The “What Would It Take" Challenge Discussion Format

This is a concept I’m experimenting with, where people pose me questions like, “what would it take to convince you…” or “what it would take to change your mind about…” and I attempt to lay out as clearly as possible what data or evidence would be required (or what else I would need to be convinced of) for my belief to change. I want to believe true things, but I recognize that the human mind has a tendency to stubbornly hold on to its current beliefs, so I’m trying out this format as a way to sort of make myself accountable to the claim that my beliefs can be changed, if a sufficient standard of evidence is met.

Of course, this isn’t just unilateral; the idea is that after I answer one such challenge question, I then turn around and ask the person who gave me that question a challenge of my own. The long-term potential is for people to be endlessly tossing these challenge questions back and forth, as long as both parties are willing to put the time in. In doing so, they should each gradually get a much clearer sense of the premises that inform the other person’s beliefs, and what standards of evidence it would take to convince them.

Eventually, after some “playtesting” of this concept, I’ll probably want to draw up a full-scale rulebook, but for now, I’m just gonna state a couple crucial ground rules. The main one is that answers can’t be vague or abstract. “I dunno, I’ll know it when I see it” is exactly the opposite of what this challenge is all about. The answers should be as precise and objective as possible. I’m not saying that will be easy; I have trouble with it too, and I’m the one who came up with this. It takes practice, but I think it’s a goal worth aiming for. You should feel free to probe the challenger for greater specificity or clarity to their challenge before providing your answer, so that it can be as clear as possible.

Answers should also move the discussion forward. The purpose of this is to foster a different sort of environment for people to have discussions about subjects they disagree on, so an answer that doesn’t provide any way to move ahead with the discussion wouldn’t serve that purpose. For instance, let’s say your challenge was, “what would it take to convince you that leprechauns exist,” and your answer was “If I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, and a leprechaun appeared out of thin air and handed me a pot of gold.” That answer follows the first rule, because it is very specific and objective, but it shuts down the discussion, because all you can do at that point is just go on with your life and wait to see if that ever happens. That’s not the intention for this challenge.

Now, one thing that is acceptable is saying that nothing will convince you or make you change your mind, provided that you can clearly articulate why. If you do, this still follows the spirit of that second rule, because it allows the discussion to move forward. If you say “nothing will convince me that leprechauns exist because I don’t believe that any mythical creatures exist at all,” then that opens the door for you to be asked, “what would it take to change your mind that mythical creatures could possibly exist?” The discussion can progress forward from there.

There may come a point when you’re not able to give an explanation for why nothing will change your mind. If you do get to that point, that seems like a really good opportunity to consider whether you have underlying foundations for your beliefs that are just based on assumptions or unfounded presuppositions. If you value believing things that are true, that would be a good opportunity to get rid of those unsupported foundations and reanalyze your worldview from there. On the other hand, if you’re perfectly happy to believe things based on assumptions, and refuse to change your beliefs no matter what evidence is presented, then this challenge is probably not for you.

I’m also gonna test out doing these challenges in a more spontaneous fashion through voice discussion, but in terms of answering through the written word, my current feeling is that responses should be between 500 and 1000 words. That makes it long enough that you can’t just give a lazy answer devoid of detail, but short enough that you’re not just drowning your discussion partner in a whole overlong dissertation that they’d never have time to respond to.