How to Control a Conversation

A lesson in pivoting

So, this article is going to be about the rhetorical technique called pivoting. Now I don't see much literature or information or resources pertaining to this concept of pivoting.  I think it would best describe it as a fancier red herring it's meant to distract to get away from the main points of conversation. 

This isn't always a bad thing but it's often used by those who want to Peddle pseudoscience and bullshit.

How would I define pivoting?  I would say pivoting is a change or shift typically in a conversation. 

You see this all the time with politicians who don't directly answer questions but instead focus on a different issue or focus on a favorable answer that makes them look good.

Nevertheless, pivoting can be influential and it can have positive applications. So let's go over some negative applications of pivoting and positive applications of pivoting.

Negative Pivoting

I want you to think about pivoting in terms of shifting. You're Shifting the conversation in one way or another. 

If a red herring is made to distract a pivot is meant to shift Focus. Whatever the focus of the conversation is changes.

 For example:

Let's say we have a politician who is questioned about their tax information. The same politician might pivot away from the issue of their tax dilemma and make start talking about the opposing political party and how corrupt and bad they are.

So, the focus of the conversation went from that politician’s tax info to the other political party. Typically pivoting is used during questioning and the shift in focus is meant to come up with one’s own answers to that question.

This is just seen a lot in the political arena.

Some might define pivot in terms of actions. So, a politician might state that they're going to do one thing and pivot by doing something else. People might see this person as unreliable or a “flip flop”.

We also see this in the realm of pseudoscience. This is where individuals will shift the focus of criticism away from themselves onto either topics or subject matter or discussions that often favored them.

You saw this with my Nicki Minaj post. She pivoted away from addressing the criticism given to her by claiming to be the victim. Pivoting is often a viable tactic for those who do not want to address head-on the issues presented to them.

 But they're also positive aspects to pivoting and sometimes pivoting is appropriate.

Positive Pivoting

Pivoting can be appropriate in a number of situations. For instance, the course from John Hopkins University, that I shared, advises us as vaccine advocates to pivot the conversation away from concerns about the vaccine to concerns about the overall virus.

 We know for a fact from a risk-based analysis the virus is more dangerous than any side effects from the vaccine by far. By changing the focus of the conversation we can help individuals who are vaccine-hesitant be more ready to be vaccinated. 

The issue and the fact of the matter is facts alone are not going to get people to change their minds. There are some people where it doesn’t matter how much data you throw at them or no matter how much logic you use they will not concede.

 So, sometimes we have to rely on these rhetorical techniques to nudge people towards more effective decision-making.

You can see positive pivoting even in relationships. Changing the focus away from the character of your significant other to their behaviors can help with conflict resolution.

 Pivoting could also be used to get out of very contentious or stress-inducing topics of discussion. 

Sometimes talking about science or you know things like the vaccine causes a lot of stress in the discussion sometimes we need to break from the discussion.

Pivoting can definitely help with this.

Final Thoughts

It's important to focus on one of the most forgotten aspects of critical thinking. 

I talked a lot about logic, cognitive science, and data literacy but I neglected something that's probably even more fundamental.

See, most people do not know how to write well let alone read well. 

I would argue most people do not know how to express their thoughts accordingly nor accept the thoughts of others in a charitable way.

This is where rhetoric comes into play. 

When I talk about rhetoric it's not about just English.

As critical thinkers we need to know how to speak to people,  we need to know how to interact with people,  we need to know how to write down our thoughts,  and we need to know how to read the thoughts of others.

Rhetoric teaches us about the techniques that I mentioned, such as pivoting, it also teaches us about things we might not take into consideration. 

Topics such as history, philosophy, literary criticism, and public speaking. 

Sure you might say that cognitive science can teach you a lot about related topics such as you know persuasion and communication, but it is rhetoric that helps us put that into action.

Many of us have forgotten what it is like to read, write, and think.

This is an addition to understanding the limitations that we get from cognitive science, understanding arguments such as in logic,  and knowing how to reason probabilistically which we get from data literacy.

In the upcoming months, I hope to cover these four pillars of critical thinking more and more and more and more.  this is just the beginning.