Sulphur on 3/5/2023 at 04:56
Quote Posted by Qooper
Lots of good posts, I appreciate it. I'll write more tomorrow.
You're right, I can't force anyone. I don't get anything by winning, and I'm not trying to win. About once a year they approach me for some reason, and we have a conversation that starts off with us exchanging what's new, and soon they start talking about a deeper topic (it's not politics). Then, when it's my turn to reply, they try to distract me by interrupting me (I lose my concentration and train of thought very easily) and in the end they start steamrolling and not letting me speak. When I say I don't want to fight, they deny trying to make a fight. This last time we spoke I made the choice not to respond to them again. So to what end? In this case no more to any end, but all this made me think how to deal with such people in the future. I'm not sure why I didn't end the conversation earlier. I think my problem is I get too caught up in the conversation, or maybe there's a type of obsession in the moment the conflict begins where I can't let go trying to show them that their behavior is inappropriate. We used to be friends many years ago, which is why I care, but this person started changing at one point. But I've taken enough punches and I've tried my best. I think I've followed wisdom in making the decision not to respond to this person anymore.
Well, that's interesting context. I'm not the greatest at this myself, since yeah, arguing with emotions tends to take over when things get heated, more often than not. I do have a similar situation, but not one where the conversations are as fraught and unlikely to lead to something more productive, because the friend in question really does care about our relationship more than slamming a point across for a sustained dopamine high -- you're probably making the right call if the other party consistently doesn't value you enough to let you speak.
W.r.t. my friend, he's fairly reasonable, until you start saying that the new Star Wars sequels were shite (and The Last Jedi was a good attempt), and randomly I discovered that he had at some point decided that the pyramids were, in fact, made by aliens, because human beings just weren't smart enough or capable enough in ancient Egypt to make them. I was flabbergasted, and also blindsided by the fact that a good school friend had turned into some sort conspiracy sci-fi nut; what must have happened to him that I'd just completely just
missed it across the years? He was pretty adamant about his take, and any points of hypothesis or evidence like stoneworking tools were quickly dismissed as impossible or useless or fake. Pretty frustrating, so I gave up and we moved on to something else (Star Wars, equally fruitless but more fun to talk about). When the call was done, like a reasonable person who doesn't want to let biases inflect their argument (admittedly rare for me), I looked this up on the internet to see which take was in fact more likely, despite my instinct telling me what the right answer was.
What I discovered was
it's more likely the pyramids were made by sentient wasps with armies of drones that while there's plenty of theories, and of course Herodotus' account, the singular problem is that there isn't much written documentation that has survived to falsify the original claim, which is why there's more speculation than evidence, and that leads us to all these claims divorced from reality.
So anyway, on another phone call this came up again, and I laid out what I'd found from my searches, which was of course pooh pooh'd at. I was, at this point, fairly curious; so I asked him a question: let's agree that both situations are possible, so why is it that, given the choice and Occam's razor, you would choose the solution with magical aliens building the pyramids over the more plausible and probable case of humans simply being ingenious? He did pause right at that moment, and told me flat out that he didn't know why, and had to think about it.
I don't know about you, but I'd call that progress. I could have made this more didactic a recounting with actual advice, but I think it's a nice tangential aside anyway, if not terribly relevant to your situation.
demagogue on 3/5/2023 at 08:01
Simple example today. District elections are happening in Texas like the day after tomorrow.
Then I read this today:
> The Chief Executive [of Hong Kong] John Lee announced at a press conference earlier on Tuesday that the District Council polls will be reformed [i.e., the number of seats the public can vote for will be reduced from 452 to 88 out of 479 total; the rest are now party appointed by either the executive or small committees] in order to prevent people from “hijacking, manipulating [and] paralysing” the local district bodies.
Aside from that news really depressing me because I've worked on HK projects forever and it keeps getting worse, I wanted to use that story to inspire friends in TX to not take their rights for granted, along with adding a little commentary like "Imagine calling democratic elections 'hijacking' a government. =V"
But I'm hesitating. And the reason is, aside from getting my rank leveled-up in some black list in China I'm sure I'm on, I'm genuinely afraid my post would get hijacked by January 6 truthers (i.e. people convinced Dems stole the election from Tr**p; Texas has heaps of them) that think US democracy already has been hijacked by rampant fraud on the part of the Democrats and civil war is the only solution now or some toxic and dangerous batshit like that, which of course would kill the entire post. And if I just deleted it, it'd probably just make it worse because now I'm censoring.
I don't know for sure it'd go down that way, but I can't help but see that kind of post setting up that kind of reply for the kind of people that will see it, and worries me enough to think carefully whether it's worth the risk. It's striking how a few bad apples can shut down any motivation to even bring certain things up at all because it's not worth risking their hysteria.
It worries me too because what's happening in HK is the where this road ultimately goes, when you have people that can't wear their bigboy trousers and control their emotional shit in politics anymore, they literally can't tell what's true or false anymore because 6th grade level reading comprehension is hard, and they start thinking authoritarianism is suddenly a great idea.
My immediate reflex is fuck that. Fuck them for, after 250 years of this democracy thing more or less working in the US sans a few hitches that were dealt with, making us have to honestly worry about its future now. But then I have to breathe and try to keep my own cool too.
------
Edit: I don't want to even focus on the political side of it per se. I could criticize suss argumentation on the left too. I think the line is when people get so worked up that, not even that they aren't reading other perspectives, but when they do read or hear it, it doesn't sink in. It's like a periodic movement that sometimes happens that I think every country is susceptible to at different times in history, every country get its turn sooner or later, and rampant (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning) sea-lioning is like the surface manifestation. I feel like we're ultimately talking about how and why sea-lioning happens in this thread.
Reading about how it happened in the past I think is a kind of useful antidote to get some perspective, like I was reading about how Taisho democracy collapsed in Japan and the politics led to a military government, not to mention the rise of Nazism in the 1920s, where rational debate completely went out the window on both the left and the right, and knowing how that happened helps me understand what's going on now. The silver lining is that I think we're still pretty far from reaching that level, in the West at least. But I don't know. We have better education systems and economies now than we had in the past, which help, but we also have social media that seems to make things worse. It's hard to predict what's happening.
Qooper on 3/5/2023 at 22:28
Quote Posted by Azaran
- They LOVE to deflect\use whataboutism. Let's say you're bringing up the plight of some community, they'll interject with some other cause that they somehow think is more important and invalidates the one you brought up. Bring them back: "I'm talking about X topic, please address that"
I was on a business last year and I had a conversation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine with a colleague. They weren't pro-Russia, but for some reason they used whataboutism on me (what about USA going into Iraq). The conversation wasn't counterproductive though, I just didn't expect them to say this. I can't remember what I said to them (could've even been what you suggest here), but I think your advice is good. I'll remember it the next time I encounter a whataboutism.
Quote:
At the same time, beware that you don't do these things yourself. I once got owned in an online discussion where I was right, but got discredited for accusing the guy of whataboutism, and then using it myself. I would have approached things differently nowadays
This is something I try to be very careful about.
Quote Posted by demagogue
2. When I see things moving in this direction, well even if it isn't, this is the way I like to frame discussions generally (being reflexively diplomatic), where we're not actually debating the final answer itself, we're trying to come to an agreement about what it is we're disagreeing on. In that example above, you want to move the discussion to us agreeing that one of the root disagreements is the situation actually on the ground, e.g., that the 10 cities with the worst statistics in X are Democrat controlled vs. Democrats control most cities, good and bad, and that's a well-known statistical fluke. Anyway you talk in terms of always trying to build agreement or consensus about what you're talking about. You never move the next step into an argument until you've got agreement on the previous step.
This is also a good test to see if the other person reciprocates your respect towards them. If they're in a mode where they won't agree just for the sake of disagreeing with you, I think it's safe to say there is a better use of time somewhere else.
Thank you for the links Nicker! It's definitely a good idea for me to brush up on fallacies. The real challenge is being able to recognize them in a fast-paced argument, but I guess argumentation is one of those things that you get better at by doing (I mean on top of reading and being prepared - preparedness is like the ammunition you need to bring with you).
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I don't know about you, but I'd call that progress. I could have made this more didactic a recounting with actual advice, but I think it's a nice tangential aside anyway, if not terribly relevant to your situation.
This is very similar to a conversation I had with another friend. The topic was different, and the question I asked them that got them thinking was different from the one you asked your friend, but the same things happened. My friend was set on two things being true, call them A and B (this time they're political, and I'd rather not go into what these two things are). We discussed them very separately, A on one day and B a few weeks later. However, I noticed that putting A and B side by side, they contradict each other or at least raise a very burning question, which I asked my friend. Before he had been adamant, but now he stopped and admitted that he didn't know, and not in a dismissive way. It sounded like he was actually puzzled by it and was going to think about it. So far we haven't returned to the topic, but maybe one day.
Quote Posted by demagogue
Edit: I don't want to even focus on the political side of it per se. I could criticize suss argumentation on the left too. I think the line is when people get so worked up that, not even that they aren't reading other perspectives, but when they do read or hear it, it doesn't sink in. It's like a periodic movement that sometimes happens that I think every country is susceptible to at different times in history, every country get its turn sooner or later, and rampant (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning) sea-lioning is like the surface manifestation. I feel like we're ultimately talking about how and why sea-lioning happens in this thread.
I've never heard of the term 'sea-lioning', but I've encountered the type of trolling it means. It's good to know what it's called. Personally I wasn't talking about sea-lioning, but it definitely fits nicely into this thread.
Starker on 3/5/2023 at 23:53
This might help a bit:
[video=youtube;_DGdDQrXv5U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DGdDQrXv5U[/video]
Tocky on 4/5/2023 at 14:57
Everyone has already said the important stuff but I just wanted to point out something the woman said in the clip. She said she "actually wished he would just debate Charlie". Think about that. She was the one interjecting and keeping him from just debating Charlie and yet she turned that around and made as if he had made her do it. She blamed him for her interrupting.
There were many dishonest debate tactics used there but that was the worst. That makes it blatantly obvious they don't care about solving a problem but just gaining more people to their side.
The thing I try to do in a debate is to ignore all the grand standing and distraction and just keep to fact. For instance, I would and have said to that ridiculous "don't give fetus shower" argument, that they are confusing what is now and what will be if not changed. The shower is given for a baby in the making and the same reason we say we are making a cake when it is currently just batter is because it will be a cake in the future.
Lots of tricks the right uses without actually caring about the truth. Stick to the truth anyway. Do it doggedly because you will have to. What they can't adress is the full truth. All they can focus on is distraction and broadbrushing minor points into whole subject covering leaps of logic.
Azaran on 4/5/2023 at 15:15
Not sure if this one's been addressed, but another dishonest tactic is accusing someone of supporting B, if they disagree with A. Even if they don't, you aggressively push the conclusion that there's only 2 choices, and if you don't support one, you must support the other.
I once saw a video of a scholar lecturing at a university on an important topic, and he got heckled by someone accusing him of supporting XYZ party. Not addressing his points rationally, not trying to refute him fairly. Simply accusing him of supporting XYZ party, as a deceitful means of discrediting him.
The worst is when biased media picks stuff like this up, and presents it as "XYZ supporter causes alarm at university, tries to spread propaganda", etc.
Qooper on 4/5/2023 at 17:08
Thanks for the vid, Starker, I'll check it out.
Quote Posted by Tocky
Everyone has already said the important stuff but I just wanted to point out something the woman said in the clip. She said she "actually wished he would just debate Charlie". Think about that. She was the one interjecting and keeping him from just debating Charlie and yet she turned that around and made as if he had made her do it. She blamed him for
her interrupting.
I didn't notice this before, but I did get a sense that there was something dishonest going on there. Thanks for pointing that out, Tocky! I'm not sure I'd be able to recognize and address that sort of dishonest tactic in a live argument, but maybe with practice I'll one day be able to do that.
Quote:
The thing I try to do in a debate is to ignore all the grand standing and distraction and just keep to fact. For instance, I would and have said to that ridiculous "don't give fetus shower" argument, that they are confusing what is now and what will be if not changed. The shower is given for a baby in the making and the same reason we say we are making a cake when it is currently just batter is because it
will be a cake in the future.
The argument from Charlie wasn't a good one, but also I think that that entire topic is slightly different because the reason why someone holds that a baby is still a baby even in the womb is because of a conviction they hold, which is outside the purpose of this thread.
Quote:
Lots of tricks the right uses without actually caring about the truth. Stick to the truth anyway. Do it doggedly because you will have to. What they can't adress is the full truth. All they can focus on is distraction and broadbrushing minor points into whole subject covering leaps of logic.
I'd like to keep the focus on argumentation technique and dealing with dishonest tactics. Perhaps it was a bit clumsy of me to pick an example video that was political, but I chose it because of that one particular fallacy that Charlie used and which the student pointed out at 1:39, and it just fit so perfectly into the topic. As mentioned in my original post (and I think I should change the font to bold for a little bit of emphasis):
Quote:
I don't want this thread to become political, so if I may ask, let's leave out comments such as "That's exactly what the left/right does" etc. Thank you! :)
Quote Posted by Azaran
Not sure if this one's been addressed, but another dishonest tactic is accusing someone of supporting B, if they disagree with A. Even if they don't, you aggressively push the conclusion that there's only 2 choices, and if you don't support one, you must support the other.
This is something I've been accused of by a friend of mine on an occasion or two, but in my opinion they have a somewhat "blocky" understanding of the world, and I think that's just their personality.
But what do you guys suggest for dealing with a steamroller? So far the way I've dealt with them is by walking away, but is there anything else I could do? Also, thanks to everyone for your input! My experience is that arguing is very difficult, and I appreciate all the suggestions you've given, it definitely helps.
Gingerbread Man on 4/5/2023 at 18:41
Highly recommend grabbing a copy of Harry G Frankfurt's seminal treatise On Bullshit -- it's short and interesting (unlike me).
Nicker on 5/5/2023 at 02:56
Hey there, tall, red and boring. Buy a sailor a drink...?
Tocky on 6/5/2023 at 07:46
Quote Posted by Qooper
The argument from Charlie wasn't a good one, but also I think that that entire topic is slightly different because the reason why someone holds that a baby is still a baby even in the womb is because of a conviction they hold, which is outside the purpose of this thread.
Ah but it is not different. Just because emotions are attached or convictions does not make them any less wrong. That holds for any argument. Stick to provable fact when you can. They think a fertilized egg is a baby. It is dividing cells. That's it. That is an irrefutable fact. When they continue to argue against that they show themselves to be irrational to thinking people. At that point you can choose to stop arguing because you have won or you can address the myriad squirmy ways they will try to work around that fact. That is fruitless but the best of us fall for it at times.
You always have to consider the third party which is the audience. Some of them will never be with you because they do not think. You can't worry about those. Those are for your opponent who appeals to emotion. Emotion is what they go for because they do not have fact. I emote as well but I don't do it to win an argument. As a matter of fact it gets in the way of reason. I'm just an emotional guy who has that as a stumbling block. But some appeal to emotion. Be wary of that.
Anybody else smell Bigfoot or is it just me?
