Arguing well - by which I mean accurately - generally requires a sense of humor, or at least of play.

We believe good debate is the verbal equivalent of what a gladiator does. Gladiators are dead serious. Consequently, as would-be gladiators, we heft our swords and scan for anything that moves and carries a weapon. Seeing an enemy, we narrow our eyes and crouch, readying sword and buckler.

By debating in this style, we eventually fail to catch good arguments even when swimming in a caldera of them. To burst a metaphor (or stretch it so far it's silly): gladiators don't have time to pause and scoop up blood in their hands and taste some, let alone fake blood, let alone find a blue rose or a zipline off the ground to safety. We're aiming for the jugular, not focusing on evidence, logic, compassion, and imagination - all of which are required for good debate.

You can't prove anything without humoring fallibility: the possibility what you're saying is totally wrong. Therefore you shouldn't equate someone else making a good point (or even just trying), up-front, with your own bloody death, or that of someone you love. If you don't have the stomach to start with the notion that you may be 100% confused, don't expect to settle an issue.

Good debate, if anything, is much more like Tai Chi or Aikido. You relax. You do what Bruce Lee suggested: you "flow like water." You attune to changing arrangements quickly. You let everything happen and just barely tip the existing energies here or there as if they were your own, where needed. In a word, you play.

Maybe you look unconcerned or lazy, but no one can defeat you, because you operate according to nature's contours, rather than your valiant preconceptions of them.

You truly "win" a debate when an idea you put forward matches reality, not because you huffed and puffed and blew someone's house down.

Proof - whether scientific or social - means walking us from the beginning proposition that an idea is totally wrong - while taking fair, transparent, verifiable steps - to the proposition that it's most likely right. You squeeze out uncertainty to establish an idea. If you don't start out uncertain, there's nothing to squeeze. Without squeezing, there is no proving.

This runs counter to our received image of the self-assured contestant. But watch the best ones carefully, the ones with a long track record of right answers, practical ideas, and cogent arguments for them. You'll see they have the boldness to allow and even invite and compliment challenges. In truth, while they project or even feel confidence, the pattern isn't confidence so much as it's the necessary foundation for proving anything. Start with a blank slate. Flow like water. Let the best ideas win. Allow any idea to try. Don't reflexively stab it as if it's trying to kill you. You aren't that weak, and reality is far stronger still.

Because you are not really threatened, you can humor even the ideas that would horrify you if they happened to be true. You know discussion is not reality, but a reflection. You can observe a solar eclipse from its shadows. These are the words of a debate. These are play. The play is a critical component. Without it, you either don't look, or your eyes are damaged.

When you argue from a (perhaps fearful) position of complete certainty, not only are you too rigid, but technically, as I just suggested, you can prove nothing of what you're out to prove. Proof exhales and releases uncertainty; without initial uncertainty, proof has nothing to breathe. You can't get an A on the test without taking the test, which means showing up and allowing the possibility of getting it all wrong. And you don't deserve an A on the test if you go in with a list of all the right answers, previously verified. It's the uncertainty that makes it a valid test. This is true of all proof.

Consequently, you need to humor arguments that undermine what you're trying to prove. To try to blot them out, forbid them, or shame anyone who mentions them is simply cheating.

(You probably are not aware that you are cheating. Our culture does a poor job of making sure everyone understands these natural rules of dialectic, or good argument - which in practice must be softer than mathematical or scientific proof, not harder, to keep discussion going. You're forgiven, at least by me, for cheating without realizing it. But now you know.)

Discussing extremely serious issues while humoring ideas you disagree with generally requires a sense of humor, or at least of play - and using it.

If you can maintain this sense, and the other parties can, you can have a good discussion.

If you can't, it will threaten your relationships even to talk, which means it won't be a particularly good, open, or informative discussion, in all likeliness.

There's a basic mechanic to all this. Good debate isn't a total mystery. It works according to natural rules, much the way your car engine does. When it breaks down, there are reasons. When the car responds to the accelerator, there are reasons.

The tragedy of modern democracy is that if everyone knew this, democracy would be 10x more effective, if not 100x more effective.