 Despite the Mohists’ general optimism about the power of disputation (biàn 辯) to resolve scientific, ethical, and political problems, an important aim of the “Lesser Selection” is to warn against blindly relying on its formal methods. Unlike a valid deductive argument, analogical distinction-drawing is not invariably reliable. According to the Mohists’ characterization of the four techniques, a typical piece of disputation might involve giving an analogy to support an assertion; presenting pairs or series of syntactically parallel statements and contending that since we accept some, we should accept others; appealing to an opponent’s precedent and challenging the opponent to explain how the case at hand is different; or asserting a statement on grounds we take to be similar to those for one our opponent has already accepted. The Mohists see four sorts of problems that may arise in drawing distinctions and thus making assertions on these grounds, one for each of the four procedures. (1) Analogies are not always reliable, because things similar in some respects may be importantly different in others. (2) Formal parallels hold only up to a point. (3) The grounds by which an opponent’s precedent and our own assertion are “so” (correct) or not may be quite different. (4) Likewise, an opponent’s reasons for accepting some assertion may be different from ours. The “Lesser Selection” explains: 