A Crash Course on How To Argue Better

This post is dedicated to people who have no idea on how to argue their viewpoints properly. Needless to say, this is in reference to the mass "dumbass comments" (as Eddy calls them) that were left on his blog.

I generally agree with Eddy's views on discourse. To have a proper debate, we must first have respect. Use logical and sound arguments to make your point. If you start asking rhetorical questions like FGM, then it is no longer an argument. It is political spin. Also, it makes no sense to just simply assert your own viewpoint and then fold your arms and say "I am entitled to my own opinion". Yeah OK, last I checked, it's a relatively free country. But assertion without justification is the fastest way to prove that you are not very smart.

So here is the Idiot's Guide on How to Make Better Arguments:

1. State your assumptions and assertion

2. Explain your assertions based on your assumptions

3. Give examples to support your assertions

4. State conclusion

5. Check whether your arguments make sense


Of all the steps above, No. 5 is the hardest to do. Steps 1 to 4 are probably taught to you when you were in primary school. Of course you do not have to do it in numerical order, but these are the bare necessities of any cogent argument. But often, we get lazy and just jump from assertion to conclusion, without even checking whether it makes sense. I must admit that I am one of those people sometimes, but I try very hard to avoid it.

The most useful way that I found to check whether your arguments make sense is the "5 Whys". This is one of the underlying techniques of Toyota's kaizen philosophy, which brought it to great heights. As an aside, Toyota seems to have lost its way, but that is not the focus of today's topic.

Let me use Ronnie's arguments as an example:

Assertion:

In fact, I would claim that despite the fact that an 11-year old Yeap Eng Chiam or an 11-year old Fong Yit San is likely to beat an 11-year old Yee Weng, Zi Jing, Ee Vern or Jonathan, the tables are turned as they are older.

Explanation:

Yes, I do believe that a 15-year-old Yee Weng (already two-time national champion), Zi Jing, Ee Vern or Jonathan (already a national champion at 13) is probably able to beat a 15-year-old Eng Chiam or Yit San. And even more surely, an 18-year old Yee Weng, Zi Jing, Ee Vern, Jonathan, Nicholas or Tze Han (all already national champions by then except Zi Jing who only won it at 20 years old) would in all likelihood win an 18-year old Eng Chiam or Yit San. Even an 18-year-old Anas might not stand a chance.

Examples to justify:

To go further, the 20-year old Yee Weng, Zi Jing, Jonathan, Nicholas, Marcus and Tze Han were National Champions (except Marcus who won it at 21), mostly rated around 2200 plus, performed strongly in local tournaments, represented Malaysia internationally (with some good perfomances) and have beaten FMs and IMs internationally. Some of course improved further, getting their IM titles in their twenties while some basically stopped playing.

Conclusion:

I hope you get my point. What I'm trying to say is that the OVERALL achievements of these players before they reached 20 were unparalleled by juniors in the years after (I'm pretty sure in the years before too).

The point here is not to discuss whether Ronnie's arguments are true or not. But this is just to show how a good, strong, logical argument is made. Hopefully, future discussions will be more productive and that some idiots would also have learnt a thing or two in making logical arguments. 

Time to Move On

Eddy has added his comments to his post on the selection matter.

With that, I think the show is over. Time to move on to better things.

The Pot Calling the Washing Machine Black

Let me first declare that I am not an interested party to any of this laundry-airing that is going on. Which is why I can say that I will be able to provide a more objective analysis on things.

For context, read Eddy Fong's email.

No matter how I read Raymond's reply, I just can't help but notice the big elephant in the room. Raymond kept emphasizing on the fact that Sumant's name was not in the list. As part of a selection committee, is it not their role to bring in any qualified player up for consideration? While Raymond may pretend to claim that he does not want to pick his favorite, but the truth of the matter is, he is also biased when he chooses not to bring in a qualified player for consideration.

Does he really believe that Sumant is not qualified to represent Perak? He is trying to shift the blame to the Perak committee. But let us all not forget that Raymond is the head of the selection committee and as the head, he is supposed to lead the discussion and choose the best players to represent Perak.

So from my understanding, here is his main reason why he did not bring up Sumant's name for selection.

People told him Sumant is not from Perak

Any one with any cow sense to read the National Closed rules know that in order to represent the state, you must be either born in, residing in, or working in the state. Furthermore, as I said, the big elephant in the room was that Sumant was ALLOWED to play in the Perak Closed. If Sumant was not from Perak, why the heck was he allowed to play in the Perak Closed? By virtue of the fact that he is allowed to play, he definitely is qualified to represent Perak. Why was this not brought up by the stupid head of the selection committee who claims to be so good at thinking? Isn't it the job of the head of the selection committee to bring up names for consideration? No one is asking him to select Sumant. What is wrong by bringing in the name to be considered by the whole committee? It shows ill-intent by virtue of the fact that he intentionally left out the name.

Let me postulate a couple of reasons. The committee already had four names. The committee only had room to select four players. If Raymond had decided to bring in another strong player, it would mean that they would have to kick out one player. And based on the "understood and long-standing" criteria, the selection was supposed to be based on merit, by using the Perak Closed results. If that was used, it would mean that Mark would have been relegated to 5th place and could possibly not be selected at all. Given such a possible conflict of interest, Raymond should have recused himself from the selection committee instead, since he is all about taking the moral high ground of walking out the room and what not.


Raymond himself is also a strong advocate of "selection by merit". I did not know when "loyalty" was included as a criteria to represent a state or country. Granted, playing strength should not be the ONLY criteria, but it should be a main one. I fancy the day I am selected to represent Malaysia in whatever tournament just because I have always paid out of my own pocket playing for Malaysia.

The joke of the year is that the selection criteria used was "number of FIDE-rated tournaments played". A criteria cleverly designed such that Mark would be an easy number one pick. Given that this is the case, the committee should have forced Raymond to recuse himself as he was the one who chose the selection criteria and based upon the criteria he chose, his son was the number one pick. Anyone can see how absurd this is.

The selection criteria was arbitrarily crafted and most definitely not "written". But should it not be based on results? Can you imagine a beginner who just started chess and played five rated tournaments and scored zero points? Would Raymond have insisted on using that very same criteria? Isn't it obvious that results should be used, instead of number of tournaments played?

All I can say is, when you talk from ass, shit comes out.