Underdog’s Advantage

I've noticed a little trend in arguments, that the person with a less-popular opinion will tend to have an advantage in an straight argument against someone with a position that the majority of society holds. This is because the person with the unpopular opinion has likely spent more time thinking about their position and how to defend it. Where-as someone with an opinion that's shared by most of society will not see as much of a need to defend it, and so wont spend much time thinking about it. It has nothing to do with the less popular opinion being more correct or better thought out; they just have more of a motivation to do research and come up with support for what they believe.
A good example is the belief that the Holocaust didn't happen. Most of you reading this now probably believe that the the Holocaust did happen, and probably feel fairly passionate about that belief as well. Yet, you've probably not spent much time thinking (or researching) how to argue this opinion against someone on the other side of the issue. Someone who believes it didn't happen, on the other hand, probably realizes they're in a small minority with that opinion, and so anticipates that they'll have to defend their belief a lot, and has put more thought into how they'll defend it. Because they've put more thought into it, they'd probably be able to argue fairly well against you on the subject. This is the underdog's advantage.
The advantage starts to go away if more people begin subscribing to the minority belief, and it starts getting more recognition. At that point, enough chatter begins in the media and in social situations that people actually begin thinking about their beliefs on the subject and coming up with reasons to support it, or at least memorizing slogans. This is when the issue becomes controversial.
An issue becomes controversial when enough people support the minority side of it. An issue isn't controversial (basically), if you can bring it up with someone you don't really know and expect that their beliefs on it will side with your own. It is controversial, if you can't really make that assumption. For instance, "Women should have the right to vote," is not a very controversial statement. "Same-sex couples should have the right to get married" is.

Cube Staircase

     Sometimes, when arguing a position, people will use a string of points, where-in each point supports the one following it, but does not end up supporting the subsequent point after that.  If you look at these arguments as a series of short “Because A, then B” statements, then each one of them as an individual is sound, but the argument as a whole is not.

    The reason it’s not sounds is because, although each points supports the one after it, it does so in such a way that doesn’t support the following points.   Here’s an example:

I’ve heard that this vacuum is powerful enough to pick up a chair; so, this vacuum sucks really hard.  If any product sucks really hard, you shouldn’t buy it.  So, you shouldn’t buy this vacuum.

    It’s true that a vacuum is powerful enough to suck up a chair, that it sucks really hard.  And it’s also true that if a product sucks really hard, that you shouldn’t buy it.  However, these aren’t true using the same sense of the phrase “sucks really hard.”  In this example, the conflation is really easy to spot, but people often sneak these into their arguments in a more subtle way.

     Here’s another way to think of it: imagine a staircase, made out of cubes.  Each cube is placed off-center from the cube below it, but in such away that its weight will still be supported and it wont fall off.

     Now imagine that a few more blocks were added on, and each block supports the block above it in the same way, and if you look specifically at any two sequential blocks, they will seem to support be supported.  However, each block will support two-or-more blocks above itself, and over-all the structure is unsound, and would fall down.

      Arguments work in the same way.  Each piece of evidence given needs to support the point which relies on it, but also every piece which relies on that one and so on.