It’s a common phrase when trying to work through something — “let’s agree to disagree“. While that may work in some cases, such as your preferred college football team, in many cases it’s just a way to give up.
As Adam Grant recently said, using that phrase means that you’ve “decided that the conflict is unresolvable“. Is it really?
That’s not to say you should always continue to fight until both parties are mad. At some point, being willing to walk away knowing a middle ground was never reached is a wise thing to do. In most cases, though, the truth is out there and it’s worth taking the time to find it.
In many cases, it comes down to rephrasing the question. Take these examples, which are seemingly all unresolvable:
Unresolvable: “Yellow is the prettiest color”, “Michigan is the best football team”, or “PCs are better than Macs”
By adjusting the initial statement to add a bit more clarity, they become questions that can be clearly answered and supported by facts.
Resolvable: “Yellow is the most visible color for emergency vehicles”, “Michigan is the winningest football team of all time”, “PCs are less expensive than Macs for comparable hardware”.
Don’t create enemies for no reason, but don’t just bail and “agree to disagree” on something that might have a clear resolution not too far away.
I think I can resolve both of those Michigan football statements for you. 🙂
I think they have two different answers. If I say “the best football team”, that presumably means “right now”, and Michigan is not the right answer. We all know who is…
However, for the second one, that is clearly Michigan. Alabama is 36 behind (965 to 929) and closing quickly, but best case is still another decade before they catch them. Until then, Michigan is undeniably the winningest college football team of all time!
I read winningest as winning percentage. In which case, Alabama and Oho State are the best.
Ahh, good point. Though if we go that way, Mary Hardin-Baylor is tops. 🙂
For D-1, though, yes, Bama is on top. Michigan is surprisingly closer than I thought (.730 to .728), but won’t catch them any time soon.