Rules of Disengagement

[agent_grey]

So I'm having a meta-argument with my wife.  We were discussing an issue last night, (one that we actually agree on 100%) and she, (understandably) got increasingly frustrated with the way that I have to take every argument I make or refute to the hypothetical extremes

Comments

[bobtraylor]

Well, I think you got the best advice yourself, there. You need to be able to just brush off the crazy people when they reveal that they're crazy. But of course, the trick is being able to tell yourself that. I mean, you don't want to come off as arbitrarily holding a point of view just because it happens to confirm your beliefs, you want to make clear that you have actual valid points for your beliefs, but here's the thing - you're NEVER going to convince the other person that that's the case.

That's the thing about crazy beliefs - they think they DO have cogent arguments, and no matter what you say, they're still going to believe that your counter-arguments are complete horseshit. If you're just trying to convince any present third party that you're the reasonable one, then that's already made clear at the get-go when they start spouting crazy shit and completely ignoring real evidence. It's like an argument that I watched between a truther and a reasonable person. It went something like this:

Truther: The collapse was too neat, it must have been engineered.

Reasonable Person: Well, here's the evidence to the contrary, and anyway, you're assuming that someone wouldn't mind killing everyone in the WTC, but would totally be concerned about not having the buildings kill anyone else in the collapse - which is, by the way, totally insane.

T: Oh, I've already seen those statistics, I thought you were going to have something new and interesting.

It's like, REALLY?! What the fuck? 2+2 doesn't equal 5 after a while just because it's been 4 for so long that the universe decided something new was in order. When there's a question like this, there is only one right answer, and it doesn't change. Physics doesn't change just because you're batshit insane.

But that's the point. Right there, when the person reveals "reality has no hold on me, I believe this crazy thing no matter what, with completely insane arguments supporting my point of view!"

That's when you have to tell yourself, "In this person's mind, there is no way they're not right. They're like console or Mac fanboys. They can't actually BE more intelligent, so they have to try to convince themselves (and everyone around them) that their choices/beliefs somehow grant them the status of 'genius', and there's absolutely nothing that I or anyone else can do to change it.

"They've crossed over into a realm of 'fucking bonkers' that doesn't allow for any questioning of their beliefs, because to question their beliefs is to question their worth as a person, and that they can't allow. To prove them wrong - if that were possible - would be to indicate that they've actually been as gullible and stupid as they like to imagine that everyone else is - their ego won't allow that because it's completely wrapped up in their illogical beliefs, so there's literally nothing I can do here."

They're more to be pitied than to be argued with, really.

But speaking of truthers, now that I'm on that topic, there's this. Perhaps it'll brighten up your day.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15740_was-911-inside-job.html