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<title>Devil's Advocate
- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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<h2>Why the Devil's Advocate Doesn't Help Reach the Truth</h2>
<address class="byline">by Richard Stallman</address>
<p>Playing the devil's advocate means challenging a position by saying
what a hypothetical adversary would say. I encounter this frequently
in interviews and Q&A sessions, and many people believe that this
is a good way to put a controversial position to the test. What it
really does is put the controversial position at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>There is an indirect way of playing the devil's advocate: to say,
“If I defended your position, how should I respond if someone said
XYZ?” This is less unfriendly than the ordinary devil's advocate,
who would simply say XYZ, but has the same effect.</p>
<p>Cunning adversaries try intentionally to obstruct thoughtful
consideration of a position they oppose. My cunning and unscrupulous
adversary (the “devil,” let us say) would not want my views
to get a proper hearing, especially if the devil thinks they are valid
and people might agree with them. The best way to prevent that is to
block me from making them understood.</p>
<p>The devil achieves that by twisting my words: presenting a misleading
context in which my words appear to mean something other than what I
intended. If this succeeds, it will confuse the audience and distract
them from the issue, in effect preventing it from being properly raised.
If this makes my words appear to mean something that the audience will
condemn, and which nobody present is really in favor of, I may need a
long explanation to get back on track. There may not be time for
this, or the audience might lose focus.</p>
<p>If I succeed in overcoming the first misunderstanding, the cunning
adversary would spring another, and another. If the adversary is
better at verbal fencing than I am, I might never get my point across.
If the stress makes me heated and I have trouble speaking clearly, the
adversary will count that a success. It matters little to the devil
whether it is my position that is vanquished or only me personally, as
long as the audience rejects my views.</p>
<p>If you are not a real “devil,” only playing the devil's
advocate, you would not really wish to prevent me from presenting the
intended point. But you may prevent it without intending to. Playing
the devil's advocate means you act hostile even though you don't feel
hostility. Once you decide to say what an adversary would say, you
are likely to do the job as well as you can, by imitating the toughest
adversary you can imagine: the cunning and unscrupulous one, whose
goal is to oppose rather than to get at the truth.</p>
<p>If you know what such adversaries have said to me, or if you are
skilled at imagining them, you would say the same things they do.
These statements could distract the audience and block consideration
of the issue, just as if a real adversary had said them. But if you
are not really my adversary, that result may not be what you really
want. If your goal was to shed light on the issue, your approach will
have backfired.</p>
<p>What I say on many issues goes against the establishment position, and
I don't expect people to agree with me without considering the issue
thoroughly, including the counterarguments. Indeed, it would be
almost impossible for anyone to avoid considering the establishment's
arguments, since everyone knows them by heart. To judge what is right
requires getting to the bottom of the issue.</p>
<p>The kind of questions that help get to the bottom of an issue are not
those that a cunning and unscrupulous adversary would pose, but rather
those of a thoughtful person who has not made up per mind (<a href="#ft1">1</a>). They
are questions that prise apart the aspects of the issue, so one can see
the various possible positions on each aspect, what they imply, and
how they relate. Very different from playing devil's advocate.</p>
<p>Thus, instead of trying to play the devil's advocate, I suggest
that you adopt the goal of “probing the issues.” And if
you are asked how you would answer if someone else asked a hostile
question, perhaps this essay is a good response.</p>
<hr class="column-limit" />
<h3 class="footnote">Footnote</h3>
<ol>
<li id="ft1">The author uses the gender-neutral third person singular
pronouns “person,” “per,” and
“pers.”</li>
</ol>
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<p>Copyright © 2012, 2017, 2021 Richard Stallman</p>
<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
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<p class="unprintable">Updated:
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$Date: 2021/09/02 08:55:39 $
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</p>
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