Gracious debate requires gracious victory. If you cause someone to stop and seriously reconsider their perspective, don't force their submission by going 'Gotcha' or 'see! You can't answer that!' Changing a mind is hard enough, let's not make it harder by feeling superior.
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I don't hold that against him in context. The importance of gracious victory is proportional to the obviousness of the victory. He had scored a pretty clear point, but was otherwise embroiled in a long and unproductive discussion that was not on his terms.
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I don't feel any sense of judgment about it. I think both of us are right.
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I definitely agree - although I can understand how, in that moment, it's difficult to refrain from expressing pleasure in finally getting the opponent to acknowledge your point. It didn't feel like gloating so much as relief that the person had finally been forced to listen.
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But certainly I would have been more impressed if he had accepted her vulnerability in that moment with a little more grace.
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To be fair, he was in a rather deep pit of ungraciousness. I don’t fault him for spending his rhetorical energy just keeping his cool under that assault. I really don’t enjoy that format of “debate”.
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I think your general point is right, but I didn’t find him belying it in the “gotcha” comment. After all, he could have said that a dozen times. I think he chose that moment judiciously and said it light-heartedly, which is how she seemed to receive it.
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She seemed to be treating the whole interview as sport, whereas he was trying to speak the complicated truth. I think in that moment he acknowledged that he too could play that game.
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It was like a basketball player who has been fouled many times without getting a whistle finally fouling the opponent and grinning gamely, as if to say: “I’d rather not play that way, but I just want to show you I can if I have to.” As a competitor, she seemed to get that.
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I really don't see us moving to a world where people don't punish you for being a gracious loser. I have never not been punished for it. I have never seen anyone not be punished for it.
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It was only after he said “gotcha” that she seemed to enjoy herself. Her smile was broad, rather than pinched, as it had been to that point. I know that joy myself. It comes when I find myself really playing, rather than going through the motions.
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I'm generally pretty skeptical of facial expression analysis, and I think it's much more likely that she didn't experience pleasure after being told 'gotcha' after she failed to defend her point on television in front of a wide audience.
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