Have you ever convinced anyone of anything?

With the slowly settling clarity that my side has been losing arguments left and right, I feel I should contribute whatever cents I have towards the cause. This is Part 1 of 2 - which I am sure you should be able to decide if you want to skip altogether after reading the first line of the next paragraph. Frankly, I get it. But now with this newly formed trust between you and me, with my established sincerity and solidarity, I must ask you to believe my claim that Part 2 is nothing like this one, and is definitely worth a read.

An argument has a premise, some assumptions and a conclusion. Premise is the baseline that is meant to have no contentions, and are stated as facts. 

I am given a coat with a frog in one of its pocket. I looked in the coat's left pocket, it is not in there. Therefore, it must be in the right pocket.

The first two sentences are the premise, statements that for the sake of the argument are presented as solid truth. The last sentence is the conclusion, drawn from the forces of reason and logic. The assumption is that the coat had only two pockets. Assumptions can be stated or unstated. This is usually where the important things of any consequence are said.

Another idea is the quality of an argument. An argument can be Valid, Sound, or Convincing. 

An argument is Valid, if the conclusion follows from the premise. "Earth is flat, therefore, if I travel long enough, I will fall off the edge". That is a perfectly Valid argument.

A Valid argument is Sound if your premise is also true. "Sun and Moon periodically appear and disappear from Earth. We have observed that objects in space rotate around other objects. Therefore, Sun and Moon must rotate around the Earth." This is a Sound argument.

But not all Sound arguments are Convincing as I am sure I didn't just convince you that sun rotates around the earth. I don't remember what makes an argument Convincing. I have been just repeating stuff that I had read long time back in this online course: MITx 24.00x Introduction to Philosophy. I did not finish that course.

Ironically, if I were to make the argument that this information will help you with your battles, that would sound unconvincing - because it will probably not do that. It will perhaps not feel immediately practical, simply because the other side won't be following these rules or this kind of structure. Then there is passion and emotion, and usually at any given time in high energy exchanges, no less that ten things are being said at once, unintentionally. Moreover, if you are a grown adult like me, your arguments are most likely not happening in a debate competition like setting.

What this should give you though, is a lens with which you can hear things a little more clearly. If you practice, and use it to ingest information (as opposed to egress, of painfully forming long sentences to make your point) you can truly listen to the other side, and make a fresh off-the-farm sort of response, that if nothing, will at least momentarily pause them.

 Please read Part 2 when I publish it (I will add the link here). I said all this because I felt it was relevant.