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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

The way to “win” an argument these days is to make a claim which is more complex to refute than the attention span of the audience. You achieve this by making claims which are somewhat true and not particularly representative of reality.

These tend to be the vast majority of arguments that people see because controversy gets clicks and the more reasonable people are straight up afraid to appear to support the other side by disagreeing with the more unreasonable folks with a shared alignment.

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I don't necessarily disagree, but there's a certain irony in presenting a claim of "how things are these days" in such a matter-of-fact way. I certainly wouldn't know how to refute your statement in a sufficiently short way. Thus, is it the presentation of claims that is the issue, or is it their content? Or both? I struggle with avoiding hypocrisy when trying to pinpoint the underlying problem.

Well somebody could try to do a representative study, but this is a HN comment, not a scientific publication.

I could also try to deconstruct some of the common complex-to-refute arguments, but I'm afraid the message would get lost in the following controversy.

What I'm saying is my perceptions following experiences I have had myself.

I suppose one could disagree with me by showing counterexamples of generally recognized public arguments for this and that and how they can be refuted simply. You have a point though. I'm not sure how I could avoid that criticism and still make an effective argument.

> I could also try to deconstruct some of the common complex-to-refute arguments, but I'm afraid the message would get lost in the following controversy.

That would be quite interesting to read nonetheless, if you’re willing to do so.

> The way to “win” an argument these days is to make a claim which is more complex to refute than the attention span of the audience.

This is a good description of something I’ve failed to put into words myself. Thanks for this.

I had to look it up again to check, but does this not fall under the dictionary definition of sophistry[1]? It seems especially appropriate to call it that given the 2nd definition of sophisticated[2] as something at a high degree of complexity, and "sophisticate"'s common root with "sophistry".

By making a complex argument, you deceive others into thinking that you have refuted another argument, when in fact you have not done so; the fallacy of your argument was hidden by it's complexity.

1. "the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving." -- Oxford languages, via Google; https://www.google.com/search?q=sophistry (retrieved 2021-01-22)

2. "(of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity." -- Same as [1], above.

Eh, the whole sophist thing is a 2500 year old beef that philosophers (i.e. aristotle, plato, socrates) had with professional teachers hired by upper class people, for everything but especially rhetoric. So it took on this meaning of an insult insinuating the target was a second rate intellectual teaching a cheap bag of tricks to rich idiots.

I’m never a big fan of using these words that take some ancient group of people or school of thought and turn the name into an adjective which has at best a loose connection with the reality of what they were.

Does the dictionary definition fit? Somewhat, but maybe not the best choice.

Thank you for saying this out loud. I've had the same visceral reaction to words like "sophistry" but have never taken the time to process why or articulate it. This is exactly how I feel about it, as well.

Well clearly you’re wrong and don’t understand Karl Popper’s “Theory of Falsification” or the ways that radical mid 18th century propaganda groups led to a rise in authoritarian group think.

to a degree i think zoomers parody this phenomenon with memes using a wall of text/dense and almost indecipherable text with the caption of "leftist memes be like"

A family member of mine is interested in what makes the worst cultures in the world tick, and according to him, Daesh memes be like that too.

This is very perceptive. Attempts at honest discussion often seem to be derailed in exactly this way. Discussion of the actual issue is avoided by loud assertions that take a lot of time to refute. Which "side" derails it does seem to depend on who the "weak man" would hurt.

Is there any way to avoid this?

I would say bring back empiricism as a big component of knowing if something is true, or at least before you discuss it as something that is right.

People are aligning with complex theories with no underlying basis, other than their feelings and utopian visions, and then getting emotional about it.

Just don’t participate once the conversation gets derailed. Learn to exit gracefully, and usually if you did make a point addressing the complexity, likely someone got something out of it.

Surround yourself with people who disagree with you, but are good at it.

It doesn't seem to me that its most often making a "more complex" claims, but making so many claims as to overwhelm any attempt to refute them, aka "Gish gallop".

To clarify, perhaps confusing language, I don't mean the claim must be complicated, it can be a simple claim.

In order to refute the claim though requires an appreciation for subtlety which the people doing the arguing don't often have. The refutation is complicated, the claim doesn't need to be.

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