Comment by Dumblydorr

> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?

For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen.

For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.

I waver between "I'm not going to convince anyone anyway, and they'll retreat to their echo chamber and be right back where they were" and "The world would be better if we fight for what's right, and speech is the only ethical way to do that".

I'm tired, Boss...

>They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort?

The outcome is not foretold. I have learned a lot from being corrected by someone who knows more than me or points out a fault in my assumptions/logic. I have also learned from seeing subject matter experts arguing with each other.

> You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling

Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off.

> and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so.

It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.

> What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable?

I'm sure this is some sort of confirmation bias, I've noticed fewer stupid talking points for topics where I argue about online. I doubt it has any impact in people's political beliefs, but people end up being slightly less ideological and more hedgey. IMO, establishment figures are too dismissive about engaging with the public because they think they're above it, but this is how you end up with DOGE laying off departments only to beg for them back.

Also, honestly, I just enjoy the feeling of putting a dumb person in their place. Occasionally, I'm the dumb person, but I don't really mind that since I'm not really tied to any viewpoint. Being more informed also satisfies my mild superiority complex. Also, even if I don't learn from others, generally learn from the process of defining my arguments.

Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist".

I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.

Put me in the Nietzsche camp: stoicism is self-tyranny. It's a denial of feeling disguised as overcoming it.

Do you have a recommendation to start reading about stoicism, but potentially not the early philosophers? A more modern text?

The goal is karma farming and the feeling of smug superiority over others, especially when they get downvoted or flagged and you don't.

The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right.

This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human.

So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)?

I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics.

No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective.

But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy.

If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot.

So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this.

What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning.

Boom.

At a reply depth of 4, the parent can never have the last laugh.. unless he replies to himself.

There's (probably) a correlation between things you know well and things you're willing to argue about.

Care about thing -> learn more about it

Care about thing -> argue about it

Language is a flawed vessel for conveying truth and the more people accept that they will never truly (like at a deep, fundamental level - not just truth-like via utility) be understood or understand, the more humility they might approach difficult discussions with, potentially facilitating the cooperation and coordination that language can be great for, rather than the dharma-combat people’s egos have them fighting every time they perceive a verbal slight or challenge.

I often write a comment in a thread here and, satisfied I got it out of my head, hit the back button without hitting reply. I know, you might look at my comment history and say I don't do that enough, but imagine how bad it would be if I always replied!

Also, even if you can't resist looking, not replying to every single person arguing against your position is a powerful tool on the internet.

If you're right, or at least, not making a complete ass of yourself, chances are someone else is going to come along and argue back for you. And besides the benefit that someone else will likely explain your position in a slightly different way, and the multiple POVs might combine more effectively, having a half dozen people explain to someone why they're wrong is a lot more convincing to random bystanders than two morons replying "nuh-uh" to each other a few dozen times.

And if no one jumps in to defend you, it's a pretty good signal to step back and re-read everything and have a good think before you have another go at it, at least to make sure you have something to add beyond what you have already said, even if you think you're still right.

This is true for a very narrow definition of debate though. At work, choosing to debate can make the difference between a software design that solves the problem vs one that doesn't. Deploying code that causes an incident vs lands safely.

In broader life, public debate can reveal new arguments to seeking minds, help influence and educate people other than the debaters. It can even grow the debaters themselves if they approach with the right humility.

That said, many do approach debate in the way you describe. For those of us trying to avoid futile debate in favor of productive debate, the best choice is to detect these bad faith actors, acknowledge the bad faith publicly, and pull away

> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right and not caring what others believe, just like they don’t care about 99.9999% of beliefs held by others either.

Disagree, if you care about truth, you're not going to just let people spread any opinion as if it were fact. It has societal consequences. That way lies the dark ages, witch hunts, wrong people getting into power. Of course one needs to be judicious in which battles to fight.

Ok, I definitely don't agree with this. It's so reductive as to be absurd. It almost reads as rooted in personal resentment.

> If it were about truth alone, the person who is right could be content with being right...

So... how would someone know if they're right? For starters, if we're going to be serious there are a lot of matters where there isn't even such a thing as "right" because the question is how to decide what to optimise for. But more importantly, if you rely on the inside of your own head to try and arrive at the truth the most likely outcome is slop. One of the best parts of being argumentative is finding out what the holes in a view are really quickly.

There seem to be views in the comments and original article that arguments are to be won rather than undertaken and reviewed. They're a man-vs-self story, not man-vs-man one.

I see your cynicism and it could be correct, I'm not sure. I also could see it being as described but irrelevant in the manager's mind who knows about the pending sale that will put off the pending funding cliff and company collapse. I could also see that the person is, as admitted, technically correct but being such a jerk that no one is interested in letting them have increased influence. So many other possibilities.

Regardless, this story about the situation, especial if true, seems less likely to support them in seeing a richer tapestry of considerations and perspectives.

> Whether the earth is round

I honestly think a lot of the flat earther types in particular are basically trolls and/or enjoy being stubborn/argue about common knowledge, for no other reason because they can.

I don't think that was really the author's approach--to let them learn from their own mistakes.

It was to quit wasting his time trying to correct their mistakes when they weren't ready to accept criticism.

Do you think you've changed many votes with your corrections? Even in arguments you won?

> ... there is actually an ever-increasing number of things that used to have an absolute right (scientifically proven) answer that become controversial. Climate change. Vaccines. Whether the earth is round - that kind of stuff.

I think there are multiple things here that need to be disentangled. The first is that just because science "proves" something that doesn't mean the political, civil, or economic path is nearly as clear cut. While there certainly are people who just deny these things outright there's also the camp that accepts the scientific result but disputes how to deal with it as a society.

Second I've seen an alarming rise in what I would characterize as scientism, a belief structure around science itself where the "acolytes" of science do not understand the science themselves, but use it to reinforce their own worldview in the same way that deniers (heretics really) use other sources to reinforce their worldview. I have seen this play out within my own social circle as people will defer to experts as if they are a clerical class with divine authority to determine ultimate truth. To give an example in a much less controversial arena, how often have you witnessed people adopting fad diets because the "science" shows X is good even though the actual backing papers, that no adopter has read, are much more murky at best? This is an understandable consequence of having a limited lifespan where not everyone can know everything therefore heuristics must be used to comprehend the world, but the flexible heuristic which can lead to a change of opinion can be swapped out for a rigid belief that permits no change of opinion unfortunately.

Last I think this ultimately stems from what F.A. Hayek called constructivist rationalism[1], the idea that we can rationally construct our own social order. I share your own concern about mistakes that affect all of us specifically regarding philosophies that adopt constructivist rationalism such as the family of collectivist ideologies (socialism and the like) which are currently on the rise. My conclusion is that civilizations will evolve according to the culmination of all individual actors' actions and I personally have a limited role to play, although I am a classical liberal. Your last question unfortunately can lead some to conclude that a much more dictatorial society is necessary to produce a result that may itself not be possible and instead lead to an even worse result than the alternative.

[1] I highly recommend The Fatal Conceit by Hayek if you want to challenge assumptions your own worldview likely rests on without even knowing it.

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There are certainly lines you don't want to cross if you want to avoid conflicts, and there are ways to ask questions nicely. Maybe it's a professional bias, but when you work in research or engineering, I think it's pretty normal to ask questions or push back on strong claims without proofs, without necessarily sounding like a jerk.

I think I managed to upset people on several occasions as I was just genuinely trying to understand their opinion on some topics.

Or people who pick a nit and then when it turns out the nit they picked wasn't even a nit, they double down and pick an even smaller it and split ever smaller hairs because they just cannot function if they don't "Win" every discussion

It's insane how reluctant some people are just to say "Oh maybe I was wrong or misunderstood"

Mostly the former, but occasionally it goes back and forth for awhile as alignment need ironing out. That's the other thing about engineering arguments: both people are aligned in seeing an end result. People in online arguments don't have mutual alignment for a good outcome so they go nowhere.

> as soon as you state a position, you’re arguing it.

That’s true, but is that the meaning of argue that the author was referring to? Do you see a difference between arguing for something (making a case) and arguing with someone (contradicting them and saying they’re wrong)?

By your logic no one should ever talk in meetings or write blog posts or comments (like yours) - stating any case about anything constitutes "not listening." Bollocks. A good listener spends a lot of time listening, but can spend some time talking.

sometimes a statement is just a statement. not everyone is taking a “position”.

sometimes a conversation is just a conversation and not a debate.

This is why we can't have good things :)

Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? Seems a little extreme. There are countless facts, indisputably so. Gravity, death, the fact you wrote me an answer, the fact I'm writing you an answer. These aren't opinions

> Is climate change man-made?

When having the climate change conversation with deniers I roll it back to; is the climate warming? They almost always[0] agree it is and we agree it’s evidenced. So now we’ve agreed on a fact and have common ground to advance the conversation. Then I can make my case that if we know the climate is warming then we have a responsibility/necessity to reduce our contribution to it and should likely invest in finding ways to reverse it. Because even if we are not the cause, we have a lot at stake.

[0] in rare case they can’t agree to this, I usually ask them if they’ve encountered a source for that and then ultimately implore them to at least read something on the topic before forming their opinion about it, there’s plenty of data available I won’t push them down any path that may be seen untrustworthy or politically misaligned with their beliefs, I just leave it alone there because it’s usually quite obvious they’re parroting the talking points of some pundit without doing any research themselves. As the article mentioned, this argument would just become an ego war more than anything.

Yes it's a scientific fact humans have been causing the current warming by burning fossil fuels since the industrial revoluton.

You can make skeptical arguments against this is you're willing to dismiss empirical data and methodology behind scientific facts. The people who do this aren't consistent and cherry pick which empirical data, models and methodologies to dismiss. It tends to align with some belief challenged by the science. Or their financial interests.

It's much harder to be a consistent skeptic, since empirical data is verifiable, and the scientific method works for all sorts of fields and technologies. But it could all be dream of a mental patient in a simulation god programmed while making a bet with the devil.

It's too early in the morning for this much sophistry.

I made $xxx,xxx.00 last year, that is a fact, I can definitively prove it via deposits to my bank account. It is a fact.

Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”

Do I need to hold the opinion that water is wet for it to be factual?

To answer your question, if by climate change you refer to the dramatic post-industrialisation acceleration of warming and climate disturbances, the correct answer is "the overwhelming majority of existing evidence points to yes".