he other day a guy posted a magnificent rant
about how he's had it with people
generally being insincere and pretending to be things they're not. He's
mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore. It is a masterpiece
of rantsmanship.
Rants are colonics for the soul. But intelligent arguments, which are supposed to convert people to your side, are more important because a good argument can change how we live. A bad one can also undermine everything you've ever worked for. Here are three autopsies of arguments that went bad and did just that.
An argument getting demolished
Case 1. For years feminists struggled to get women's sports accepted as a separate category. Unfortunately, some also argued that women should be allowed in men's sports and that physical standards should be lowered to permit it. This laid the groundwork for their opponents, who are now using the same argument to put biological men in women's sports. I don't know which is more surprising: that men never tried this before, or that the women I asked about this vehemently deny that it's happening.
Case 2. A good way to tell if somebody's argument needs improvement is to observe how they react when presented with something that offends them. An example was on Retraction Watch the other day about a paper from Iran that offended many readers.
Many people don't know that Iran has a thriving scientific community. One paper claimed that transgenderism and certain other sexual practices were intrinsically harmful and proposed a treatment. This sparked an acrimonious debate that fell along predictable lines: scientists said if the authors have evidence that it's harmful we need to hear it. Others said that discussion of the topic offended them and therefore publication of the paper should not be permitted.
This argument showed the challenges scientists face when defending ideas that make people uncomfortable. For a scientist, the truth always comes first, but they can be under enormous pressure to avoid such topics even if avoiding them means doing harm.
Case 3. Last week one conservative website had a long debate about why they seem to be losing cultural battles. Leaving aside the question of whether that's really true, the range of permissible answers was markedly restricted, indicating an unwillingness of participants to be too critical. Result: no consensus. When people have to risk condemnation by one's peers, they find it difficult to to accept fault or change course.
These three case studies point to an urgent need for humans to practice making better arguments. Here are some errors that both sides tend to make.
Arguing from tradition and authority In the argument over gay marriage, conservatives argued that male-female marriage was traditional, not realizing that this argument made no sense to their opponents, who don't value tradition. Although a few tried to discuss the effect on children, there was little evidence to back it up. So most cited tradition, and they lost that battle.
I cringe when I see somebody making valid points and then, halfway through their argument, start talking about God and what he would want. It's a perfect way to lose an argument: even assuming God exists and has an opinion on the subject, we can only speculate what it might be.
Can we conclude from occasional chromosomal abnormalities that there is an infinite number of sexes? Some activists think so. But their tactic, which is a common one, is to appeal to the authority of science to convince people that science has already proved their case, and therefore you are powerless to resist. When this generates outrage, the activists respond by calling critics anti-science or science deniers. The purpose is to use the perception of authority to shut up the opponents.
Misrepresenting science A related topic is to misrepresent scientific discoveries to confuse the audience. Sometimes these arguments come from well-meaning people who misunderstood what they read in scientific articles, but often they come from people deliberately misrepresenting what's in the paper. An example was the misinterpretation on certain blogs about the I-TECH randomized clinical trial of ivermectin in Malaysia (discussed here). The bloggers had to know they were misrepresenting the science, but did it anyway to promote their cause.
Denying the opponent's right to have an opinion This is the assertion that your point of view is the only correct one, and your opponent's opinion is dangerous misinformation and must be censored to protect people. Not only is this a guaranteed way to convince people that you lack any skill at constructing arguments, it also guarantees that your opponents (who also lack the same skill) will sooner or later use the tactic against you.
Blowing off potential allies People often try to enforce group solidarity by attacking anyone who is sympathetic but critical. Those with new ideas leave the room and the debate becomes sterile and unproductive. This is what happened to National Review, which depleted its base by rejecting libertarians and Birchers and, later, Trump fans.
Name-calling A common mistake is to call your opponents nasty names such as Nazis and haters, or inventing a derogatory or dehumanizing term. You can make your opponents angry or you can try to convince them. You can't do both.
Blowback Sometimes a good argument fails because its advocates made the opposite argument on a previous issue. Example: the debate on whether critical race theory should be taught in schools. Those arguing against it historically argued for the opposite, namely that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in schools. This lets their opponents accuse them of hypocrisy. That's an invalid criticism, as the argument should stand or fall on its own merits, but the audience might not see it that way.
It's true that some readers will only listen to arguments that support what they already believe, but many will stop reading the moment you call your opponent a nasty name, state a fact that lacks empirical support, repeat points already made, or base the argument on words attributed to someone they believe doesn't exist.
It's too bad that rhetoric, logic, and argumentation aren't taught in schools. See also books by Peter Boghossian reviewed here and here. Effective reasoning is fiendishly hard to do. But maybe schools are so busy not teaching other important stuff to find the time to do it.
mar 20 2022, 7:10 am. revised mar 22 2022
