A few years ago I devel­oped a pow­er­ful rhetor­i­cal prin­ci­ple that has spread widely among my circle of friends. Now I shall share this extremely potent knowl­edge with you, the dear reader. By taking advan­tage of this rule (which has been empir­i­cally ver­i­fied in innu­mer­able¹ sit­u­a­tions) you will hand­ily win any argu­ment or debate you might find your­self par­tic­i­pat­ing in.

The prin­ci­ple, which I have humbly named the Poulos Pos­tu­late, goes as follows:

• The louder you say it, the more right it is.

And an impor­tant corol­lary of this prin­ci­ple is:

• In a debate, the person who is louder is right.

Or put another way:

• You can win any debate by shout­ing lots.¹

I find the best appli­ca­tion of this prin­ci­pal is as fol­lows: the next time you’re in a debate, state your case bluntly and suc­cinctly. Don’t bother with too much detail or nuance—that crap just bogs you down and obfus­cates your point. Anyway, a shorter state­ment will be much easier on your throat once you start scream­ing at the top of your lungs.

Your oppo­nent—let’s call them “John C.” for the sake of exam­ple—will likely fail to see things your way. This is because John C. is an idiot. Which is to say, he is a stub­born con­trar­ian who con­sis­tently fails to com­pre­hend the majesty of your genius. Even though you have put forth your bril­liant argu­ment in a straight­for­ward and force­ful manner, his dim mind abjectly fails to grasp the essen­tial truth under­ly­ing your claim. Your intel­lect is vast and deep, and John C. is a mere slug squirm­ing along the lip of that deep chasm. He may be dimly cog­nizant that there is some­thing impres­sive nearby, but it is all he can to do avoid falling in.

So anyway, John C. is prob­a­bly blath­er­ing on with some kind of lame coun­ter­ar­gu­ment: “Greg, I’m pretty sure that’s impossible,” or “Greg, I’m pretty sure the moon isn’t actu­ally made of cheese,” or “Greg, I’m pretty sure that griz­zly bear is not ‘just a big cuddly fun-​bun who wants to be our friend.’” In fact, he’s prob­a­bly still talk­ing, mean­der­ing through end­less points of “evidence” as though it’ll some­how con­vince anyone that he’s right. Tough beans: he’s wrong, you’re right, and every­one will be much better off the sooner they real­ize this.

If John C. is still talk­ing, cut him off now. Simply restate your first state­ment, but—and this is the key—say it louder than you did before. Don’t scream it (yet), as you want to leave a little room for esca­la­tion if your oppo­nent doesn’t get the hint right away. But def­i­nitely use a firmer, louder, angrier tone. It’s unnec­es­sary to change the state­ment of your argu­ment in any way. In fact, saying any­thing dif­fer­ently would indi­cate incon­stancy and dif­fi­dence on your part, and you cer­tainly don’t want to be seen as some kind of flip-​flopper. No: best is to repeat your orig­i­nal state­ment exactly, word for word.

Hope­fully John C. will get the point now and admit defeat. More likely, he will be truly dense and will con­tinue to argue. For exam­ple, he may claim that you have not acknowl­edged any of the points he raised pre­vi­ously. Ignore this. He also may argue that you inter­rupted his point with­out adding any­thing new to the con­ver­sa­tion. Ignore this, too. If he keeps yam­mer­ing away, inter­rupt him. Simply restate your posi­tion again, louder this time.

Con­tinue esca­lat­ing the argu­ment in this fash­ion. Even­tu­ally John C. will get the point and admit defeat. Ide­ally, he will say some­thing like, “Oh my good­ness, now that you put it THAT way [i.e., LOUDLY] I see your side of the argu­ment and agree with you com­pletely! You are so smart and amaz­ing and incred­i­bly good look­ing and boy I wish I could be just like you!” More com­monly, your oppo­nent will simply refuse to con­tinue con­vers­ing with you. This is a clear admis­sion of defeat. It is an implicit acknowl­edg­ment of your intel­lec­tual supe­ri­or­ity, and of the fact that you are far better look­ing than he could ever hope to be, even on one of his good days.

Occa­sion­ally, you will come across an oppo­nent who is well-​versed in advanced rhetor­i­cal tech­niques and is also famil­iar with the Poulos Prin­ci­ple. For these for­mi­da­ble foes, I unfor­tu­nately have very little advice to offer you. The best I can do is wish you strength of voice and encour­age you to shout your blessed little heart out.³

¹ Innu­mer­abil­ity of sit­u­a­tions not actu­ally guar­an­teed.
² A vari­ant of the prin­ci­ple can also be applied to writ­ten argu­ments: instead of shout­ing, one must increase the size and weight of the font being used.
³ How­ever, in keep­ing with a long tra­di­tion of stay­ing at the fore­front of debat­ing tech­nolo­gies, we here at Poulos Labs have been work­ing on an advanced new rhetor­i­cal tech­nique, which we ten­ta­tively call “punching”. How­ever, it is highly exper­i­men­tal, some­what dan­ger­ous, and cur­rently suit­able for only the most expe­ri­enced debaters. We hope to have a more user-​friendly design tested and in pro­duc­tion some­time during the second quar­ter of 2010.