Man suicides after court ordered Christian drug program tried to ungay him

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Man suicides after court ordered Christian drug program tried to ungay him

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nevvy Z posted:

This is a common lovely discussion tactic, not just for lawyers. If you can't make a real argument you look for technicalities you can use to try to make the opposing argument look bad. It's a pretty lovely move to pull in casual discussion on an online forum.

The whole concept of a technicality doesn't make any sense in discussion to me. You're making some sort of argument or claim, presuming it's properly constructed, that's going to contain some sort of evidence and likely some set of logical deductions stemming from that evidence. I see two scenarios, either your evidence and deductions are relevant to your claim, in which case someone attacking them is a reasonable response, or their not relevant to your claim, in which case why were they written down in the first place?

I understand (though don't really agree with) complaints about technicalities in the legal system, since the legal system will forcibly prevent you from presenting totally valid evidence in certain scenario, but in discussion you have total control over your arguments. If your argument possesses what you perceive to be a technicality that can be attacked, how this anyone's fault other than the person who constructed the weak argument?

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 20:44

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:18

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Trent posted:

The point is that some people ignore the principle of charity in order to correct someone on semantic minutiae, and attack largely irrelevant minor mistakes while ignoring the actual thrust of the argument.

There's nothing wrong with attacking technical details, unless you are just distracting from the issue by intentionally missing the point.

I'm not sure how you think the principle of charity should apply to things that we are acknowledging as mistakes. Let's take an actual example. Tamir Rice was a 12 year old that was shot and killed by the police. Recently I read a post that referred to him as a teenager, though the difference between him being 12 or 13 was not really relevant to the point. I think this is a complete set of reasonable interpretations:
1. Poster was simply mistaken about the age
2. Poster was under the impression that teenager includes 12 year olds
3. Poster was deliberately making a largely irrelevant minor mistake for rhetorical effect
I think charity pretty clearly suggests assuming interpretation 1, but even then we should still say "He was not a teenager, he was actually 12", because there's no reason to let people believe wrong things. Further, if I don't care about the actual thrust of the argument, I don't see why I should feel obligated to comment any more than "He was actually 12", just to prevent wrong information from spreading.

From there, I don't see a difference between purposefully not engaging the point versus intentionally missing the point. If we want to lay blame on people for distracting from the issue, surely we should blame the people who included A) Information that was wrong and B) For apparently no reason, since that information being wrong doesn't even damage the argument. This is especially a good idea in light of the possibility of interpretation 3. I think charity prevents us from ever assuming any given post is engaging in that strategy, but a policy of turning a blind eye to such statements, in addition to allowing the spread of false information, allows bad faith posters to use lies for rhetorical effect without an opposing voice.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 19:54

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Trent posted:

If you didn't care about the actual thrust of the argument, and were just popping in with a correction, the criticism wouldn't apply to you in the first place.

You're all over the place. The post I replied to was about "technicalities" which is a concept I think categorically shouldn't exist in persistent asynchronous communication. I'm not concerned that a criticism might apply to me in the future, I'm saying the criticism is simply not valid. I don't care whether participants care about each others' arguments, it needs to be fundamentally acceptable to point out errors that people make regardless of context. Irrelevancy is not a defense to making an error, that just means you double hosed up because you made an error that was additionally unnecessary.

quote:

It was about actual stakeholders in the argument attacking sidebar weak points and irrelevant minutae when confronted with counterarguments, intentionally deviating from anything truly relevant to the topic or the obvious thesis of their interlocutor, thereby arguing in bad faith. In other words, ignoring substantial points to quibble about bullshit. A substantive reply that also included a minor factual correction would not come under fire.

I do agree that there is nothing wrong with a spectator interjecting a point of information as you suggest.

Since when does the principle of charity care about stakeholders? Also how do you distinguish stakeholders from non-stakeholders? Doesn't charity demand that you assume someone who is attacking sidebar weak points has simply lost/never had interest in the main conversation? Also I still think that if you want people to not quibble about bullshit, it's your responsibility to not post bullshit. Sidebar weak points don't need to exist, and when they do exist they don't need to be defended.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 20:03

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ytlaya posted:

For an example of this, it's like someone repeatedly pointing out when people concerned about racism misstate facts or make other mistakes in their arguments*. While their arguments are technically correct, it doesn't change the fact that the main thrust of their opponents' arguments (that racism is a big issue) is still true. This is why such tactics are often (and usually correctly) treated as an attempt to derail discussion about important issues.

*I want to clarify that pointing out these mistakes is fine. The problem is when pointing out those mistakes is literally all you do. It's okay if you say something along the lines of "I agree _____ is an issue, but you're wrong about ______."

Why is this a problem? We have two posters:
Poster A: Racism is a big issue because 2+2=7
Poster B: 2+2=4, further even if 2+2=7, that would be poor evidence that racism is a big issue

Why is it more important that B preface their statement with "I agree that racism is a big issue" which is a kindergarten level thing to say and unrelated to their actual point than for A just to not make a lovely point? Would you prefer that people not point out mistakes? The issue with creating distractions isn't pointing out mistakes, it's when people incorrectly defend mistakes. This is pretty insane to me.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 17:17

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Effectronica posted:

Well, twodot, it's a tactic designed to be unproductive, because the guy using it in this thread immediately admitted that, actually, he disagrees with the premises. So it's all about avoiding real engagement in actual practice. So it's, in turn, an example of dishonest behavior, because it's about attacking without engaging. Thus, people who want to be honest should avoid using it.

Oh weird, you made a post that isn't full of garbage. How can a post that is correcting what all sides agree is a mistake be considered unproductive? Surely ridding a thread of inaccuracy is productive behavior? If someone sincerely believes someone made a mistake, how can correcting it be considered dishonest? I don't understand why avoiding "real engagement" is considered a problem, in fact, Ytlaya seems to believe that it's fine to avoid real engagement so long as you put magic words in front your lack of engagement declaring which tribe you belong to. Here's an example:

zoux posted:

I'll tell you who's got a loving war-boner, it's CNN. Their site has been at defcon 5 since the attacks.

This person doesn't know how DEFCON works, but I don't give a poo poo nor know anything about how CNN operates. Why shouldn't I just post "That's not how DEFCON works" without actually engaging with what is clearly their point?

quote:

Like, this guy here, unwilling to actually upfront say that he believes Christianity is inherently gay-hatin', only insinuating such.

This person isn't correcting a mistake, and isn't relevant to the discussion.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 20:32

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Effectronica posted:

Okay. I see that you're using "tribe" here, and also being a snotty lil prick. Put together, these suggest, that is to say, they create the implication, that you believe yourself to be rational, as opposed to the loony libz. This in turn actually degrades the conversation, because only obsessive psychopaths will continue for long when a smarmy dickhead is demanding that they (metaphorically) eat poo poo with every post and most people will back down at the first sign of this happening.

I thought implying that your posts are typically full of garbage would be the thing that would tip you off that I think you're an idiot.

quote:

So, while it is possible for someone to genuinely correct inaccuracies out of a neutral perspective, it's far more common to see someone doing it who is giving off signs they wish to argue from a safe distance, generally, it seems, because they have a particular kind of brain damage, like yourself. As a consequence, even though you may just possibly be sincere about your desire to only tread the upward path and merely ensure accuracy, you lack the communication skills to make that happen and so you will either have to deal with it or run crying to the mods demanding that nobody be allowed to make these kinds of accusations.

I realize that people can and do post in bad faith, but what I'm saying is that correcting someone's mistake fundamentally shouldn't be considered to be in bad faith. Attempting to correct someone who is right, correcting mistakes that were never made, accusing people of believing things they don't, deliberately misinterpreting people are all examples of bad things that people shouldn't do, but if you say "I'll tell you who's got a loving war-boner, it's CNN. Their site has been at defcon 5 since the attacks." and I say "DEFCON 5 is in fact the lowest readiness level", you can't make judgements on my stance of CNN's war-boner, nor should I be required to express a stance on CNN's war-boner to comment on how DEFCON works.

I'm fine with people making whatever accusations they want, what I'm saying is if you make a basic factual error, and then complain about being corrected, you look like someone who doesn't care about actual reality, so that's a bad thing to complain about.

I also don't understand your standard here, you've switched from talking about being/appearing honest to what looks like pragmatism, but it's weird, because you seem to be talking about me personally, when I'm talking about whether technicalities as a concept make any sense in this context. Like feel free to argue that I'm personally ineffective at correcting people's mistakes, that doesn't have any bearing on whether complaining about technicalities is in general reasonable.

quote:

Since you can't understand a very basic generalization, or else are deliberately avoiding the topic, you're either too stupid or malevolent to do the former.

I straight up can't parse this. Like this isn't me going "haha you're dumb", I literally don't understand what this is trying to say.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 21:36

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Effectronica posted:

Your post basically misses the entire point and skims along for a good fifty feet. The point, here, is that the complaint is about how most of the "just making corrections" posts connote dishonest argumentation. Indeed, people actually admit to this connotation being an accurate one! So if you want to avoid those associations, you need to formulate your correction in such a way as to avoid this connotation. People do this all the time.

I'm missing your point because your point is not related to mine, so feel free to stop quoting me. Free standing factual corrections should not be considered bad faith actions, because that is ridiculous. Pragmatically, maybe that belief is in the minority and if I personally want people to like me I should take that into account, but that's not an argument for considering factual corrections bad faith actions.

quote:

A good place to start would be to avoid calling people crazy, as a general rule, when you're making those corrections. I know this will be a burden for such supremely rational and saintly people who face these unjust accusations, but you'll just have to lump it.

I'm totally fine with people thinking calling people crazy is evidence of some sort about that person's beliefs

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 22:02

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:18

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Effectronica posted:

Okay. So. Dead Reckoning admitted, right in this thread, to following the exact process that people are accused of engaging in. So, in fact, people do make *in nasally voice* "bad faith actions" under the guise of corrections. That is an indisputable fact. It's also true that not everyone faces those accusations. I am arguing that this is because people primarily use connotations in the post itself to conclude whether the post is in bad faith.

Your argument is that we should give people free reign to argue in bad faith. You use words like "pragmatic" to disguise this fundamentally idiotic position, probably because you are an idiot.

Someone can claim to be making a factual correction in bad faith, but that doesn't make it true. Correcting a false statement simply can't be dishonest (I suppose excepting a person who was attempting to be dishonest, but accidently made a true correction). You can argue in bad faith and also offer factual corrections, but the factual corrections themselves can only be right or wrong. That's the whole point of disconnecting them from broader points. (edit: I suppose if someone made a number of factual errors, but some of those factual errors was actually unfavorable to their argument, you could be acting in bad faith by selecting specific factual errors to correct, and not others, but if you're making a large enough set of factual errors, that people can cherry pick which ones to attack, I'm not really concerned about that. Such a scenario would also imply that not posting is a bad faith action which seems weird.)

There's a variety of actions I'm opposed to that aren't factual corrections, so no, I'm not trying offer people free reign to argue in bad faith. I'm saying people should have free reign to correct mistaken facts. I have no clue why people would be opposed to factual corrections, except that they anticipate making a bunch of factual errors, and don't want to be inconvenienced by reality.

twodot fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Nov 18, 2015

# ¿ Nov 18, 2015 22:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Man suicides after court ordered Christian drug program tried to ungay him