Types of Disagreements

[tongodeon]

I tend to argue a lot with people on LJ and lately I've been stepping back and thinking about what kind of disagreements are productive to argue about and what kinds are less productive.

First, there are personal opinions. "Chocolate is delicious." "Getting the flu feels like getting kicked in the head by a Swede." "I love the smell of Napalm

Comments

[ikkyu2]

I firmly believe that 'cilantro tastes like soap' will be resolved by genetics in the near future, just as 'asparagus makes pee smell funny!/no it doesn't!' already has been.

[jorm]

In kollege, I were a philosophy major. Unsurprisingly, this involved a lot of debate and attempt at rational discourse. It would, at times, become extremely frustrating for me because fully 2/3rds of a dialog was usually involved around agreeing on a common vocabulary and some basic posits

[waider]

Once upon a vacation, I ran into a brash guy at a bar who said he could win any argument, whether he believed in it or not. After a short period of time it became obvious that the reason for this was that he was so obtuse in his arguing that people simply gave up talking to him about anything, which to him was victory.

I suspect it's a very lonely victory.

As far as other people's beliefs go, I tend to work on the live-and-let-live principle. I have friends who have an assortment of beliefs and that's fine by me. The only time it becomes an issue is if someone tries to push their beliefs on me; I'm willing to have the conversation, but I'm also quite happy to push back as hard as I am pushed. Since my personal worldview is strong agnosticism - i.e. there are questions to which the answer is simply "we don't know", and there's no concrete proof for any of the theories - I've generally found that both accommodating beliefs I don't hold myself and pushing back when necessary are actually pretty easy. I have had people get pretty upset

[tongodeon]

I suspect it's a very lonely victory.

More than that, it's a logical fallacy. I can win any argument if I argue it by saying "agree with me or I will beat you up", but that's not an actual victory.

[angel_boi]

i've have known, and yes dated several of these folks... some of whom really do think they've won, all the time... and go around doing a little i'm so smart dance... but over time you come to realize ALL of their friends, and coworkers are just rolling their eyes and biting their tongues... rather than getting lured into pointless unwinnable debate over useless shit

[crisper]

>compatible standards of evidence

[tongodeon]

Herein lies the rub.

You betcha. I added those three very important words as a key to open a whole 'nother major can of worms. If my standard of evidence is "empirical and reproducible" and yours is "written in this book" then we shouldn't even start discussing basic principles of objective reality until we address the even bigger question of how to know that we know what we know.

I have some strong opinions on that subject as well, but I'm still working on that post.

[silmaril]

Chemtrail belief is currently my most shocking litmus tool.

I had to go look up what a "chemtrail" was.

After reading the first sentence of the Wikipedia article, I have to go take a break, curl up in on myself and cry for a while. Later.

[eejitalmuppet]

I have a Swedish friend. He would be delighted and honoured to participate in a research project comparing influenza to being kicked in the head by a Swede.