Turning Verbal Traps into Honest Questions

You’re almost there. You can feel the thrill of victory. It vibrates in the keys under your frantically tapping fingertips.

You’re sure, you’re sure, you’re about to convince another blogger that doorknobs exist!

Tumblr user the-knob-is-a-lie has argued hard, across dozens of reblogs, to prove their thesis that doorknobs are nothing but a sinister myth. But they’ve slipped. There’s a flaw in their logic. A contradiction. And you’re about present that flaw to them and prove yourself the victor of this ideological war, once and for all.



“If, as you say, twisty things don’t exist at all,” you write, “then how did you unscrew your water bottle just now? Huh? HUH?????”

You post the reply and take a moment to bask in your genius.

The trap is sprung. The day is yours. The only thing to be done is sit back and wait for your opponent to come crawling over and kiss your feet, to thank you solemnly for making them see reason.

The response is not what you expected. There is no kissing your feet. No groveling.

The victory strikes oddly hollow. You’ve proven something you already know, that the-knob-is-a-lie is wrong. You’ve proven it to yourself, and you’ve proven it to the other people who already know it. You’ve won, and you’ve won precisely nothing.



Want this situation to go differently? Want to communicate rather than alienate? Let’s look at your question again:

“If, as you say, twisty things don’t exist at all, then how did you unscrew your water bottle just now?”

The phrasing implies that you expect your question to come as a shock. That… might come across as condescending. Consider, instead, assuming that the question you are asking is a question the other person has thought of, and working forward from there.

Firstly, take a moment to set aside your incredulity and think about possible answers to your question. How did they unscrew their water bottle without twisty things? Do they define the word “unscrew” differently from you? Or “twisty”? Were they exaggerating a bit when they said twisty things don’t exist? And will you come across as pedantic when you use that exaggeration against them?

Assume there are reasons why a good, earnest, intelligent human would say things that sound crazy to you. What might those reasons be? If you’re trying too hard to be in the right, it’s harder to make your point. It’s harder to understand where the other person is coming from so you can communicate your points in a way they will understand.

Okay, now you’re ready to start your question over. Own your subjective perception of the conversation, and inquire openly about theirs:

“You said earlier that twisty things don’t exist. My understanding of the screw-top lids on water bottles is that they are a kind of twisty thing. Do you see them differently? Or did you mean ‘twisty thing’ more specifically than I interpreted it when I read your earlier post?”

Now the conversation can move forward, because you’re talking like you care what the other person has to say. Like you know that there are limitations to your own understanding.Your goal now is not to be right, but to understand where the other person is coming from so you can communicate your points in a way that they will understand.

You’ve set a tone of respect. That doesn’t guarantee you anything, but it does make it much easier for the-knob-is-a-lie to admit that they might be wrong, or might have communicated badly.

You’ve created room for them to say, “Well now that you mention it, I’m not sure how I reconcile those things. Maybe you’re right. I’ll think about it,” or, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t really mean that there are no twisty things at all. I was talking about a certain kind of twisty thing.”

Remember, if you’re arguing, then someone else is involved. Even if your argument seems rock-solid to you, if that person doesn’t see it then you haven’t proven anything to them. Maybe you just wanted to prove to yourself how right you are, but if you want them to understand and believe your point of view, trying to spring traps for them is not an effective strategy. Demonstrating an attempt to understand where they’re coming from works a lot better.