IMO the most important part of learning fallacies is not to call them by name while debating. It’s to smell the bullshit from a distance. Both in the others’ reasoning and your own.
That’s what those Reddit kids are missing. This shit is not an “I won!” card. It’s a reasoning framework.
(Sometimes I do still call them out by name. But that’s usually a sign I’m already losing my patience with the muppet in question, and considering to block them [online] / turn 180° [offline] while saying “I’m not wasting my time further with you and your dumb shit”.
I don’t debate religion any more, though; unlike in my later teens + early twenties. Zealots get mentally tagged “irrational harmful avoid”, and the sort of person who believes with the brain but not the liver isn’t usually a problem.)
I feel like, if anyone calls out a fallacy and acts like it’s an “I won” card, you should just pull out the Fallacy Fallacy and uno reverse that shit. Then fuck their dad as a victory lap.
To go a step further, arguments are healthier if they’re pictured as a way to field test your beliefs to see if they hold up to scrutiny.
If you go into an argument trying to get the other person to change their mind, you’ll often be met with failure even if your points were valid simply because people hate changing their mind, and you don’t want to be tempted to use bad-faith arguments of your own just to secure that “win.”
Instead, just give your argument; if the other person has a good point, see if yours can hold up to it, and change your outlook if you find that it can’t. And if it feels like the other person is just saying whatever they think will “win,” leave, because their argument wouldn’t make a good field test anyway.
And if you did change their mind, they probably aren’t going to tell you. Or maybe you planted a seed in their mind that helps to change it years and years down the road. You don’t know! That’s the crazy thing. But people just get frustrated and give up because they had an unreasonable expectation about the argument in the first place.
My personal preference is to always respond first in good faith, even if the shit clearly stinks. Sometimes they just worded things poorly or misunderstood something. However, if their stench becomes apparent, it’s then much easier to humiliate them and dip by the second response.
IMO the most important part of learning fallacies is not to call them by name while debating. It’s to smell the bullshit from a distance. Both in the others’ reasoning and your own.
That’s what those Reddit kids are missing. This shit is not an “I won!” card. It’s a reasoning framework.
(Sometimes I do still call them out by name. But that’s usually a sign I’m already losing my patience with the muppet in question, and considering to block them [online] / turn 180° [offline] while saying “I’m not wasting my time further with you and your dumb shit”.
I don’t debate religion any more, though; unlike in my later teens + early twenties. Zealots get mentally tagged “irrational harmful avoid”, and the sort of person who believes with the brain but not the liver isn’t usually a problem.)
I feel like, if anyone calls out a fallacy and acts like it’s an “I won” card, you should just pull out the Fallacy Fallacy and uno reverse that shit. Then fuck their dad as a victory lap.
To go a step further, arguments are healthier if they’re pictured as a way to field test your beliefs to see if they hold up to scrutiny.
If you go into an argument trying to get the other person to change their mind, you’ll often be met with failure even if your points were valid simply because people hate changing their mind, and you don’t want to be tempted to use bad-faith arguments of your own just to secure that “win.”
Instead, just give your argument; if the other person has a good point, see if yours can hold up to it, and change your outlook if you find that it can’t. And if it feels like the other person is just saying whatever they think will “win,” leave, because their argument wouldn’t make a good field test anyway.
And if you did change their mind, they probably aren’t going to tell you. Or maybe you planted a seed in their mind that helps to change it years and years down the road. You don’t know! That’s the crazy thing. But people just get frustrated and give up because they had an unreasonable expectation about the argument in the first place.
My personal preference is to always respond first in good faith, even if the shit clearly stinks. Sometimes they just worded things poorly or misunderstood something. However, if their stench becomes apparent, it’s then much easier to humiliate them and dip by the second response.
Yes, I understand that you have a very compelling argument, but have you considered the fact that I banged your dad ?