1) Repairing Your Arguments Before Seeking Advice

Repairing your arguments can be very important. Not only does it give you a more open mind about a certain topic, but it also helps you think twice before reaching a final conclusion. If you do not repair arguments, you may reach a conclusion that may not be necessarily true. This may cause a chain reaction on what you will do next after knowing that conclusion. For example, in some cases, reaching a conclusion can result to asking a certain person for answers or advice. Here is a scenario that happened having to do with a trivia quiz and being in group teams.

Host: Here is the next question! What is octopus translated into Japanese?
Person 1: _____ (which is me) loves sushi and octopus is a type of sushi and Japanese food. She should know the translation.
Person 2: LET'S ASK HER!

From hearing this, I was thinking that their reasoning was way off. I admit that I love eating sushi, but back then my English to Japanese knowledge was very low. I can see their reasoning because sushi is a Japanese food and I did have some knowledge about that. Though their reasoning seems believable, it is still weak because they did not mention anything about translation. They only talked about food basically. If the argument was repaired, their argument would be better, like the one below.

Host: Here is the next question! What is octopus translated into Japanese?
Person 1: _____ (me) loves sushi and octopus is a type of sushi.
Person 2: She goes to a lot of Japanese restaurants and usually, they include English to Japanese translations of food in their menu. Therefore, she probably knows the translation.

This above is a stronger argument than the previous one because this shows directly that I was exposed to English and Japanese translation. The previous argument was weaker because they only mentioned about me eating Japanese food. If you were to base a conclusion by eating a certain food alone, you might as well say that a person that loves Mexican food know Spanish, or that if you love eating Filipino food, you know Tagalog. However, if you were to mention that menus of Mexican or Filipino restaurants usually include English to other language translations, then it would seem more believable that people exposed to these menus have some knowledge about the translation.

- Pink Bean