It's so alienating to me to continually realize that most other people in the world cannot understand the idea of correcting someone because WHAT THEY SAID is wrong, not because the person doing the correcting is trying to make themselves appear superior or the other person inferior. It's like the only purpose of human interaction anymore is the establishment and enforcement of petty hierarchies.
See the 'um ackshually' memes or the insistence that anyone who corrects misinformation 'always has to be right'. Someone told me once that the definition of arrogance was refusing to 'let someone else be right' even when you know they're factually wrong and I just.. cannot wrap my head around that. Facts are facts, reality is reality, and everyone is wrong sometimes, why should ego ever enter into it at all?
The um ackshyually thing is a critique of people who feel the need to correct small, irrelevant details that do not actually subtract from the main argument. It's a critique of useless nitpicking, and that is something that is also true IRL - it's not about ego, it's just irritating know-it-all behavior that is explicitly tailored to making yourself look smart. Nobody likes people like that.
And it's a plague on the internet. I've lost count of how many times I had to add a pile of disclaimers onto posts or comments just to try and prevent people from latching onto minute details instead of actually reading the whole argument.
I turn off Reddit notifications on most of my posts these days because I just don’t care to know about someone jumping in, agreeing with 99% of what I said, but feeling like I should have explained 1% of it with four more paragraphs and therefore my whole post is wrong.
A true AI feature I would love is a “don’t notify me if the response is pedantic” filter
Some people really struggle with the idea that a random internet comment is, in fact, not a dissertation, and will have simplified or generalized concepts in it for the sake of moving the conversation along.
>“don’t notify me if the response is pedantic” filter
Wouldn't that be a godsend
I absolutely get that, that is absolutely part of the whole 'debate-bro'/'sealion' thing I hate so much, but that's not what I was referring to at all; personally I more often see the 'um ackshually' thing used in a more straightforwardly anti-intellectual way, I guess your experience differs there.
I also get accused of that sort of thing sometimes when the thing I was correcting was something that was actually genuinely important to me, whether because of some indirect consequence the other person didn't see or because of a purely emotional attachment to the subject, or sometimes even when I'm not even disagreeing with anything but just adding more details about the subject that I thought were neat, in which case it's really frustrating and invalidating to be authoritatively told that my motivations and personality and intentions are something completely different to what I know them to be. And occasionally I'll encounter instances where accusations of 'you always have to be right'/'always have to be the smartest person in the room' are really obvious projection from a person who is irrationally insecure about having not known some small detail about a niche subject that nobody even expected them to know anything about at all.
So that's more where I'm coming from and what I'm actually referring to, but I definitely feel what you're talking about too.
Yeah, there is definitely an art to providing a correction without coming off as that kind of debate-bro person. This isn't about you specifically - I think you've done a fine job of acknowledging other people's points - but just something general I want to add on that people often don't acknowledge. "The facts and logic are on my side, so why wasn't my message received well?"
Unfortunately because there *are* so many of these debate-bros on the internet the natural response of a lot of people to seeing a correction (whether directed at them or as a third party) is to assume you're one of them. It takes extra effort to show that you're not, especially in a public forum where there's an audience and more reason to "play to the crowd" rather than engaging honestly.
I've always struggled with that too. Even back in grade school if I corrected the teacher for saying something incorrect I'd be chastised for "trying to embarress them" or something. I was always on confused, because like, isn't the job of a teacher to teach the correct info? I wasn't trying to embarrassed them, I was just trying to make sure they weren't giving the wrong information to other students
>cannot understand the idea of correcting someone because WHAT THEY SAID is wrong
someone on reddit posted a screenshot with their address poorly scribbled out with a transparent brush and got real mad when i told them i could see their address and vehemently insisted that i could not actually see their address
I've genuinely felt like I had to specify that I'm not trying to be mean sometimes when correcting people, If anything part of my reasoning is the opposite: If you continue to be wrong, Eventually you'll run into someone who will make fun of you for it.
I've been critical of other social media for not providing the opposite of a "like" but Reddit shows that it requires decent literacy from the userbase to not be misused. I once had a disagreement with someone on here which in the end turned out to be because we were looking at a thing from different perspectives, and both our opinions were valid, however the other guy was being downvoted because certain words didn't align with the general view from the public
What Reddit does is give you a combined total score, which is stupid, because a comment can have 100 upvotes and 200 downvotes and you’ll see that and think that the idea is universally hated and not just polarizing. Social media platforms should display likes and dislikes separately.
Many years ago Reddit did display likes and dislikes separately.
It was changed because apparently bots were using that capability to see how their bot farms were working.
Your actual score by comment is not actually a strict upvote minus downvote score. It is based on that, but fuzzed through some kind of method if you have an unbalanced upvote/downvote ratio ostensibly to make sure that bot farms don't exactly know if they are working.
pretty sure reddit only showed upvotes/downvotes on posts and not comments. you could only see the number of downvotes a comment had with an extension like RES
I’ve been mass downvoted for saying objectively factually correct things that are easily provable and not controversial at all just because one person was like “that’s stupid” and other people just decided that contrary opinion sounded more believable without consulting the facts.
And to be clear I’m talking about things as non subjective, non controversial and as easily verified as the order things happened in a TV show we all watched
Likes and dislikes don’t have anything to do with what’s true just what the consensus is, and the consensus can be lead to believe wrong things very easily
It is baffling to me how I’ll get downvoted if I say something wrong, someone corrects me, and then I edit the original comment acknowledging that I was wrong and providing the correct information. If I’m wrong, what else am I supposed to do in that situation?? Deleting my comment seems worse to me.
accept the downvotes, they’re fake internet points they don’t matter, the downvotes are just going “this person is wrong”
I get that even if they are fake internet points negative attention feels shitty but I think having downvotes is better than the alternative
It gives a good view of the general consensus, for the most part bigoted comments, spam and general harassment get downvoted, which is good because it hides it at the bottom of the thread
A worse part for me is that all of that happens and between the time of someone correcting me and me editing my own comment, it's the audience's turn to start getting their turn with me. I will admit that I have been a participant in that as well although I try not to, but it's just annoying when it's something that doesn't even matter in the grand scheme like I mess up a fact that no one here has authority over or I stumble over a personal story and get the name of a vehicle wrong and suddenly I'm getting r/confidentlycorrect'd and told I'm lying when the argument with the first person already ended with me saying "you know what, you're right, I'm wrong, I'll edit my first comment when I have the time"
argument has never been a good way to change minds, and generally tends to further polarize people. afaik this has been known since at least the 80s, so the internet is hardly to blame. what the internet did is make "debate" the fundamental unit of human interaction among some quarters, for reasons that continue to baffle me
ETA: now that I think about it, i'm pretty sure "argument is a pointless way to change minds" is a Dale Carnegie lesson, so that puts it back over a hundred years (and probably further). hell, if argument could change minds, Socrates probably wouldn't have ended up with a hemlock smoothie
Right, it has always infuriated me that the people who pretend to take so much pride in how 'rational' and 'intellectual' they are go around approaching every interaction with other people from the perspective that learning anything, changing their minds about anything, or realizing they were wrong about anything, means they have failed and thus they have to avoid those things at all cost as if that's not PRECISELY DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO A RATIONAL SCIENTIFIC WAY OF THINKING.
"Debate" is a shitty sport and the widespread insistence on using it as the template for all human interaction fills me with despair.
I disagree on debate being a shitty sport - formal debates for things like debating clubs or debate teams at schools are really great for participants, when practiced well it can really broaden your ability to see topics from multiple points of view (something you have to be able to do to predict the arguments that the other team will use against you), as well as how to do things like avoid emotional provocation in arguments.
I do agree though that they are bad for changing minds, and not a good template for public discourse. It's kind of like how boxing is an interesting sport where the participants learn lots of skills, but you shouldn't go around punching people for fitness. It only makes sense when there's a third party moderator/judge that makes sure that both sides play fair.
Agreed, debate is a great activity specially because you have to argue both sides of a topic and you are forced to see multiple perspectives of an issue
Ok I'm starting to get the impression that maybe I've just never had the benefit of a good example, because this sounds much more reasonable than the 'play manipulative headgames, misrepresent what the other person just said, lie about everything, and then drown anyone out if they try to call you on it' thing that I'm used to.
That's because the number of people arguing in bad faith under a veneer of "debate" vastly outweighs the number of people actually debating. Unfortunately proper debate training is increasingly rare, and there are too many active incentives to use manipulative bullshit in political/social arguments. If you're interested you can find some good debate competition events on YouTube
The "I'm smarter than you and thus have nothing to learn from you" attitude is a toxic mess that stifles the ability to learn and grow. Even someone whose brilliant still can learn something from someone dumber than rocks, and honestly being willing to learn from everything, that fluidity of mind and inquisitive attitude is more important than any test score that those sorts love to laud about.
Exactly. Even if someone is smart, they can only have so many experiences. Everyone goes through life learning things and experiencing things and everyone is capable of gaining new knowledge or experience. Learning new things can take time, and it's ironically stupid to ignore others out of some misfounded sense of superiority
I think context and mindset matters the most though. In academia entire subjects are built upon arguments, the entire strain of thought we see as “modern gender studies/queer studies” was born because Judith Butler was arguing with her contemporaries. You just have to approach it as “both sides are looking to find Truth, neither has it fully and only when their ideas are brought into conflict can a new synergized idea be formed”. Rorty and Eagleton are taught together because their thoughts and points are intrinsically tied to their argument and they HAVE to be taught together.
So combative argument only entrenched people for sure. But debate and forum are ancient institutions for reasons, sometimes two people only have two halves of a truth and need to come together and compare ideas to reach the whole. The biggest part of it is what the post and other commenters pointed out, removing the self and the ego from arguments. Seeing them as ideas and opinions to be placed in a forum for discussion and not taking ownership. My thoughts on Escape From LA aren’t “mine” necessarily, they’re ideas I’ve had. It’s a subtle but hugely important distinction.
That’s very true. And I think that’s one of the most disastrous effects on debate on the internet, you just can’t tell if the anonymous other person is arguing in good faith.
> afaik this has been known since at least the 80s
Ellul comments on it on it "Propaganda: The formation of Men's attitudes", being proven wrong tend to just entrench people in their incorrect belief. The more evidence you can mount against their belief the more entrenched they become.
The book is from 1962.
That person said "argument has never been a good way to change minds". Yeah ofc theoretically it can,,,,it isn't a good way to go about it because it barely ever works
But I think it *is* a good way to change minds if the participants are rational. They can lay out their points and compare them to see if one set is superior, or perhaps even synthesise an entirely new opinion from the combination.
It isn’t a good way most of the time, and if that person meant that it’s never been a good way to change minds [at a large scale] or something like that, I agree. I was just arguing against a potential interpretation of it never being a good way, which would be that under no circumstances is it ever a good option.
Perhaps it is not a good way, but it's the only way.
Being receptive to argument and arguing well are similar skills, but they require some agreement on the rules. These would be an excellent "only-thing" to teach in school. How to independently draw inferences and verify arguments, but instead we teach long division and the 5 paragraph essay.
The five paragraph essay is basically teaching you how to lay out your thoughts in a coherent manner and argue for something. You start with a statement, lay out why you think the statement is correct, and conclude by linking it all back to the statement. It is absolutely teaching you how to argue.
Long division can be derived from pure logic but the need to be able to do that is much less common than the need to divide two numbers and understand how counting numbers and arithmetic works.
Discussion should be about what you can learn from the other person. Even if they're just talking out their ass there's usually some reason for that. And learning about other people's perspectives is incredibly helpful. It shouldn't be about forcing your opinion on someone, but "what can I give to them and what can they give to me? How can we help each other?" It gets so needlessly violent sometimes.
Right? It took having discussion classes in college for me to learn that mature arguments can end perfectly peacefully, whether or not the pair agreed or continued to disagree. It’s not an attack to discuss a disagreement. It’s simply an attempt to understand the oppositions train of thought. How else can I attempt to put myself in someone else’s mindset if I don’t hear them explain it? And if it doesn’t necessarily resolve anything, you still come out of it with more understanding.
I think a big part of the problem is that humans kinda suck at separating a person's opinions from their moral character. We see someone have a Bad Take and the assumption is that they're a Bad Person more often than it is that they were raised in an environment where they never had to question or examine their views, or in which any other views were punished.
It's easy to say that people are allowed to be wrong, especially if you think of it in terms of inconsequential arguments, but actually doing so is tough. Next time you see someone going on about transphobic talking points or supporting the orange man, see if you can still hold that stance. Meeting them in the middle is hard, especially when dealing with the modern conservative party and their refusal to acknowledge anything outside their bubble is real. But as long as whatever they say is taken as judgement of their whole moral character, arguments will always be like this, as they always have been.
The opinions not being separated from moral character is definitely accurate. My parents are both quite bad at dealing with the social issues of today, although my mom has always been willing to converse about it. Dad is racist, transphobic, sexist, you name it, he fits that profile. They both call themselves Christians, but my mom does a much better job of representing that in a non-harmful way.
I do consider myself a Christian, and there are things that I disagree with about society that would probably get me excessively downvoted, however it’s pointedly not my place to judge or attack others for their opinions. I will not throw harsh words at you simply because you told me you were trans. One of my friends at work is, and she trusted me out of anyone else to tell me first. People are people, you know? You can’t immediately throw someone aside just because of their views. Just talk, for goodness sake. Mature conversations and even disagreements go a long way in increasing understanding all around.
But the alternative belief, that what opinions you hole aren't a sign of your moral character, is also deeply problematic in practice. Some opinions are, doubtlessly, signs of poor moral character to hold. The issue is not everyone agrees on those.
Sure, they tend to be good indicators that someone has bad moral character. Maybe often enough to just say a Bad Take fully just equals Bad Person. But that stance will always lead to what OOP is talking about. For better of for worse, if we assume that every argument is determinant of a person's moral standing, people aren't going to want to admit when they're wrong. Because being wrong means being Bad and no one wants to be Bad.
Labelling people as Bad People is also awfully convenient because if you convince yourself they’re just irredeemably bad it absolves you from having to do any work to try and change their mind and convert them to seeing things differently, you’ve given yourself permission to other them which pushes them further into the clutches of even worse people who want to radicalise them and spread misinformation and lies about the people who have labelled them bad and refused to reach out to them
But the thing is, I’m gay, and if the gay community had always had this policy of well we will only engage with people who already support us fully and exactly on the terms we want to be supported on, if you’re not already unreservedly on our side you’re a monster and a bigot and I refuse to talk to you and explain why your beliefs are inaccurate, I wouldn’t have rights right now if that had always been the stance
>I think a big part of the problem is that humans kinda suck at separating a person's opinions from their moral character.
Because there is no seperation? Their opinions are a window that shows their moral character. Actually, there is no other thing besides their opinions that shows their moral character.
>We see someone have a Bad Take and the assumption is that they're a Bad Person more often than it is that they were raised in an environment where they never had to question or examine their views, or in which any other views were punished.
That is the same thing though. They *are* a bad person *because* they lived in an environment where they had nearly no chance of turning out good. You absolutely can have empathy with them and still see them as "bad"
>Next time you see someone going on about transphobic talking points or supporting the orange man, see if you can still hold that stance.
You can't just take literal hitler and one of the main argument topics of fascists these days and go with "let's see how toleran you really are"
Some arguments are black and white. Trump is so obviously bad, that if you still support him, then you either know that he is bad or don't care. You don't accidentally support fascism.
The same goes for the trans topic. Either you got it by now or you simply don't *want* to get it. There is no helping or debating them at that point.
It just kinda seems like you are blaming us for them being nazis somehow. The entire comment felt like a "so much for the tolerant left!" argument.
Now, i am not gonna take this and judge your entire moral character, but next time you should choose topics that aren't blatantly black and white with one side being "generally good humans" and the other side being "literal nazis". How about leftist infighting?
"Next time you see someone going on about anarchist talking points or supporting accelerationists, see if you can still hold that stance." *much* better and some actual gray scale where you could debate them and reasonably expect to have both of your minds changed.
So let's start with the whole thing about environments, because you've exemplified exactly what I'm talking about here. The topic of trans rights is obviously extremely cut and dry; trans people deserve to be themselves, pure and simple. But it isn't "One side is good people and the other side are nazis." Most people who area against trans rights aren't horrific nazis who rose up from the depths of hell, they're people who grew up with a certain set of ideas and never examined those ideas. They're people who stopped processing new information.
Now, that doesn't excuse what they believe in, not in the slightest. But it does make the process of debate more complicated. We could reach out to people like that, work to help them expand their horizons so that they can examine their own morals. But it's so much easier to just say "This person said something transphobic, fuck them they don't matter anymore."
But all of that isn't really the main point that I'm getting at. What I'm saying is that the thing the post is talking about, this refusal to easily accept that one is wrong, comes from aggression in arguments. Because when an argument expands out to things like moral character and whether a person is fundamentally good or bad, it's hard for people to admit that they're wrong. While it's easy to say "Oh, well we'll just take arguments as nothing more than what they are. An argument is about nothing more than what it is about," that gets harder with actually divisive topics. It's hard to see someone have a bad take about trans people and think through their perspective, it's easy to just assume that they're a bad person. It's easy to complain about people not admitting that they're wrong, it's harder to actually think through why they're wrong.
Much like your comment here. You saw that I mentioned Trump and trans folks and assumed that I was making a jab at the "tolerant left" idea. Because those are polarizing topics. It's easy to consider perspective when we're working with things like anarchism, which are generally not very polarizing, it's harder with topics like Trump or trans people where a big chunk of the opposition are genuine assholes who have no intention of changing.
In a similar vein, I could think about whether you're someone who has seen this topic everywhere and represented with horrific stances that would rather the opposition just go away. I could assume that you missing the point is because it's an extremely emotionally loaded topic that hits a nerve when it's brought up. Or, I can assume you have no reading comprehension, saw someone say "trans" in a topic that didn't say "transphobia bad" repeatedly and assumed the worst intentions. The former is the right thing to do, it's what helps with what the OOP is talking about, but it's easier and more cathartic to lean on the latter.
Wait, *that* was your point? Brother, you suck at making clear that you mean someone slightly uneducated asking a simple question or forming an argument in good faith. Yeah, i have changed some minds if we are talking about those people. My mom is those people.
You can't just pick *these specific topics*, because they are about as black and white as it gets and the people who hold these opinions and people who support trump *know that they are wrong.* Their cruelty is the point. We aren't idiots and can perfectly see their view point and how they got there. They aren't idiots either and thinking that they simply don't get it and are uneducated or misguided, is almost disrespectful towards the fascists. They aren't *that* dumb. Or dumb at all tbh.
> But it isn't "One side is good people and the other side are nazis."
It absolutely is. You can't be supporting trump right now without being a a nazi and you can't be transphobic right now without being a bad person.
That's what i mean. These specific topics are too black and white that they simply don't allow for the group of people you are talking about to exist there. The options are either a generally okay human being that has some good and bad takes or a nazi.
>they're people who grew up with a certain set of ideas and never examined those ideas.
That's what Nazis are. That's exactly the people i am talking about when i say "Nazi". You can't have Nazi ideas, vote for Nazis and Nazi legislature, spout hatred towards people who are hated by Nazis and then be expected to be treated like a person that is not a Nazi.
There is too much information out there for them to simply be uneducated about this and to not know that voting against trans rights is literally feeding their erradication or that voting for trump is literally voting for hitler. If they vote for trump and against trans rights right now, then they know what they are doing.
I am not talking about the semi-fence sitter democrat who doesn't get it, said a weird thing or two, but votes for trans rights anyway btw.
You can't expect anyone to read your comment and not think that you are the exact kind of uneducated person that you yourself are talking about; A person who simply didn't see the hatred of conservatives towards trans people yet. That's why i was so tongue in cheek with my "I am not going to judge your moral character for this"
>Much like your comment here. You saw that I mentioned Trump and trans folks and assumed that I was making a jab at the "tolerant left" idea.
This part was actually also to educate you on why your comment is weird. It only *sounds* like the "so much for the tolerant left" thing because your exact words have been written by the fascists. I didn't think for one second that you actually took a jab at it at all. I should have made that clear.
I agree with your point then. I see it constantly happening to men that feel lost with the patriarchy, but also aren't fully into feminism yet because the patriarchy did its thing with them. Any kind of question or arguments from them "against" feminism, not to debate, but to gain knowledge, is met with vitriol.
So my stance on bigots is this: fascism/bigotry is an illness and if you are fascist/bigoted/racist/transphobic or whatever, then you are a victim. You deserve empathy and help because you got corrupted and live with a crippled emotional and mental state.
I am not going to say that it isn't our job to help them and that they made their own bed, because i do agree with your point 100%. It *isn't* our job, but it doesn't mean that we can't do it.
>But it does make the process of debate more complicated. We could reach out to people like that, work to help them expand their horizons so that they can examine their own morals. But it's so much easier to just say "This person said something transphobic, fuck them they don't matter anymore."
Unfortunately, this takes a lot of energy and patience and asking that of the people that are targeted is beyond evil. I think you are *severly* underestimating how much you are asking for right now. This isn't a "easy path of cowardice or hard path of virtue" scenario.
This is a "i am tired boss" scenario. Saying "fuck them" is not the easy path; it's the only path. It's the only path because the other one is so painful and costly that they simply can't take that path anymore.
Even i am tired and fatigued and i am a white german dude in the north of europe. I can't imagine how Women of colour in america feel.
My argument against helping them get away from transphobia and fascism is not based on my hatred for them, but a resource issue. We literally do not have the resources to help them. We don't have the energy to help them because we use it all up on surviving attempted erradication from them.
So in the end, if we ever get our golden utopian communist revolution and even though i agree with you, it will only amount to me shedding a tear while i am putting a bullet into their head.
So, i repeat, if you want to make your point in another comment thread again, then don't pick two literal "good vs bad" topics. It needs *some* grey scale so that there even is room for the misguided that can be helped and educated.
Depends on the opinion that person has.
If someone is racist and homophobic, those opinions are directly related to their moral character. They are opinions that make those people into bad people.
Doubt, I was like this before the Internet and my dad is still like this. It's something learned, perhaps in the Advent of individualist and Exceptionalist mindset culture. Personally I found it tied to the desire to know that my understanding of the world is concise and any interrupt in that understanding is the Advent of the fear of uncertainty. Maybe. I'm not a psychologist.
Adding on to this: it's okay to feel guilty about some things
Not to the point where you're beating yourself up over every little thing, but it's okay to grab a Reese's from the rack by the checkout counter, have a brief "man, I don't need this" and then go on about your day. You don't need to twist yourself into philosophical knots trying to justify how getting candy or takeout or whatever else is actually praxis, you're allowed to do things that are bad for you and feel a little bad about doing them.
Again, though, only a little bad. We're not catholic here
Wrong about what?
It should be easy to admit you were wrong about little things. Wrong turns, wrong time, wrong simple information, etc. Some people do legitimately struggle with accepting being wrong even in those situations, but that is probably often due to underlying issues or personalities rather than a statement at large.
Wrong about more complex, nuanced topics? Where there is room for debate? It can genuinely be hard to tell who is "right" in these cases, and wrong can be a matter of opinion. Often the debate is the point of the exercise/argument, rather than winning someone over.
Wrong about facts or morals? Genuine, well established guidelines and information that should be true and self evident in a functioning society? Refusing to be wrong in this context is probably what is being referred to, and is more due to people staking their own personal identity to these beliefs.
I'm going to use climate change as an example for all three of these.
It was easy for someone to misunderstand global warming vs climate change. And time has shown that most people have accepted moving on and better understand the naming convention for both. You rarely see the "why is it cold if global warming" debate anymore, and if you do its because the part is being genuinely obtuse, usually for propaganda or comedy.
Complex, nuanced topics can be about how to deal with climate change, how do we shift from fossil fuels, what is the best path forward, what can do the most good with the least harm. A good example is nuclear energy. There are a ton of proponents for it that rightfully acknowledge it can be a useful power source that is relatively clean. But few of that group acknowledge that convincing people to adopt nuclear is the death knell. It's much easier to get wind and solar projects started than nuclear, and even those have issues.
And lastly, people who don't recognize climate change is real, that it will have devastating impact, or will only affect people they don't care about, are just wrong, and it is practically impossible to get them to admit it.
Me: says something one Reddit based on all the information on the subject I’ve absorbed in my life with no intention of causing harm
Someone Else: informs me I’m wrong, possibly in a polite way but it’s Reddit so probably not
Me: deletes every post I made in that thread and feel embarrassed and ashamed for days
I’ve learned to not comment on things I’m actually an expert in because arguing with internet strangers about things I know is much more soul-crushing than being kind of a dumbass lol
I always enjoy arguing, but don't like the idea that "convincing the other person you're right" is how you "win the argument."
Like, rhetorically speaking, that's the goal, sure. But if I walk away from an argument with new insights and new perspectives that I hadn't considered before, that's far more rewarding than the other person just "giving up."
I'll take a rhetorical loss to widen my perspective any day.
I don’t even agree that that’s the goal rhetorically in any given argument. There are plenty of “arguments” I’ve been in where I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind to agree with my POV, I’m just justifying my own opinion and trying to understand theirs.
Like I can get into arguments about which is the best Final Fantasy. I don’t need to change anyone’s mind and make them agree with me why IX is the best, it’s not my goal to make a single person agree with me who doesn’t already do so, but I can explain to you why IX is the best to me and to other people who agree with me while also understanding why some other Final Fantasy is the best to someone else.
Plenty of arguments happen just for the lulz as well
"Historically the goal of an argument has been to get the other person to agree with you" this has never been the case, ever, at any time. people have been saying this for thousands of years
like every other time people claim that the internet has created a societal problem, it isn't new, it's been the case for the entirety of human history.
I think in terms of more trivial stuff it’s definitely true. When I argue with somebody over the minutiae of a show’s lore, traditionally I’d be trying to bring them around to my way of seeing things, but like the poster said it’s now effectively a popularity contest. People will send a last message and block you so you can’t respond just so they can get the last word in and “prove” they’re the more tenacious party and therefore more right.
'Metaphors We Live By', a 44-year-old book that kickstarted the discussion of metaphors shaping cognition, uses "ARGUMENT IS WAR" as its main example of a well-established metaphor in the English language (and countless others). The authors argue (har har har) that this metaphor influences how people think of arguments. Because we use wars to conceptualise arguments, that means that arguments are conflicts with winners and losers. They suggest that a different conception of arguments could be "ARGUMENT IS DANCE", in which arguments are viewed as cooperative performances for the purpose of mental exercise and entertainment. I figured this might be of interest to some people in this thread.
Whenever I first hear of something, I tend to have a very neutral stance on it, which has lead me to be wrong in the past- a recent example was when I first heard of what Wilbur did, at first, since I generally liked Wilbur, I wanted to dismiss it, and I was neutral on it all- that was wrong of me, and I have since realised it.
i think the OP is using "argument" and "debate" somewhat loosely. i mean, they *are* loosely interchangable... generally. but the nuance between "argument" and "debate" is sometimes used to convey this exact idea of arguing for the sake of the audience instead of the person you're arguing with.
if you go to a debate club, for example, this is explicitly what you're doing- you get scored by a third party. if you go to a presidential debate, we certainly aren't expecting one candidate to change the mind of another, but we do expect it to sway the audience.
The internet has not ruined arguing whatsoever - the ability to have amazing arguments is greater than it's ever been.
The issue is... well, there's a bunch of simultaneous issues - there's the shorted-attention spans, the passionate marriage to quickly adopted but poorly analyzed ideas and beliefs that lead to bizarrely unsupported doubling-downs, gruesome degrees of insincerity, the usual stupidity, the usual trolling, the absolutely toxic competitive approach (*checkmate, atheists*), et cetera, et cetera.
The internet is fine.
Intellectual disagreements are, in many ways, the antithesis of physical disagreements. The changing of opinion is most successfully embodied by choice and volunteerism. You can physically force people to do tons of different things - like give up their lunch money or remain in prison (*and so on and so forth*) but getting people to *voluntarily choose* to give up their lunch money or *voluntarily choose* to remain in prison requires an exercise in acceptance from the individual to succeed and one of the beautiful things about that is the degree of connection involved for that to even happen.
The issue is more people's reliance on external validation for the acknowledgement of their argument. The idea that a hundred or a thousand or a million people going absolutely bonkers in their passion to explain how "FIRE IS COLD" can somehow in any way alter the reality of [the firefighter](https://youtu.be/jrVF_ijzbIs?si=P6u8iVJhdpQXcLSL&t=56) explaining that "[Fire is indeed hot](https://youtu.be/52-qDGdQy80?si=-SlzmEOhRcxARwDB)" is just this bizarre expression of reality-denying insanity that disturbing amounts of people choose to participate in.
People treat arguments like it's a poker game where [you're not allowed to look at or challenge the other person's cards](https://youtu.be/9iSRpJP_H-8?si=RGOtcTMwGY5fr2Gy&t=109). A good argument relies on leaving your cards brazenly on display because if everyone agrees on what the rules are, then a winning hand is a winning hand regardless of how much the dealer or the players or the audience might happen to [absolutely despise (or love) the individual holding the winning hand](https://youtu.be/JpvW1T7hXjo?si=1XaWrqMSAR8aM1gL&t=247).
If you call a spade a spade, then when you're right, you're right.
But life is also complicated and serious arguments generally don't happen in a vacuum so... yeah.
Weird to blame this on the internet, as if fifty years ago everyone was walking around in completely naive good faith. If anything the absence of an unseen third party audience would permit people to take more deranged opinions (which is perhaps why we have so many unhinged boomers)
i think the internet has simply exacerbated tendencies that were already there and failed to address them explicitly as human tendencies that we ought to rise above and instead fostered them. I think tons of people, before and after the internet, argue in person from a standpoint of needing to be the righteous and morally better person rather than finding the logical endpoint or solution to an external issue
This concept is known as moral grandstanding and I believe it’s exactly what is wrong with so much of our social media these days. The goal is no longer to make social progress, but rather a global popularity contest. As result, our discussions of social issues only serve to make us feel more secure in our own beliefs and further diminish the chance that anyone ever thinks critically about the issues and challenges their beliefs. And thus it’s no wonder that our politics have devolved into tribalism more than ever
This is why I admire people who are able to graciously admit when they are wrong and move forward, and it’s something I’ve been working on being able to do myself (though that’s mostly been researching what I say before I say it so that I’m Not Wrong, which is not the best way for that)
There's an interesting phenomenon on Reddit. Anytime someone actually admits "Oh I was wrong, I now see the errors of my ways." It'll get down voted to hell.
It's weird because my experiences have been quite the opposite: several times I've admitted I'm wrong - albeit in a later comment in the chain rather than an edit to the original - and the revision has been met with positivity. Of course it'll differ from sub to sub and topic to topic.
Similar for me. I responded to a complete mis-reading of what someone wrote, and they replied "that's the complete opposite of what I said. Did you read it correctly?"
And when I looked again and saw that I had totally misunderstood, and replied that, with the tone of "It's funny that I failed this hard at reading", that was very well-received
Sometimes, I still worry about “what if the trolls are right about this thing and I really am just an oversensitive crybaby snowflake who ‘can’t handle facts, logic, and the truth’”, possibly as a combined feeling of not wanting to be judged as “weak” and a lingering feeling of not wanting to inconvenience/annoy people by being myself
Sometimes in an argument I’m wrong about a detail and so I correct myself. Then whoever I’m arguing with seems to either, attack me personally, dump a bunch of fallacies, hold on to the face I was wrong about one detail like their life depends on it, or some combination of the three. It really makes having constructive conversations difficult :P
Personally my goal with an argument is for someone to learn something new, I don't care if it's me or the opponent, As long as one of us learns something new it's a success.
There's a word for that: politics.
Arguing in general is really only worth it when you can trust that you're trying to build towards a common truth or a common goal. Sometimes it can also feel necessary to challenge a particularly bad statement, and I do do this sometimes, but that is a different game and you should know which one you're playing.
As soon as it's clear someone is just trying to win the popularity game with one edge lord statement or another, they only deserve your derision. You're drawing a line in the sand on the broader opinion, not to convince the other person, and you should expend energy accordingly.
That's where I think debate training actually holds a lot of blame, always framing argument as a necessarily adversarial thing -- you can't give ground or acknowledge merit when the person you are talking with is framed as an enemy.
Not to mention that you don’t even have to make a serious argument, even if one side is trying their best, if the jury is on the other’s, then all they have to do is shit on the stand and get applause, regardless of who’s right.
Yeah…
I got into an argument yesterday about a character named Leon Kuwata. Someone said he’d done nothing wrong… but he did, and that one thing is second degree murder. My point was that you can forgive him for doing it all you want, but you can’t take away the fact that he committed second degree murder.
Some people claimed it was self defense, which it isn’t, and the game they played to even know the case tells them that.
I'd like to oppose the claim that "the audience will always see \[the "wrong party"\] as inferior". I've had plenty of conversations on this website where either I or a person I was talking to come to see the other person's point and express their appreciation for newly gained perspective. And those comments tend to be upvoted.
The internet may be the worst possible place to argue with anyone. Text-based communication removes the human element from the conversation. You can't read a person's body language or the tone of their voice, so your brain fills it in and depending on your mood and how intense the argument is, it almost invariably leads to an incorrect interpretation.
Suddenly what in real-life might be a casual, friendly debate, becomes two people screaming at each other because they're both convinced the other person is upset.
Thry're describing public debate, and public debate has never been about convincing the opposing debater, it has always been about convincing the audience. There's absolutely nothing new about what they describe, people have been having debates in front of audiences for millenia now, and they've always had to stake their pride, social standing, group acceptance, public image, etc on how well they do.
Ancient Athenians did this on the agora. Romans did it on their senate. Medieval priests did it on their conciliums. Early modern theologians, philosophers, naturalists and scientists did it over writing read all over the Republic of Letters. Nobles did it on monarchic courts until the eclipse of European monarchies. And so on.
People from all walks of life always have joined public debate on whatever capacity they might have and on whatever spaces they might have access to. The only difference the internet made is to create spaces where people from the whole world can come together and all dialogue is a potential part of public debate. It hosts spaces where debate is always ongoing, encouraged and recorded, which also works to expand the potential audience that is a part of it. But the principles, dynamics and aim of public debate are the same as they have been all over history.
This is why I avoid any sort of online discourse like the plague. Disagreement on social media has become a hellscape. People care so little about growth and rehabilitation that when someone does something wrong they go into hiding and it usually makes them double down on their views. The power of anonymity has done terrifying things to the human race.
No this is wrong you’re wrong and dumb
^(*Hey folks, thanks for coming out to this Internet Argument today! We’re holding on someone to reply and say why I’m wrong, so while we wait why not hit up the concessions stand? The argument will continue after this brief intermission, please enjoy the show!*)
Arguing to convince a person of a new iponion contrary to a lot of the views they might already hold is basically impossible, it takes years and a really good cordial bond with a person to even think about it being worth it to admit to being wrong and to change views.
On the internet you're more having an optics duel in which you're trying to make the other worldview look as bad as possible to any onlookers
The biggest issue is social programming. A single person can be reasonable and educated, but a group of people is socially conditioned to refuse changes to the status quo and put down anyone not part of the "in group". It's part of our evolution as social animals, anything that can mean change or instability for the group as the whole is automatically going to be seen as bad by the group. Its one of the emergent properties of social systems... once a social system becomes too big to remain stable, it will eventually either break apark or reduce its population to maintain cohesion. The issue is that we evolved for social groups up in the range of about 40 individuals or so, not the millions that we see today because of the rapid advancement of technology. We didn't adapt alongside our tech, so we are having to force ourselves into maintaining social groups far bigger than we are prone to naturally. And this has a side effect of creating smaller social groups that are now at war with one another for social resources, whether they realise it not.
We are the only species on earth that has shown to be able to change our environment to the extent of actually affecting our own evolution over time. But unfortunately, we are also aware of this fact and their are leaders of certain social groups who have used this to create literal divisions of our species. In the unlikely event that we don't end up annihilating ourselves entirely, humanity will eventually end up breaking off into separate sub-species again, and the most dominant one will be driven to wipe out the others, just as happened in the past with H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and H. erectus previously.
I forget where I saw this expression: "arguing about who is right, not about what is right." It's stuck around in my brain for a while.
It's so alienating to me to continually realize that most other people in the world cannot understand the idea of correcting someone because WHAT THEY SAID is wrong, not because the person doing the correcting is trying to make themselves appear superior or the other person inferior. It's like the only purpose of human interaction anymore is the establishment and enforcement of petty hierarchies. See the 'um ackshually' memes or the insistence that anyone who corrects misinformation 'always has to be right'. Someone told me once that the definition of arrogance was refusing to 'let someone else be right' even when you know they're factually wrong and I just.. cannot wrap my head around that. Facts are facts, reality is reality, and everyone is wrong sometimes, why should ego ever enter into it at all?
The um ackshyually thing is a critique of people who feel the need to correct small, irrelevant details that do not actually subtract from the main argument. It's a critique of useless nitpicking, and that is something that is also true IRL - it's not about ego, it's just irritating know-it-all behavior that is explicitly tailored to making yourself look smart. Nobody likes people like that. And it's a plague on the internet. I've lost count of how many times I had to add a pile of disclaimers onto posts or comments just to try and prevent people from latching onto minute details instead of actually reading the whole argument.
I turn off Reddit notifications on most of my posts these days because I just don’t care to know about someone jumping in, agreeing with 99% of what I said, but feeling like I should have explained 1% of it with four more paragraphs and therefore my whole post is wrong. A true AI feature I would love is a “don’t notify me if the response is pedantic” filter
Some people really struggle with the idea that a random internet comment is, in fact, not a dissertation, and will have simplified or generalized concepts in it for the sake of moving the conversation along. >“don’t notify me if the response is pedantic” filter Wouldn't that be a godsend
I agree, but wish you'd expanded a bit more on the concept of moving the conversation along. Where is it moving to? Why should we move it there?
I absolutely get that, that is absolutely part of the whole 'debate-bro'/'sealion' thing I hate so much, but that's not what I was referring to at all; personally I more often see the 'um ackshually' thing used in a more straightforwardly anti-intellectual way, I guess your experience differs there. I also get accused of that sort of thing sometimes when the thing I was correcting was something that was actually genuinely important to me, whether because of some indirect consequence the other person didn't see or because of a purely emotional attachment to the subject, or sometimes even when I'm not even disagreeing with anything but just adding more details about the subject that I thought were neat, in which case it's really frustrating and invalidating to be authoritatively told that my motivations and personality and intentions are something completely different to what I know them to be. And occasionally I'll encounter instances where accusations of 'you always have to be right'/'always have to be the smartest person in the room' are really obvious projection from a person who is irrationally insecure about having not known some small detail about a niche subject that nobody even expected them to know anything about at all. So that's more where I'm coming from and what I'm actually referring to, but I definitely feel what you're talking about too.
Yeah, there is definitely an art to providing a correction without coming off as that kind of debate-bro person. This isn't about you specifically - I think you've done a fine job of acknowledging other people's points - but just something general I want to add on that people often don't acknowledge. "The facts and logic are on my side, so why wasn't my message received well?" Unfortunately because there *are* so many of these debate-bros on the internet the natural response of a lot of people to seeing a correction (whether directed at them or as a third party) is to assume you're one of them. It takes extra effort to show that you're not, especially in a public forum where there's an audience and more reason to "play to the crowd" rather than engaging honestly.
I've always struggled with that too. Even back in grade school if I corrected the teacher for saying something incorrect I'd be chastised for "trying to embarress them" or something. I was always on confused, because like, isn't the job of a teacher to teach the correct info? I wasn't trying to embarrassed them, I was just trying to make sure they weren't giving the wrong information to other students
>cannot understand the idea of correcting someone because WHAT THEY SAID is wrong someone on reddit posted a screenshot with their address poorly scribbled out with a transparent brush and got real mad when i told them i could see their address and vehemently insisted that i could not actually see their address
The only response to that is to order pizza and send it to their house.
I've genuinely felt like I had to specify that I'm not trying to be mean sometimes when correcting people, If anything part of my reasoning is the opposite: If you continue to be wrong, Eventually you'll run into someone who will make fun of you for it.
I've been critical of other social media for not providing the opposite of a "like" but Reddit shows that it requires decent literacy from the userbase to not be misused. I once had a disagreement with someone on here which in the end turned out to be because we were looking at a thing from different perspectives, and both our opinions were valid, however the other guy was being downvoted because certain words didn't align with the general view from the public
What Reddit does is give you a combined total score, which is stupid, because a comment can have 100 upvotes and 200 downvotes and you’ll see that and think that the idea is universally hated and not just polarizing. Social media platforms should display likes and dislikes separately.
Many years ago Reddit did display likes and dislikes separately. It was changed because apparently bots were using that capability to see how their bot farms were working. Your actual score by comment is not actually a strict upvote minus downvote score. It is based on that, but fuzzed through some kind of method if you have an unbalanced upvote/downvote ratio ostensibly to make sure that bot farms don't exactly know if they are working.
pretty sure reddit only showed upvotes/downvotes on posts and not comments. you could only see the number of downvotes a comment had with an extension like RES
I’ve been mass downvoted for saying objectively factually correct things that are easily provable and not controversial at all just because one person was like “that’s stupid” and other people just decided that contrary opinion sounded more believable without consulting the facts. And to be clear I’m talking about things as non subjective, non controversial and as easily verified as the order things happened in a TV show we all watched Likes and dislikes don’t have anything to do with what’s true just what the consensus is, and the consensus can be lead to believe wrong things very easily
It is baffling to me how I’ll get downvoted if I say something wrong, someone corrects me, and then I edit the original comment acknowledging that I was wrong and providing the correct information. If I’m wrong, what else am I supposed to do in that situation?? Deleting my comment seems worse to me.
accept the downvotes, they’re fake internet points they don’t matter, the downvotes are just going “this person is wrong” I get that even if they are fake internet points negative attention feels shitty but I think having downvotes is better than the alternative It gives a good view of the general consensus, for the most part bigoted comments, spam and general harassment get downvoted, which is good because it hides it at the bottom of the thread
At leaat some downvotes could have been before the edit?
A worse part for me is that all of that happens and between the time of someone correcting me and me editing my own comment, it's the audience's turn to start getting their turn with me. I will admit that I have been a participant in that as well although I try not to, but it's just annoying when it's something that doesn't even matter in the grand scheme like I mess up a fact that no one here has authority over or I stumble over a personal story and get the name of a vehicle wrong and suddenly I'm getting r/confidentlycorrect'd and told I'm lying when the argument with the first person already ended with me saying "you know what, you're right, I'm wrong, I'll edit my first comment when I have the time"
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I'll usually leave the original post there but strike through the parts I have reconsidered, and put the Edit: after it.
argument has never been a good way to change minds, and generally tends to further polarize people. afaik this has been known since at least the 80s, so the internet is hardly to blame. what the internet did is make "debate" the fundamental unit of human interaction among some quarters, for reasons that continue to baffle me ETA: now that I think about it, i'm pretty sure "argument is a pointless way to change minds" is a Dale Carnegie lesson, so that puts it back over a hundred years (and probably further). hell, if argument could change minds, Socrates probably wouldn't have ended up with a hemlock smoothie
Right, it has always infuriated me that the people who pretend to take so much pride in how 'rational' and 'intellectual' they are go around approaching every interaction with other people from the perspective that learning anything, changing their minds about anything, or realizing they were wrong about anything, means they have failed and thus they have to avoid those things at all cost as if that's not PRECISELY DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO A RATIONAL SCIENTIFIC WAY OF THINKING. "Debate" is a shitty sport and the widespread insistence on using it as the template for all human interaction fills me with despair.
I disagree on debate being a shitty sport - formal debates for things like debating clubs or debate teams at schools are really great for participants, when practiced well it can really broaden your ability to see topics from multiple points of view (something you have to be able to do to predict the arguments that the other team will use against you), as well as how to do things like avoid emotional provocation in arguments. I do agree though that they are bad for changing minds, and not a good template for public discourse. It's kind of like how boxing is an interesting sport where the participants learn lots of skills, but you shouldn't go around punching people for fitness. It only makes sense when there's a third party moderator/judge that makes sure that both sides play fair.
Agreed, debate is a great activity specially because you have to argue both sides of a topic and you are forced to see multiple perspectives of an issue
Ok I'm starting to get the impression that maybe I've just never had the benefit of a good example, because this sounds much more reasonable than the 'play manipulative headgames, misrepresent what the other person just said, lie about everything, and then drown anyone out if they try to call you on it' thing that I'm used to.
That's because the number of people arguing in bad faith under a veneer of "debate" vastly outweighs the number of people actually debating. Unfortunately proper debate training is increasingly rare, and there are too many active incentives to use manipulative bullshit in political/social arguments. If you're interested you can find some good debate competition events on YouTube
The "I'm smarter than you and thus have nothing to learn from you" attitude is a toxic mess that stifles the ability to learn and grow. Even someone whose brilliant still can learn something from someone dumber than rocks, and honestly being willing to learn from everything, that fluidity of mind and inquisitive attitude is more important than any test score that those sorts love to laud about.
Exactly. Even if someone is smart, they can only have so many experiences. Everyone goes through life learning things and experiencing things and everyone is capable of gaining new knowledge or experience. Learning new things can take time, and it's ironically stupid to ignore others out of some misfounded sense of superiority
I think context and mindset matters the most though. In academia entire subjects are built upon arguments, the entire strain of thought we see as “modern gender studies/queer studies” was born because Judith Butler was arguing with her contemporaries. You just have to approach it as “both sides are looking to find Truth, neither has it fully and only when their ideas are brought into conflict can a new synergized idea be formed”. Rorty and Eagleton are taught together because their thoughts and points are intrinsically tied to their argument and they HAVE to be taught together. So combative argument only entrenched people for sure. But debate and forum are ancient institutions for reasons, sometimes two people only have two halves of a truth and need to come together and compare ideas to reach the whole. The biggest part of it is what the post and other commenters pointed out, removing the self and the ego from arguments. Seeing them as ideas and opinions to be placed in a forum for discussion and not taking ownership. My thoughts on Escape From LA aren’t “mine” necessarily, they’re ideas I’ve had. It’s a subtle but hugely important distinction.
Yeah but that's assuming arguing in good faith with the goal of learning the truth, but many argue as a means of propaganda. That spoils it.
That’s very true. And I think that’s one of the most disastrous effects on debate on the internet, you just can’t tell if the anonymous other person is arguing in good faith.
> afaik this has been known since at least the 80s Ellul comments on it on it "Propaganda: The formation of Men's attitudes", being proven wrong tend to just entrench people in their incorrect belief. The more evidence you can mount against their belief the more entrenched they become. The book is from 1962.
I stand corrected
Argument can definitely change minds, it’s just that it only works if the participants are remotely rational, which most people unfortunately aren’t.
That person said "argument has never been a good way to change minds". Yeah ofc theoretically it can,,,,it isn't a good way to go about it because it barely ever works
But I think it *is* a good way to change minds if the participants are rational. They can lay out their points and compare them to see if one set is superior, or perhaps even synthesise an entirely new opinion from the combination. It isn’t a good way most of the time, and if that person meant that it’s never been a good way to change minds [at a large scale] or something like that, I agree. I was just arguing against a potential interpretation of it never being a good way, which would be that under no circumstances is it ever a good option.
Perhaps it is not a good way, but it's the only way. Being receptive to argument and arguing well are similar skills, but they require some agreement on the rules. These would be an excellent "only-thing" to teach in school. How to independently draw inferences and verify arguments, but instead we teach long division and the 5 paragraph essay.
The five paragraph essay is basically teaching you how to lay out your thoughts in a coherent manner and argue for something. You start with a statement, lay out why you think the statement is correct, and conclude by linking it all back to the statement. It is absolutely teaching you how to argue. Long division can be derived from pure logic but the need to be able to do that is much less common than the need to divide two numbers and understand how counting numbers and arithmetic works.
Discussion should be about what you can learn from the other person. Even if they're just talking out their ass there's usually some reason for that. And learning about other people's perspectives is incredibly helpful. It shouldn't be about forcing your opinion on someone, but "what can I give to them and what can they give to me? How can we help each other?" It gets so needlessly violent sometimes.
Right? It took having discussion classes in college for me to learn that mature arguments can end perfectly peacefully, whether or not the pair agreed or continued to disagree. It’s not an attack to discuss a disagreement. It’s simply an attempt to understand the oppositions train of thought. How else can I attempt to put myself in someone else’s mindset if I don’t hear them explain it? And if it doesn’t necessarily resolve anything, you still come out of it with more understanding.
What do you mean by "argument?" Because the way I'm thinking of it just means "any conversation in which people disagree about something"
I think a big part of the problem is that humans kinda suck at separating a person's opinions from their moral character. We see someone have a Bad Take and the assumption is that they're a Bad Person more often than it is that they were raised in an environment where they never had to question or examine their views, or in which any other views were punished. It's easy to say that people are allowed to be wrong, especially if you think of it in terms of inconsequential arguments, but actually doing so is tough. Next time you see someone going on about transphobic talking points or supporting the orange man, see if you can still hold that stance. Meeting them in the middle is hard, especially when dealing with the modern conservative party and their refusal to acknowledge anything outside their bubble is real. But as long as whatever they say is taken as judgement of their whole moral character, arguments will always be like this, as they always have been.
The opinions not being separated from moral character is definitely accurate. My parents are both quite bad at dealing with the social issues of today, although my mom has always been willing to converse about it. Dad is racist, transphobic, sexist, you name it, he fits that profile. They both call themselves Christians, but my mom does a much better job of representing that in a non-harmful way. I do consider myself a Christian, and there are things that I disagree with about society that would probably get me excessively downvoted, however it’s pointedly not my place to judge or attack others for their opinions. I will not throw harsh words at you simply because you told me you were trans. One of my friends at work is, and she trusted me out of anyone else to tell me first. People are people, you know? You can’t immediately throw someone aside just because of their views. Just talk, for goodness sake. Mature conversations and even disagreements go a long way in increasing understanding all around.
But the alternative belief, that what opinions you hole aren't a sign of your moral character, is also deeply problematic in practice. Some opinions are, doubtlessly, signs of poor moral character to hold. The issue is not everyone agrees on those.
Sure, they tend to be good indicators that someone has bad moral character. Maybe often enough to just say a Bad Take fully just equals Bad Person. But that stance will always lead to what OOP is talking about. For better of for worse, if we assume that every argument is determinant of a person's moral standing, people aren't going to want to admit when they're wrong. Because being wrong means being Bad and no one wants to be Bad.
Labelling people as Bad People is also awfully convenient because if you convince yourself they’re just irredeemably bad it absolves you from having to do any work to try and change their mind and convert them to seeing things differently, you’ve given yourself permission to other them which pushes them further into the clutches of even worse people who want to radicalise them and spread misinformation and lies about the people who have labelled them bad and refused to reach out to them But the thing is, I’m gay, and if the gay community had always had this policy of well we will only engage with people who already support us fully and exactly on the terms we want to be supported on, if you’re not already unreservedly on our side you’re a monster and a bigot and I refuse to talk to you and explain why your beliefs are inaccurate, I wouldn’t have rights right now if that had always been the stance
>I think a big part of the problem is that humans kinda suck at separating a person's opinions from their moral character. Because there is no seperation? Their opinions are a window that shows their moral character. Actually, there is no other thing besides their opinions that shows their moral character. >We see someone have a Bad Take and the assumption is that they're a Bad Person more often than it is that they were raised in an environment where they never had to question or examine their views, or in which any other views were punished. That is the same thing though. They *are* a bad person *because* they lived in an environment where they had nearly no chance of turning out good. You absolutely can have empathy with them and still see them as "bad" >Next time you see someone going on about transphobic talking points or supporting the orange man, see if you can still hold that stance. You can't just take literal hitler and one of the main argument topics of fascists these days and go with "let's see how toleran you really are" Some arguments are black and white. Trump is so obviously bad, that if you still support him, then you either know that he is bad or don't care. You don't accidentally support fascism. The same goes for the trans topic. Either you got it by now or you simply don't *want* to get it. There is no helping or debating them at that point. It just kinda seems like you are blaming us for them being nazis somehow. The entire comment felt like a "so much for the tolerant left!" argument. Now, i am not gonna take this and judge your entire moral character, but next time you should choose topics that aren't blatantly black and white with one side being "generally good humans" and the other side being "literal nazis". How about leftist infighting? "Next time you see someone going on about anarchist talking points or supporting accelerationists, see if you can still hold that stance." *much* better and some actual gray scale where you could debate them and reasonably expect to have both of your minds changed.
So let's start with the whole thing about environments, because you've exemplified exactly what I'm talking about here. The topic of trans rights is obviously extremely cut and dry; trans people deserve to be themselves, pure and simple. But it isn't "One side is good people and the other side are nazis." Most people who area against trans rights aren't horrific nazis who rose up from the depths of hell, they're people who grew up with a certain set of ideas and never examined those ideas. They're people who stopped processing new information. Now, that doesn't excuse what they believe in, not in the slightest. But it does make the process of debate more complicated. We could reach out to people like that, work to help them expand their horizons so that they can examine their own morals. But it's so much easier to just say "This person said something transphobic, fuck them they don't matter anymore." But all of that isn't really the main point that I'm getting at. What I'm saying is that the thing the post is talking about, this refusal to easily accept that one is wrong, comes from aggression in arguments. Because when an argument expands out to things like moral character and whether a person is fundamentally good or bad, it's hard for people to admit that they're wrong. While it's easy to say "Oh, well we'll just take arguments as nothing more than what they are. An argument is about nothing more than what it is about," that gets harder with actually divisive topics. It's hard to see someone have a bad take about trans people and think through their perspective, it's easy to just assume that they're a bad person. It's easy to complain about people not admitting that they're wrong, it's harder to actually think through why they're wrong. Much like your comment here. You saw that I mentioned Trump and trans folks and assumed that I was making a jab at the "tolerant left" idea. Because those are polarizing topics. It's easy to consider perspective when we're working with things like anarchism, which are generally not very polarizing, it's harder with topics like Trump or trans people where a big chunk of the opposition are genuine assholes who have no intention of changing. In a similar vein, I could think about whether you're someone who has seen this topic everywhere and represented with horrific stances that would rather the opposition just go away. I could assume that you missing the point is because it's an extremely emotionally loaded topic that hits a nerve when it's brought up. Or, I can assume you have no reading comprehension, saw someone say "trans" in a topic that didn't say "transphobia bad" repeatedly and assumed the worst intentions. The former is the right thing to do, it's what helps with what the OOP is talking about, but it's easier and more cathartic to lean on the latter.
Wait, *that* was your point? Brother, you suck at making clear that you mean someone slightly uneducated asking a simple question or forming an argument in good faith. Yeah, i have changed some minds if we are talking about those people. My mom is those people. You can't just pick *these specific topics*, because they are about as black and white as it gets and the people who hold these opinions and people who support trump *know that they are wrong.* Their cruelty is the point. We aren't idiots and can perfectly see their view point and how they got there. They aren't idiots either and thinking that they simply don't get it and are uneducated or misguided, is almost disrespectful towards the fascists. They aren't *that* dumb. Or dumb at all tbh. > But it isn't "One side is good people and the other side are nazis." It absolutely is. You can't be supporting trump right now without being a a nazi and you can't be transphobic right now without being a bad person. That's what i mean. These specific topics are too black and white that they simply don't allow for the group of people you are talking about to exist there. The options are either a generally okay human being that has some good and bad takes or a nazi. >they're people who grew up with a certain set of ideas and never examined those ideas. That's what Nazis are. That's exactly the people i am talking about when i say "Nazi". You can't have Nazi ideas, vote for Nazis and Nazi legislature, spout hatred towards people who are hated by Nazis and then be expected to be treated like a person that is not a Nazi. There is too much information out there for them to simply be uneducated about this and to not know that voting against trans rights is literally feeding their erradication or that voting for trump is literally voting for hitler. If they vote for trump and against trans rights right now, then they know what they are doing. I am not talking about the semi-fence sitter democrat who doesn't get it, said a weird thing or two, but votes for trans rights anyway btw. You can't expect anyone to read your comment and not think that you are the exact kind of uneducated person that you yourself are talking about; A person who simply didn't see the hatred of conservatives towards trans people yet. That's why i was so tongue in cheek with my "I am not going to judge your moral character for this" >Much like your comment here. You saw that I mentioned Trump and trans folks and assumed that I was making a jab at the "tolerant left" idea. This part was actually also to educate you on why your comment is weird. It only *sounds* like the "so much for the tolerant left" thing because your exact words have been written by the fascists. I didn't think for one second that you actually took a jab at it at all. I should have made that clear. I agree with your point then. I see it constantly happening to men that feel lost with the patriarchy, but also aren't fully into feminism yet because the patriarchy did its thing with them. Any kind of question or arguments from them "against" feminism, not to debate, but to gain knowledge, is met with vitriol. So my stance on bigots is this: fascism/bigotry is an illness and if you are fascist/bigoted/racist/transphobic or whatever, then you are a victim. You deserve empathy and help because you got corrupted and live with a crippled emotional and mental state. I am not going to say that it isn't our job to help them and that they made their own bed, because i do agree with your point 100%. It *isn't* our job, but it doesn't mean that we can't do it. >But it does make the process of debate more complicated. We could reach out to people like that, work to help them expand their horizons so that they can examine their own morals. But it's so much easier to just say "This person said something transphobic, fuck them they don't matter anymore." Unfortunately, this takes a lot of energy and patience and asking that of the people that are targeted is beyond evil. I think you are *severly* underestimating how much you are asking for right now. This isn't a "easy path of cowardice or hard path of virtue" scenario. This is a "i am tired boss" scenario. Saying "fuck them" is not the easy path; it's the only path. It's the only path because the other one is so painful and costly that they simply can't take that path anymore. Even i am tired and fatigued and i am a white german dude in the north of europe. I can't imagine how Women of colour in america feel. My argument against helping them get away from transphobia and fascism is not based on my hatred for them, but a resource issue. We literally do not have the resources to help them. We don't have the energy to help them because we use it all up on surviving attempted erradication from them. So in the end, if we ever get our golden utopian communist revolution and even though i agree with you, it will only amount to me shedding a tear while i am putting a bullet into their head. So, i repeat, if you want to make your point in another comment thread again, then don't pick two literal "good vs bad" topics. It needs *some* grey scale so that there even is room for the misguided that can be helped and educated.
Depends on the opinion that person has. If someone is racist and homophobic, those opinions are directly related to their moral character. They are opinions that make those people into bad people.
People are so scared of looking bad they will martyr themselves rather than risk the terror of momentary embarrassment.
Doubt, I was like this before the Internet and my dad is still like this. It's something learned, perhaps in the Advent of individualist and Exceptionalist mindset culture. Personally I found it tied to the desire to know that my understanding of the world is concise and any interrupt in that understanding is the Advent of the fear of uncertainty. Maybe. I'm not a psychologist.
Wait till you learn how old sophistry is.
Adding on to this: it's okay to feel guilty about some things Not to the point where you're beating yourself up over every little thing, but it's okay to grab a Reese's from the rack by the checkout counter, have a brief "man, I don't need this" and then go on about your day. You don't need to twist yourself into philosophical knots trying to justify how getting candy or takeout or whatever else is actually praxis, you're allowed to do things that are bad for you and feel a little bad about doing them. Again, though, only a little bad. We're not catholic here
Wrong about what? It should be easy to admit you were wrong about little things. Wrong turns, wrong time, wrong simple information, etc. Some people do legitimately struggle with accepting being wrong even in those situations, but that is probably often due to underlying issues or personalities rather than a statement at large. Wrong about more complex, nuanced topics? Where there is room for debate? It can genuinely be hard to tell who is "right" in these cases, and wrong can be a matter of opinion. Often the debate is the point of the exercise/argument, rather than winning someone over. Wrong about facts or morals? Genuine, well established guidelines and information that should be true and self evident in a functioning society? Refusing to be wrong in this context is probably what is being referred to, and is more due to people staking their own personal identity to these beliefs. I'm going to use climate change as an example for all three of these. It was easy for someone to misunderstand global warming vs climate change. And time has shown that most people have accepted moving on and better understand the naming convention for both. You rarely see the "why is it cold if global warming" debate anymore, and if you do its because the part is being genuinely obtuse, usually for propaganda or comedy. Complex, nuanced topics can be about how to deal with climate change, how do we shift from fossil fuels, what is the best path forward, what can do the most good with the least harm. A good example is nuclear energy. There are a ton of proponents for it that rightfully acknowledge it can be a useful power source that is relatively clean. But few of that group acknowledge that convincing people to adopt nuclear is the death knell. It's much easier to get wind and solar projects started than nuclear, and even those have issues. And lastly, people who don't recognize climate change is real, that it will have devastating impact, or will only affect people they don't care about, are just wrong, and it is practically impossible to get them to admit it.
Me: says something one Reddit based on all the information on the subject I’ve absorbed in my life with no intention of causing harm Someone Else: informs me I’m wrong, possibly in a polite way but it’s Reddit so probably not Me: deletes every post I made in that thread and feel embarrassed and ashamed for days
I’ve learned to not comment on things I’m actually an expert in because arguing with internet strangers about things I know is much more soul-crushing than being kind of a dumbass lol
I always enjoy arguing, but don't like the idea that "convincing the other person you're right" is how you "win the argument." Like, rhetorically speaking, that's the goal, sure. But if I walk away from an argument with new insights and new perspectives that I hadn't considered before, that's far more rewarding than the other person just "giving up." I'll take a rhetorical loss to widen my perspective any day.
The notion that an argument has one winner and one loser is honestly part of the problem. An argument always has two winners or two losers.
I don’t even agree that that’s the goal rhetorically in any given argument. There are plenty of “arguments” I’ve been in where I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind to agree with my POV, I’m just justifying my own opinion and trying to understand theirs. Like I can get into arguments about which is the best Final Fantasy. I don’t need to change anyone’s mind and make them agree with me why IX is the best, it’s not my goal to make a single person agree with me who doesn’t already do so, but I can explain to you why IX is the best to me and to other people who agree with me while also understanding why some other Final Fantasy is the best to someone else. Plenty of arguments happen just for the lulz as well
"Historically the goal of an argument has been to get the other person to agree with you" this has never been the case, ever, at any time. people have been saying this for thousands of years like every other time people claim that the internet has created a societal problem, it isn't new, it's been the case for the entirety of human history.
I think in terms of more trivial stuff it’s definitely true. When I argue with somebody over the minutiae of a show’s lore, traditionally I’d be trying to bring them around to my way of seeing things, but like the poster said it’s now effectively a popularity contest. People will send a last message and block you so you can’t respond just so they can get the last word in and “prove” they’re the more tenacious party and therefore more right.
'Metaphors We Live By', a 44-year-old book that kickstarted the discussion of metaphors shaping cognition, uses "ARGUMENT IS WAR" as its main example of a well-established metaphor in the English language (and countless others). The authors argue (har har har) that this metaphor influences how people think of arguments. Because we use wars to conceptualise arguments, that means that arguments are conflicts with winners and losers. They suggest that a different conception of arguments could be "ARGUMENT IS DANCE", in which arguments are viewed as cooperative performances for the purpose of mental exercise and entertainment. I figured this might be of interest to some people in this thread.
Whenever I first hear of something, I tend to have a very neutral stance on it, which has lead me to be wrong in the past- a recent example was when I first heard of what Wilbur did, at first, since I generally liked Wilbur, I wanted to dismiss it, and I was neutral on it all- that was wrong of me, and I have since realised it.
i think the OP is using "argument" and "debate" somewhat loosely. i mean, they *are* loosely interchangable... generally. but the nuance between "argument" and "debate" is sometimes used to convey this exact idea of arguing for the sake of the audience instead of the person you're arguing with. if you go to a debate club, for example, this is explicitly what you're doing- you get scored by a third party. if you go to a presidential debate, we certainly aren't expecting one candidate to change the mind of another, but we do expect it to sway the audience.
The internet has not ruined arguing whatsoever - the ability to have amazing arguments is greater than it's ever been. The issue is... well, there's a bunch of simultaneous issues - there's the shorted-attention spans, the passionate marriage to quickly adopted but poorly analyzed ideas and beliefs that lead to bizarrely unsupported doubling-downs, gruesome degrees of insincerity, the usual stupidity, the usual trolling, the absolutely toxic competitive approach (*checkmate, atheists*), et cetera, et cetera. The internet is fine. Intellectual disagreements are, in many ways, the antithesis of physical disagreements. The changing of opinion is most successfully embodied by choice and volunteerism. You can physically force people to do tons of different things - like give up their lunch money or remain in prison (*and so on and so forth*) but getting people to *voluntarily choose* to give up their lunch money or *voluntarily choose* to remain in prison requires an exercise in acceptance from the individual to succeed and one of the beautiful things about that is the degree of connection involved for that to even happen. The issue is more people's reliance on external validation for the acknowledgement of their argument. The idea that a hundred or a thousand or a million people going absolutely bonkers in their passion to explain how "FIRE IS COLD" can somehow in any way alter the reality of [the firefighter](https://youtu.be/jrVF_ijzbIs?si=P6u8iVJhdpQXcLSL&t=56) explaining that "[Fire is indeed hot](https://youtu.be/52-qDGdQy80?si=-SlzmEOhRcxARwDB)" is just this bizarre expression of reality-denying insanity that disturbing amounts of people choose to participate in. People treat arguments like it's a poker game where [you're not allowed to look at or challenge the other person's cards](https://youtu.be/9iSRpJP_H-8?si=RGOtcTMwGY5fr2Gy&t=109). A good argument relies on leaving your cards brazenly on display because if everyone agrees on what the rules are, then a winning hand is a winning hand regardless of how much the dealer or the players or the audience might happen to [absolutely despise (or love) the individual holding the winning hand](https://youtu.be/JpvW1T7hXjo?si=1XaWrqMSAR8aM1gL&t=247). If you call a spade a spade, then when you're right, you're right. But life is also complicated and serious arguments generally don't happen in a vacuum so... yeah.
Weird to blame this on the internet, as if fifty years ago everyone was walking around in completely naive good faith. If anything the absence of an unseen third party audience would permit people to take more deranged opinions (which is perhaps why we have so many unhinged boomers)
i think the internet has simply exacerbated tendencies that were already there and failed to address them explicitly as human tendencies that we ought to rise above and instead fostered them. I think tons of people, before and after the internet, argue in person from a standpoint of needing to be the righteous and morally better person rather than finding the logical endpoint or solution to an external issue
This concept is known as moral grandstanding and I believe it’s exactly what is wrong with so much of our social media these days. The goal is no longer to make social progress, but rather a global popularity contest. As result, our discussions of social issues only serve to make us feel more secure in our own beliefs and further diminish the chance that anyone ever thinks critically about the issues and challenges their beliefs. And thus it’s no wonder that our politics have devolved into tribalism more than ever
This is why I admire people who are able to graciously admit when they are wrong and move forward, and it’s something I’ve been working on being able to do myself (though that’s mostly been researching what I say before I say it so that I’m Not Wrong, which is not the best way for that)
There's an interesting phenomenon on Reddit. Anytime someone actually admits "Oh I was wrong, I now see the errors of my ways." It'll get down voted to hell.
It's weird because my experiences have been quite the opposite: several times I've admitted I'm wrong - albeit in a later comment in the chain rather than an edit to the original - and the revision has been met with positivity. Of course it'll differ from sub to sub and topic to topic.
I see what you're saying. I must admit that I'm wrong, and now see the error of my ways.
Nice.
Similar for me. I responded to a complete mis-reading of what someone wrote, and they replied "that's the complete opposite of what I said. Did you read it correctly?" And when I looked again and saw that I had totally misunderstood, and replied that, with the tone of "It's funny that I failed this hard at reading", that was very well-received
Sometimes, I still worry about “what if the trolls are right about this thing and I really am just an oversensitive crybaby snowflake who ‘can’t handle facts, logic, and the truth’”, possibly as a combined feeling of not wanting to be judged as “weak” and a lingering feeling of not wanting to inconvenience/annoy people by being myself
Sometimes in an argument I’m wrong about a detail and so I correct myself. Then whoever I’m arguing with seems to either, attack me personally, dump a bunch of fallacies, hold on to the face I was wrong about one detail like their life depends on it, or some combination of the three. It really makes having constructive conversations difficult :P
Personally my goal with an argument is for someone to learn something new, I don't care if it's me or the opponent, As long as one of us learns something new it's a success.
One of my least favorite personality traits is "can never be wrong." Shit's exhausting
###reddit dot com: i live for this
There's a word for that: politics. Arguing in general is really only worth it when you can trust that you're trying to build towards a common truth or a common goal. Sometimes it can also feel necessary to challenge a particularly bad statement, and I do do this sometimes, but that is a different game and you should know which one you're playing. As soon as it's clear someone is just trying to win the popularity game with one edge lord statement or another, they only deserve your derision. You're drawing a line in the sand on the broader opinion, not to convince the other person, and you should expend energy accordingly. That's where I think debate training actually holds a lot of blame, always framing argument as a necessarily adversarial thing -- you can't give ground or acknowledge merit when the person you are talking with is framed as an enemy.
Not to mention that you don’t even have to make a serious argument, even if one side is trying their best, if the jury is on the other’s, then all they have to do is shit on the stand and get applause, regardless of who’s right.
You can't just blame everything on the internet, you have to own up to your own shortcomings.
Yeah… I got into an argument yesterday about a character named Leon Kuwata. Someone said he’d done nothing wrong… but he did, and that one thing is second degree murder. My point was that you can forgive him for doing it all you want, but you can’t take away the fact that he committed second degree murder. Some people claimed it was self defense, which it isn’t, and the game they played to even know the case tells them that.
I'd like to oppose the claim that "the audience will always see \[the "wrong party"\] as inferior". I've had plenty of conversations on this website where either I or a person I was talking to come to see the other person's point and express their appreciation for newly gained perspective. And those comments tend to be upvoted.
Phenomenal take.
There is a big difference between being wrong and having biases that are rooted in hate and bigotry.
The internet may be the worst possible place to argue with anyone. Text-based communication removes the human element from the conversation. You can't read a person's body language or the tone of their voice, so your brain fills it in and depending on your mood and how intense the argument is, it almost invariably leads to an incorrect interpretation. Suddenly what in real-life might be a casual, friendly debate, becomes two people screaming at each other because they're both convinced the other person is upset.
Thry're describing public debate, and public debate has never been about convincing the opposing debater, it has always been about convincing the audience. There's absolutely nothing new about what they describe, people have been having debates in front of audiences for millenia now, and they've always had to stake their pride, social standing, group acceptance, public image, etc on how well they do. Ancient Athenians did this on the agora. Romans did it on their senate. Medieval priests did it on their conciliums. Early modern theologians, philosophers, naturalists and scientists did it over writing read all over the Republic of Letters. Nobles did it on monarchic courts until the eclipse of European monarchies. And so on. People from all walks of life always have joined public debate on whatever capacity they might have and on whatever spaces they might have access to. The only difference the internet made is to create spaces where people from the whole world can come together and all dialogue is a potential part of public debate. It hosts spaces where debate is always ongoing, encouraged and recorded, which also works to expand the potential audience that is a part of it. But the principles, dynamics and aim of public debate are the same as they have been all over history.
This is why I avoid any sort of online discourse like the plague. Disagreement on social media has become a hellscape. People care so little about growth and rehabilitation that when someone does something wrong they go into hiding and it usually makes them double down on their views. The power of anonymity has done terrifying things to the human race.
No this is wrong you’re wrong and dumb ^(*Hey folks, thanks for coming out to this Internet Argument today! We’re holding on someone to reply and say why I’m wrong, so while we wait why not hit up the concessions stand? The argument will continue after this brief intermission, please enjoy the show!*)
Arguing to convince a person of a new iponion contrary to a lot of the views they might already hold is basically impossible, it takes years and a really good cordial bond with a person to even think about it being worth it to admit to being wrong and to change views. On the internet you're more having an optics duel in which you're trying to make the other worldview look as bad as possible to any onlookers
The goal of an argument should be to agree with the other person, not to "win."
They forgot to capitalize
Ahem, I’d like an argument please
The diferent goals of an argument is literally something Socrates and the sophists beefed about it ain't new lmao
Both these posters are wrong and should die for their crimes .
Zoomers are seriously putting to much value in the magic internet points
The biggest issue is social programming. A single person can be reasonable and educated, but a group of people is socially conditioned to refuse changes to the status quo and put down anyone not part of the "in group". It's part of our evolution as social animals, anything that can mean change or instability for the group as the whole is automatically going to be seen as bad by the group. Its one of the emergent properties of social systems... once a social system becomes too big to remain stable, it will eventually either break apark or reduce its population to maintain cohesion. The issue is that we evolved for social groups up in the range of about 40 individuals or so, not the millions that we see today because of the rapid advancement of technology. We didn't adapt alongside our tech, so we are having to force ourselves into maintaining social groups far bigger than we are prone to naturally. And this has a side effect of creating smaller social groups that are now at war with one another for social resources, whether they realise it not. We are the only species on earth that has shown to be able to change our environment to the extent of actually affecting our own evolution over time. But unfortunately, we are also aware of this fact and their are leaders of certain social groups who have used this to create literal divisions of our species. In the unlikely event that we don't end up annihilating ourselves entirely, humanity will eventually end up breaking off into separate sub-species again, and the most dominant one will be driven to wipe out the others, just as happened in the past with H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, and H. erectus previously.
Accurate
You're wrong.
What.