Is there ever a good reason to debate someone who is not arguing in good faith? | Hacker News Reader

Is there ever a good reason to debate someone who is not arguing in good faith?

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14 pointssquircle15 comments

Maybe I have a wild bias, but I don't see how this is underwater quantum rocket surgery. Try and continue to engage when reasonable and respectful with mutual humility without intent of conflict. The nuclear option is to shutdown communication but only after a pattern of unreasonableness or disrespect. It shouldn't be necessary among civilized adults, because if it's the first option rather than the last, society would be in middle of the process of dissolution.

I think you should take seriously the proposition that this is what's happening.

I would like to hope it's mostly just America having a mid-life crisis rather than Europe too. Chalmers Johnson wrote a book about the collapse of empire and a possible resolution to it that was suggested reading at the CIA on the topic.

It's a common thought-terminating cliche [0] employed by the unsophisticated to simply declare the other party as "arguing in bad faith" and claim victory, while still being very clearly, undeniably, wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

Good counterpoint.

I was going to say this exactly.

I would also group in "mis/disinformation" because it's such a clumsy phrase and people will often say both making it an even larger often-repeated verbal monstrosity.

It's interesting because, for me at least, there's an aesthetic quality to these phrases that is unmistakable.

A subset of passive aggressiveness or crybullying perhaps as an excuse to employ stonewalling, one of the 4 horsemen of the relationship apocalypse. It's even more corrosive when combined with a social group pattern of continually excommunicating the latest "impure" or "nonbeliever."

The Reddit thread is more worth reading than this HN thread, as of this writing.

Yes absolutely, two can get a ton of laughter throwing arguments towards each other knowing the other keeps their position.

For example two sports fans which like different teams.

Ah, yes. So, a precondition to meaningful debate is that all parties agree on the game (if not the rules of engagement?)

You cannot have a meaningful debate if the other party isn’t arguing in good faith. I think OP actually gave a good example with sports. I’ve seen people argue about sports for both fun and because they tossed back a too few many. Being exposed to sports fans in my 20s really helped me understand alot about what can drive people to do all sorts of things.

> You cannot have a meaningful debate if the other party isn’t arguing in good faith.

It depends on what you consider to be the point of the debate: to convince your opponent, or to convince the audience. If it's the audience, then all you have to do is point out the mistakes and bad faith of the rebuttals and then every debate is a meaningful debate.

I don't agree with their definition of bad faith, but if your goal is to change someone's mind debating is generally the worst way to do it.

No. I'm gonna murder the shit out the next trump fuck that lies to my face with that trademarked shit-eating smile.

Yeah they will still learn something even if it is overnight. So will the listeners. After all, what really is the point of debate? To visibly win?

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