The Master Debater

Lots of people like to say that they love to argue, and I used to be one of them. An argumentative spirit is a sign of intelligence, of community. It's a sign of mutual respect to engage a friend in argument, a stark contrast to the less respectful cold shoulder. Or so I thought.

Lately, though, I've realized how fine a line there is between argument and discourse. In other words, the mutual respect we seek can be found in discourse, while arguments are just obnoxious exchanges between two increasingly-frustrated parties. It's a fine distinction, but it can make all the difference.

To define terms: in my lexicon, an argument is the result of a knee-jerk desire to oppose, a belligerence that spawns claims of "devil's advocacy" while just producing pigheadedness. On the other hand, discourse is a productive discussion that takes two opposing viewpoints and synthesizes something positive for everyone. Discourse makes everyone a little smarter, while arguments rob everyone of a few minutes of their lives.

Arguments, at least in my life, often take the form of something like "I like sitcoms." "I do not like sitcoms." "Elitist." "Moron." You know the type.

In the past few days, I've been fortunate enough to have some really good discourse-style discussions. It started off in the car with Aaron. While making small talk about our research's progress, we started bantering about the properties of the Central Nervous System. For 20 minutes, we just went back and forth about the plasticity of motor cortices, the potential for rehabilitation after stroke, the adaptability of the brain in general, and so on. This may sound painful to you, but it actually got my adrenaline pumping.

More recently - in fact, just a few hours ago - I noticed an interesting diagram on the whiteboard in my lab. I mentioned it to my labmate, who is working on developing an explanation for the unexpected results he found in a recent experiment. He bounced some ideas off me, and I mulled them over like any good (read: bored) labmate would. Suddenly, some lightbulbs went off, and we spent the next 45 minutes going back and forth about possible mechanisms for the perception of workspace curvature. We didn't necessarily disagree, but we were approaching the same conclusion from different directions, although we were both too stubborn to acknowledge that fact. At one point, I had to say, "Time out. Dude, this is so much fun. Okay, time in."

Perhaps the wackiest discussion of my academic career took place last night. Will, Aaron, and I were sitting in Will's room. Suddenly, we found ourselves debating the class-discrimination capabilities of somatosensory neurophysiology in regions of the body that are highly innervated but rarely studied... In other words, how well can genitalia perceive the difference between sexual partners? I have no idea how this came up. No conclusions were drawn. Hilarity, however, was all but inevitable. When Will and Aaron started listing hypotheses, I had a laughing fit so hard I almost doubled over.

Aside from the indisputable humor inherent to genitalia, it's hard to explain why these sort of experiences move me so thoroughly. Certainly it must be at least partially based on the fact that each of these discussions focused on my research (perception, not genitalia, jerk). However, I really want to attribute it to the back-and-forth.

More specifically, the conversations that I enjoy the most are the ones where the back-and-forth is a synthesis building from statement to statement, rather than dismissive rebuttal-fests between people who aren't actually listening to each other. If the discussion centers on the neurophysiology of the crotch, well, so much the better.