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

[crisper]

>compatible standards of evidence

Herein lies the rub. We, as a species, can barely manage compatible standards of railroad gauge. We splashed a multi-million dollar space-traveling machine onto the surface of Mars because Rocket Scientists couldn't keep track of which measurement system they should use. The word "format war" doesn't even seem the least bit alien anymore. And you're talking about shit that people choose to believe? You're fucked, my brother; there are folks for whom the standard of evidence is that the Earth is 6000 years old, the CDC is actively poisoning the human race with chemtrails, Barack Obama *is* a corrupt felon, fried chicken is for breakfast lunch and dinner, bigfoot is an angel of God, and you are some kind of "reality-based scenario" tool of the Devil. And some of them are actually on "your" side much of the time, you just don't know it yet. (Seriously: Chemtrail belief is currently my most shocking litmus tool.)

>Reasonable people can agree on the factual premises but disagree on the subjective conclusions.

Of course, reasonable people eventually get their civilization torn down by the unreasonable ones. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying to build something nice; just sayin'.

[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.