Arguing Using Critical Thinking (Marteney)

There is a quote that has been passed down many years and is most recently accounted to P.T. Barnum, “There is a sucker born every minute.” Are you that sucker? If you were, would you like to be “reborn?” The goal of this book is to help you through that “birthing” process. Critical thinking and standing up for your ideas and making decisions are important in both your personal and professional life. How good are we at making the decision to marry? According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is one divorce in America every 36 seconds. That is nearly 2,400 every day. And professionally, the Wall Street Journal predicts the average person will have 7 careers in their lifetime.

Critical thinking skills are crucial. Critical thinking is a series learned skills. In each chapter of this book you will find a variety of skills that will help you improve your thinking and argumentative ability. As you improve, you will grow into a more confident person being more in charge of your world and the decisions you make.

Standing Up For Your Point Of View

This book is not about how to win an argument, although you will become more skilled at argumentation. This book is about how to engage in constructive conflict resolution and thus gaining more confidence in your points of view. We will do this by exploring all types of arguments from interpersonal disagreements to major policy decisions. In this process, we will work at improving your critical thinking skills at decision-making.

Arguing Can Be Constructive

Ever make a bad decision?

In September of 2000, Mark Randolph and Reed Hastings, the co-founders of Netflix met with John Antico, the CEO of Blockbuster to see if Blockbuster was interested in purchasing Netflix for $50 million dollars. They made their argument and Mr. Antico didn’t even consider the offer. He actually thought it was a joke.

Netflix had been losing money and was looking at a $5 million dollar loss that year. The founders of Netflix had been trying to get a meeting with Blockbuster for months and finally they had their chance to make an argument as to why it would be in Blockbusters interest to purchase Netflix.

In his book, That Will Never Work, Marc Randolph describes the encounter.

Hastings quickly ran over Blockbuster’s strengths and then noted that there were areas where it could benefit from Netflix’s market position and expertise. “We should join forces,” he said. “We will run the online part of the combined business. You will focus on the stores. We will find the synergies that come from the combination, and it will truly be a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”

Antioco’s response is probably very high on his list of things-I-wish-I’d-never-said: “The dot-com hysteria is completely overblown.” Blockbuster general counsel Ed Stead then explained how the business models of Netflix and just about every other online business were not sustainable and would never make money. The Netflix execs debated this point with him for a while, then Stead cut to the chase: “If we were to buy you, what were you thinking? I mean, a number.”