument. He presents a fair point that there is no real victory from an argument because both sides benefit from hearing each other's viewpoint. Cohen makes the claim that people often miss the valuable benefits that result from the argument due to the lashing out of negative feedback, instead of having a helpful exchange of knowledge. He used allusions to compare arguing as "war" and essentially it is, because people are so adamant on proving their point, that the argument has lost its meaning and simply becomes a battle on who has the last word.
This is often seen from political debates, when both sides are merely attacking each other, rather than exchanging new ideas and beliefs. Political debates should instead be more about people coming together to collaborate and debate their argument accordingly. Arguments should be justifiable and discussion-like. Cohen believes that the true winner of the argument is the one who is learning from it, not the preconceived winner. War-like argument has become prevalent to the point where people lose logic and it is more on shoving evidence down the opponent's throat in efforts to win. Arguments now are just ridiculing one another without any points being made. In summation of Cohen's claim, there is not just one sole winner from an argument, but both sides are benefiting from it since they are getting cognitive gain and exchanging information.
- Cynthia Thach
Cohen makes a great point on the fact that at times in arguments people tend to lash out on each other. However, in my opinion, I don't necessarily think that this means everyone is right. Not everyone in an argument is trying to teach the other person,in this day and age I'd say there is a lot bigotry and not enough relevant reasoning. If you are seeing this from a political debate aspect I'd say his theory might work.
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I completely agree that everyone in an argument is essentially winners because participants get the chance to learn about different perspectives in a topic, which allows us to be receptive about the problems troubling the world. However, not everyone has the ability to understand, and accept other people’s opinion; thus, beginning a conflict. Being the people we are, we always want to be right about everything in an argument, but sometimes losing is more beneficial to us than winning an argument since we are gaining significant knowledge.
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