Counterintuitive Spring 2023

Choose the Only Good Opening Sentence:

1. An argument cannot be won in the first sentence, but it can be lost.
2. First sentences are very important.
3. Most authors of articles of all kinds have trouble writing first sentences.
4. There are several ways an article can be started.
5. Some ways of starting essays are better than others.
6. If you are starting to write an essay, you should be very careful about your first sentence.
7. Readers are attracted to good opening sentences.

What’s so good about it?

1. It makes two strong paradoxical claims.
2. It sums up a very strong argument the essay will make.
3. It is itself an argument.
4. It makes a challenge to the reader.
5. It’s memorable.
6. It can be debated, demonstrated, illustrated.
7. It’s a good example of itself.

Notice I didn’t say it’s true?

It might not be, but it could be, which is what engages readers. If they have any interest in argument at all, they’ll want to know whether the essay contains a convincing proof of this premise.

Start again.

An argument cannot be won in the first sentence, but it can be lost. Success in arguing depends on persuading readers of the truth of a clearly stated premise. Let’s break that down:

1. Persuasion
2. Truth
3. Clarity
4. Premise

1. Persuasion. We will not prove anything in our essays. Proofs are for mathematicians, not essay writers. We will persuade our readers by being reasonable but firm. We’ll appeal to their logic (logos), their emotions (pathos), and their humanity (ethos). Any hint of illogic, cheap sentimentality, or prejudice, even in the first sentence, can make readers wary of our intentions. We don’t want them defensive; we want them receptive. If they dig in to protect a cherished belief before we get them to listen, WE LOSE the argument.

2. Truth. Truth is different than proof. While what we say will probably be provocative, it must always be possible. To be caught in a lie would completely destroy our credibility, without which WE LOSE the argument.

3. Clarity. Because the truth is multifaceted, true declarations can be richly ambiguous, but that’s no excuse to be unclear. Even as they describe nuanced opinions, our claims, to persuade, must be clear. The quickest way to lose an argument is to keep the reader wondering what we mean by what we say. If we can’t be understood, WE LOSE the argument.

4. Premises. It goes without saying that we need to convince our readers of something in particular. The premises cannot be false, but neither can they be obvious. They are premises because they require evidence and persuasion. Without them, WE LOSE the argument.

Example 1. The Marshmallow Test

a) From a very early age, we are either gobblers or nibblers, and only dire circumstances can change us. b) As psychologist B.J. Casey has demonstrated with an experiment spanning more than 40 years, children who gobbled a single test marshmallow instead of waiting for a promised second marshmallow have continued to suffer from lack of will power throughout their lives. c) Those who managed to delay (and therefore double!) their gratification have been more behaviorally more successful ever since—healthier, less obese, less addictive, even better SAT test-takers by an average of 210 points! d) For years, observers credited the marshmallow abstainers (the nibblers) for their astute and strategic self-denial, but it’s perhaps more likely the gobblers just don’t trust the game.

Just 4 sentences; many many claims.

a) Makes a provocative claim that is not just bold but also central to the author’s argument. We seem to be one type or another, but our experiences and environment can change us.

b) Apparently, nibblers are better at delaying gratification in everything for their entire lives, which makes them less impulsive, and more moderate in their behaviors.

c) The proof is that they’re less prone to modern problems (and better on tests!).

d) But a subject who does not trust the authority to deliver a second marshmallow (or who might fear losing the first marshmallow!) will never see the logic of saving the first one. In a rigged game, eating the marshmallow isn’t impulsive, it’s wise.

Example 2. Nice Work if You Can Get it

a) Vancouver’s heroin addicts have been hired by the city to do important work: maintaining a clean addiction. b) Every day, like good employees, they report for duty at one of several safe zones for addicts known as Insites. c) There, in return for staying healthy and refraining from crime, they are paid in drugs—careful doses of heroin in clean needles—all at taxpayer expense. d) And the taxpayers approve because they’ve been suffering the alternatives for decades.

Just 4 sentences; many many claims.

a) Uses an analogy to make a provocative claim: that the addicts have a job to do and are on the city payroll.

b) Advances the “addicts as employees” analogy while detailing one of their responsibilities: to show up for work.

c) Details the terms of the arrangement: Can’t do crime, pay is delivered by professionals to avoid illness.

d) Emphasizes the economics of the deal. Taxpayers who are tired of the crime and the sleaziness of street drug trade are paying for cleaner streets . . . and saving money over the alternatives.

Example 3. Too Old to Die

a) Poor Margaret Bentley wants to die, and her doctors would probably let her if only she could tell them. b) Advance health directives made by healthy young people who want to avoid the torments of a lingering death are usually sufficient to prevent doctors from artificially prolonging life. c) But when a patient such as Bentley is no longer competent to press her case, she can find herself in a legal battle with her younger self. d) 50-year-old Margaret didn’t want to turn 90, but 91-year-old Margaret can’t confirm that she agrees.

Just 4 sentences; many many claims.

a) Makes a provocative claim that is not just bold but also central to the author’s argument. Margaret Bentley is clearly suffering in a particularly thorny legal limbo. It’s probably truer to say that young Margaret Bentley wants to have killed old Margaret Bentley, but that paradox will become clear.

b) This establishes that the legal mechanism is a routine that people exercise to avoid the MB problem, but clearly “usually” isn’t helping Margaret.

c) In this case, the older Margaret Bentley continues to accept food although the younger Margaret Bentley had stipulated that she wanted to be allowed to decline food when she was no longer living a meaningful life. Clearly MB created this mess herself with a sloppy directive. But all of that needs to wait. It’s too much information for the first paragraph.

d) We need a sentence to clarify that the legal conflict is between the same person at two different ages. Lawyers and bioethicists will have a field day determining whether young Margaret Bentley is “the same person” as old Margaret Bentley, among other wonderful conundrums that make this topic such a rich source of Definition essays.

Example 4. Too Young to Die

a) Some say age is defined by how long we’ve been alive (our distance from birth), but for terminally ill children, age should be defined as how long they have have to live (their distance from death). b) Here in America, we’re struggling to grant euthanasia for adults who have come to the end of their long and meaningful lives. c) Meanwhile, the Belgians are granting children, some as young as six, the legal right to bring their lives to a peaceful, planned conclusion. d) The two groups have something essential in common: they’re within a year of dying, and that gives them the right to decide how long to bear the pain.

Just 4 sentences; many many claims.

a) Make a definition claim that has nothing to do with the dictionary definition. For the purposes of this argument, the author claims that our true age is not how long since we’ve been born but how long before we die. That makes terminally-ill kids old enough to make their own choices.

b) This establishes that Belgium has made its peace with euthanasia, which the US has not, and that the granting of death with dignity laws is indeed a slippery slope. Once it’s granted, it will likely be expanded. The author has no problem with that situation.

c) Makes a subtle rhetorical case for the peaceful solution of planning and executing death on the patient’s terms; the sentence avoids any gruesome arguments about the suffering the child would otherwise suffer. (That will come later, when we’re ready for it.)

d) This is the conclusion of a deductive syllogism.

• Patients within a year of death deserve euthanasia.
• Children with terminal diagnoses are within a year of death.
• Terminally-ill children deserve euthanasia (despite their chronological age).

Write Your Own Opening
(In class FRI NOV 13)

1. Open a new post titled: Open Strong—Username
2. Post to the E12: How to Open category and to your own Username.
3. Write an opening paragraph for your Research Position Paper (in progress).
4. Craft a first sentence that DOES NOT LOSE the argument.
5. A good first sentence:
   1. Makes strong, perhaps paradoxical claims.
   2. Sums up a very strong argument the essay will make.
   3. Is itself an argument.
   4. Makes a challenge to the reader.
   5. Is memorable.
   6. Can be debated, demonstrated, illustrated.
   7. Is a good example of itself.
6. The other 3 or so sentences should achieve as many of the A-G goals as possible . . . each!

You have until the end of the period FRI NOV 13 to write a good first draft.

Lecture Text

Readers can bail on us after any word: this one, or the next. Their time is precious; the world is lively with distractions, and increasingly the page where we meet them is studded with seductive links.

Re-read the first sentence, please. I wrote it to introduce a post about the importance of first sentences, but I didn’t mention sentences at all. In fact, the whole short paragraph avoids the brittle topics of sentences and introductions. Instead, it invites readers to contemplate a personal relationship between themselves and the writer, in this case me. It suggests that readers who stop reading are betraying the author. It sympathizes with readers torn between alternatives. It conjures the page as a temptress luring our readers away from us. In this tiny human drama, the reader is the prize and the writer has everything to lose.

The paragraph even plays hard to get, suggesting to the reader that she could probably find more enjoyment elsewhere. It makes her consciously commit. And yes, this reader is female; I can tell you what she looks like. I imagine her to remind myself I’m having a conversation.

Consider the alternative.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a first sentence. A good one fulfills three essential roles: to engage the attention of the reader, to introduce the primary topic of the essay that follows, and most importantly, to compel the reader to go on to the next sentence.

You might argue (as I always do with you) that this new paragraph 2 does the job better—that the original purple paragraph 1 and its first sentence waste time and words and don’t get to the point. I would counterargue that humanizing the commerce between writers and readers is the point. The second version names the roles of the sentence, but doesn’t explain why we care. The first version says: it’s personal. We write to fulfill our own needs, and without our readers that need is unmet.

Real Life Examples

Now consider these professional examples from some recent newspaper stories (New York Times, Economic Times, Wall Street Journal).

1. Democrats have for too long been passive in the face of the vast amounts of corporate money, most of it secret, that are being spent to evict them from office and dismantle their policies.

• Creates a clear dynamic and pits two parties against one another for jobs and influence. Suggests that one side has been devious, the other weak.

2. We’re in the middle of a remarkable shift in how Americans see the world and their own country’s role in the world.

• Horrible. The vagueness of its claims (“how Americans see the world”; “their own country’s role in the world”) adds up to no claim at all.

3. In the end it was his father’s left hand, found a couple of years ago in a pile of charred bones outside La Plata, that enabled Gonzalo Reggiardo Tolosa to know for a fact the man he never knew was dead.

• Gonzalo never knew his father. He now knows that father is dead. His evidence is the charred bones of his father’s left hand. I’m going to read Sentence 2.

4. Every literate person assesses written language every day. We find arguments compelling, lyrics melancholy, jokes humorous. We can explain what makes a particular sentence resonate.

• Wastes its humanity. These sentences point at emotion and feeling instead of illustrating them. Its claims are too abstract: we assess; we find; we explain. There are jokes in this paragraph, sad lyrics, and arguments, but its tone is flat.

5. Days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 shortly after midnight on Saturday, investigators considering a range of possible causes — mechanical failure, pilot error and terrorism — have yet to turn up solid clues.

• Suppose instead this story began:
  

  239 people vanished from the earth on Saturday, and we still don’t know why.

6. More than a dozen Latino men on Long Island have reported being robbed by a Suffolk County police officer, saying he pulled them over while they were driving and stole their money.

• Suppose instead this story began:
  

  If reports are true, a Suffolk County cop has been pulling over Latino drivers on Long Island to rob them.

7. The results of Europe’s most comprehensive survey on violence against women are shocking. The survey, released last Wednesday, reveals that more than one-third of Europe’s women say they have been subjected to physical or sexual violence from the age of 15 on.

• Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Europe’s women are in terrible danger. By their own report, more than one-third of them have suffered physical or sexual violence since turning 15.

8. The Obama Administration may have finally found a way to stop the boom in U.S. energy production.

• Does a brilliant job of creating a villain in a sentence. The administration has been actively trying to kill a profitable business, it says. The evidence? The administration wants to place new animals on the endangered species list. Protecting them will slow approval for new drilling licenses. So the delay in issuing permits to punch holes in the earth is characterized as a “way to stop the boom in energy production,” not as a “way to protect our fragile environment from the disastrous methods we currently use to produce energy.”

9. Liberals claim that only government can control health costs, and when market competition proves otherwise, the White House tries to hide the evidence by sabotaging the market.

• Whatever you think of the argument, there’s no arguing this sentence lays its cards on the table, face up.

10. The investigation into passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines flight who were traveling with stolen passports has drawn attention to a thriving market for illicit documents and the disparity in aviation security across the globe.

• Suppose this sentence began:
  

  From certain airports, our fellow passengers are much more likely to be flying on a stolen passport.

Student Essays

God Hates Fags

The gay rights movement is one of the most prominent movements in the United States. In 37 out of 50 states, gay marriage is still against the law. Gay rights have been fought against for years now and much progress has been made. Even still, people combat the right of homosexual individuals. One movement however, sees this movement as an abomination to society.

• It’s hard to tell from this paragraph that the essay will argue that the incendiary rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church has actually created sympathy for the homosexual community. The talk of “movements” generalizes and politicizes the argument before it gets started.
• Suppose instead it began:
  

  The Westboro Baptist Church and its provocative pastor claim they know who God hates, but the anger and revulsion at a recent rally were aimed directly at the church.

The Macronutrient Diet

Nutrition is something that many people in America struggle with. In today’s culture, practically everybody wants to either lose fat or gain muscle. However, the ability to diet accordingly is usually the most common setback that people encounter when trying to improve their physique. The term “diet” itself is often intimidating with its implication that it is going to be extremely restrictive with the quality of food it allows one to consume. Layne Norton, a professional natural bodybuilder with a PhD states that, “‘Diets’’ are interventions that typically target weight loss by elimination of certain types of foods, food groups, or macronutrient groups”. With this is mind, the quality of the food must be prioritized over the quantity, right?

• This article isn’t about macronutrients. It’s about fear. People are afraid of diets. They find them intimidating. Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Nobody wants to diet. The word conjures images of starvation, or worse—months of subsisting on packaged foods that don’t look nearly as good as the pictures on the package.

The Happiness Factor

The most common misconception with someone who is happy is we think that person has meaning in their life. A person who is happier may even have less meaning in their life than there less happy counterparts. Happiness doesn’t define meaning rather it defines contentment. Having meaning in one’s life runs deeper than the mere sensation that happiness brings. Meaning is about contributing to the world, to something greater than oneself. Happiness is just satisfaction with one’s current standpoint on life, and their environment. The world defines happiness as something much greater than what it actually is. Happiness is nothing less than just the satisfaction of one’s current standpoint.

• Contentment, happiness, satisfaction and meaning are riding a merry-go-round. There isn’t a person in sight. More accurately, there is one person, whose name is One.
• Suppose instead this paragraph began:
  

  Happiness is over-rated. It may even be something to be ashamed of. Because it derives from meeting our own selfish goals, we may have to be greedy to call ourselves happy.

Death by Shower

Accidental injury or death can occur at any moment. Accidents are not planned for, it just occurs. Possible accidents are avoided every day, such as slipping in the shower or tripping on a sidewalk. Such a death is unexpected and can be devastating. Although, everyday routines are ignored and are assumed to be safe, when the chance of having an incident can happen on any day. Many insurance policies don’t cover accidental death, and others offer it as an add-on.

• This essay isn’t about actuarial data on accidents. It’s about staying alive. Suppose instead the paragraph began:
  

  We cheat death a thousand times a day, maybe more. Statistics are hard to come by, but the odds of us dying from some silly accident of everyday living are so prevalent that many life insurance policies don’t cover them.