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Comment by aaronem | Hacker News Reader

Are you by chance familiar with the axiom that, given an audience without any other information about the parties or principles involved in a given argument, the side which presents its claims in a calm, level-headed fashion is more likely to be taken seriously than the side that's red-faced and flinging spittle?

I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.

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That's not an axiom, it's just an opinion. Personally, I find passion pretty compelling to read/hear, and I won't present my side with a false posture of academic distance if that's not how I feel. Additionally, I'm not really interested in winning over the people who are more concerned with the tone of an argument than the actual facts presented.

Well, exhorting the choir is very satisfying, of course, and I can see the tactical benefit in so doing to the exclusion of any attempt to increase the size of the congregation. This does, of course, imply an abandonment of any desire to find a modus vivendi, but the impression I have is that such abandonment is more or less implicit.

Thank you for descending from the mountaintop to dispense your advice to such a lowly thinker as I, great wise sage.

(That was sarcasm. Opinions are not facts, and condescension does not signal wisdom.)

FYI, there is a certain branch of thought that believes that passion and anger increase validity of argument.

I'm a former partisan of that sort of thinking, so I'm well aware of it -- from the inside, as it were. The trouble with it is that it only works on people who already substantially agree with you. When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing, and at worst it actively impairs your efforts.

Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.

> When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing

Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.

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