The language of arguing about what did not happen
Eight things people say in this kind of argument. Match each to the move it makes.
Two people doing it properly
Half past five, or nine in the morning
A: My one change is this. The first message goes out at nine in the morning instead of half past five in the afternoon. Nothing else moves.
B: Then nothing else happens either. The decision had already been taken on the Tuesday. You are changing the announcement, not the decision.
A: I am changing who reads it first. At half past five it reaches the people who check their phones on the train home, and that is the same eleven people every time. At nine it reaches everybody at once.
B: All right — I will grant you that the audience is different. What I do not grant is that a different audience changes the outcome. You need a mechanism. Somebody who reads it at nine and does something before lunch that nobody actually did.
A: The mechanism is the union rep. She was in the building on the Wednesday morning and on a train on the Wednesday evening.
B: That is a real mechanism, and I accept it. I still think she would have found out by the Thursday, and the Thursday was in time.
A: Then we disagree about exactly one thing, which is whether the Thursday was in time. That is a much smaller argument than the one we started with, and it is one we could actually settle.
Three questions.
1. What does B demand before accepting that the change matters?
2. What is A’s mechanism?
3. How does the exchange end?
The four moves
1 · State the change, and say what stays still. The message goes out at nine. Nothing else moves.
2 · Supply or demand a mechanism. A person, a place, a time, an action. The union rep was in the building on the Wednesday morning.
3 · Refuse smuggled changes. Anything downstream of the first change is fair. A second independent change is not. You are moving two things at once.
4 · Narrow to what is left. So we disagree about exactly one thing, which is…
Six lines of a counterfactual argument, out of order. Put them into the order that builds.
- Everything else stays exactly where it was — same letter, same sender, same address.
- I will grant you all of that, and I still think she had already decided.
- My one change is that the letter is posted on the Friday rather than the Monday.
- Then the whole thing comes down to whether the decision was made before the Thursday.
- The mechanism is the second post on the Saturday, which existed then and does not now.
- So it arrives before she leaves, rather than four days after she has gone.
Two minutes of assembly
One word per gap. Eight lines you will need in the next twenty-six minutes.
Hold everything still — only the one thing moves.
What is the ? Who does something different, and when?
You are smuggling a second change there.
No, that is downstream the change you already granted me.
I will you that the audience is different.
It would have happened , with or without your letter.
That is a mood, a counterfactual.
So the disagreement is about whether Thursday was in time.
Three questions.
1. What must your one change come with?
2. Your opponent adds a second independent change. What do you say?
3. How should the argument end?
Alternative history, one change at a time
How the twenty-six minutes run. Five alone to specify the change, fifteen in fours for two argued rounds, six for the narrowing. The rule holds throughout: one change, held still, with a mechanism.
Stage 1 · Alone · 5 minutes · Specify
One counterfactual, from history, from public life, from a film or a novel, or from your own life. Anything at all, provided it takes exactly one change.
Four lines. The second is the one that will be attacked first.
- 1 · The change, in one sentence, with a time attached. The letter is posted on the Friday.
- 2 · The mechanism: who does something different, where, and when.
- 3 · The consequence you claim follows — and only the ones that are genuinely downstream.
- 4 · The strongest objection to your own case, written before anybody makes it.
Stage 2 · Fours · 15 minutes · Two rounds
Two counterfactuals per four, argued in turn. One proposer, three challengers, and a timer.
Seven minutes a round, and thirty seconds of that is the proposer’s opening.
- Proposer (30 sec): the change, what stays still, and the mechanism.
- Challengers: attack in this order — first the mechanism (who did what, when?), then the consequence (that would have happened anyway), then the scope (you are smuggling in a second change).
- Proposer: concede anything you genuinely cannot defend. A concession here costs nothing and buys the rest.
- Anybody may call "mood" once per round. If the group agrees the alternative is too large to argue about, the proposer has two minutes to cut it down to one change and start again.
Stage 3 · Fours · 6 minutes · Narrow it
For each of the two counterfactuals, one sentence that everybody in the four accepts.
Three minutes each. The sentence names what is still in dispute, and nothing else.
- Write it as: We disagree about exactly one thing, which is whether ___ .
- Every person in the four has to accept the wording. If somebody does not, it is not narrow enough yet.
- Say whether the remaining disagreement is settleable — is there anything that would tell you who is right?
- If the answer is no, say so out loud. A counterfactual that survives all the way down to something unsettleable was still worth the fifteen minutes; it just is not history.
What survived the rule
Two questions.
1. What happened the first time somebody called mood?
2. Could you name a mechanism for your own change?
Who did what, and when
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What turns a mood into a counterfactual?
2. What is the last move?
Next. The errors this area produces — including the form that does not exist in any variety of English, and the two words that change what a wish is admitting.