Arguing Is Pointless | Hacker News Reader

Arguing Is Pointless

blogs.hbr.org

23 pointsacconrad28 comments

No, arguing is not pointless. But the point of arguing is rarely to convince someone of anything. The point of arguing is learning the other persons arguments and the flaws in your own. Arguing is platonic dialectic. The author gets very close to the point of argumentation, and then misses it.

In my mind, you're making the case for debate. Argument has an emotional connotation, where as debate is more educational in connotation.

Arguing over minor differences in words when a person's intent is sufficiently clear ... really is pointless.

I find most debate tactics pointless. I find some of them a bit intellectually dishonest. An honest search for the truth involves questioning and self doubt. A lot of the way debating is practiced discourages the right kind of openness and keeps people away from the truth.

I think I'd like to see more of the "intellectual potlach" I see a few really brilliant and confident people playing. (They are so confident, they willingly put their ideas into the fire, knowing they'll most likely come out unscathed.)

Not a minor difference; debates happen in civil threads on this site. Arguments involve situations like blowhards yelling at cops giving them parking tickets.

TFA confuses the two to some extent.

I agree that he missed the point about what argumentation really is. If you do it right you, your 'opponent' and everyone else listening learns something.

The point of arguing, according to "Thank You for Arguing" and rhetorics, is to persuade and be persuaded to take some sort of action. The article described fighting, not arguing.

Platonic dialectic is related yet different, but I can see how modern ignorance of rhetorics have led people to equate platonic dialectic with debate, arguing with fighting.

Some of the most heated, seemingly-intractable arguments I've participated in have led me later upon reflection to change my mind. I'm thankful the other party didn't take this viewpoint that arguing is pointless.

Also, a just society needs to operate by certain fictions: for example, that people are innocent until proved guilty or that all men are created equal. Among those should be the assumption that others can be persuaded through logical means (as opposed to say force or habit). I think it's somewhat akin to the principle of charity.

This is good if you are using this as a filter to find exceptional people. The exceptional people can often be persuaded, because they actually listen and consider unfamiliar ideas and ways of thinking. (Also note, that they aren't always persuaded.)

However, if you are playing the odds - odds are people aren't really listening or devoting sufficient attention to a complex or genuinely novel idea.

One Christmas, at Mom's house, I walked by the Christmas tree, and--MEOOWRAAWR--her monster of a cat jumps out from under the tree and claws my foot! At this point, the reflex is to kick the cat, out of self-defense instinct.

TIMEOUT!

if i kick the cat, the cat will hate me, it will be a problem in the future as he feels defensive, and my poor mother will expel me from the house. So i swallowed my reflex, put neosporin and slippers on, then nicely petted the darn cat.

My personal relationships sure got a lot better after realizing this.

IMHO, some arguments can be highly productive, but I think it takes a certain amount of rapport to effectively argue with someone. I've had discussions with friends where we began with one set of positions, and by the end had swapped positions! Those sorts of arguments are enlightening and memorable, but they require a certain amount of openness and ease with the other person, where you can feel free to toss around ideas without necessarily having to defend them. If you don't have that, then indeed, confirmation bias will kick in.

In cases where I've felt that happening, I've found it helpful to try to pinpoint fundamental assumptions or values that are (by definition) inarguable. Unveil these, and you'll either resolve the debate with "well, you value X and I value Y, and no amount of arguing will change that," or "we both assume/value X but have reached different conclusions, Y and Z -- what would it take to falsify Y or Z?" My girlfriend and I have somewhat opposing political views, so I have some practice at this.

I'd phrase this as a rule: "Only argue if you feel close enough to the other party to admit if you're wrong, and if they feel the same way."

Instead of emotionally arguing with someone, you should rationally consider how to persuade the person, and whether it is worth it. That's a much better suggestion than "doing nothing" as suggested in this pointless flame-bait article*

*please think before replying to that sentence.

"Instead of emotionally arguing with someone, you should rationally consider how to persuade the person,"

What is your evidence that this works any better than raw applications of social power (which is the failure state described in the article)?

My statement would still be true in that case. You would just be proposing a shortcut because "rationally consider how to persuade" would be a constant function that always returned "apply raw social power".

However, as can be pretty clearly seen from psychological literature, neither making emotional and oppositional statements (what I was saying) or "raw application of social power" (whatever that means) is the most effective method of persuading someone. Here is a list of 18 studies demonstrating the subtleties of persuasion (3rd google result for "psychological studies on persuasion")

http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/01/the-psychology-of-persuasio...

"apply raw social power"

This follows my experience of how decisions are made in corporate America. It's all about animal dominance games. Logic is only an auxiliary weapon. It's a grenade launcher beside the main cannon.

Depends on the argument. It helps to not be flat wrong, as the author was in the case of his parking ticket and his attempt at appealing it.

I thought that was funny, because he was essentially playing the part of the guy trying to cut into line (from his later example), and the cop was the person not actually arguing with him while not letting him get away with it.

Mind, stopping yourself from arguing with people who call you on doing the wrong things is probably a wise change to make.

Defeatism at its worst. If arguing is pointless, why even have your own opinion at all? And what point does democracy have?

If arguing is pointless, why even have your own opinion at all?

So you can live your life by it?

And what point does democracy have?

Democracy involves artificial environments and contexts where there are rules constructed to make arguments follow a certain structure so they can be settled through voting.

NO IT'S NOT

Arguments are necessary. There must be a way to intellectually resolve disagreements without resorting to ignoring the other. If one think that the other person is hopeless, then the relationship is in a terrible state. That's how wars get started. Humans should be above that, we should be able to communicate well, and resolve differences of opinion with ease.

Currently much of the frustration associated with arguing comes from the terrible tools and methodology we use.

I'm a co-founder of ArgueX.

I'd be interested in this--I tried building something like it a long time ago, but it's a very difficult problem.

We think we have 'the solution'. Please sign up for beta. Invites will be going out soon.

Excited to see your concept, but if you want to appeal to the HN crowd, don't store/email me my plaintext password.

We're using Drupal, and from what I understand the password is md5 encrypted before it is saved into the database. However it sends you a one time email of the password before encryption. This is so that you have a local copy of your password.

I would, but you don't have an option for openID.

Politely discussing issues with people can be very productive.

Arguing on the internet is pointless.

>Arguing on the internet is pointless.

Have you never been convinced by a counter-argument delivered via "the internet"? Not even enough to alter your position even slightly, nor even your approach to others in presenting your position?

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