| ▲ | feoren 5 days ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The author is silently switching between two definitions of "argument" depending on which point he's trying to make. An argument with a toddler is about whether they should brush their teeth, put their toys away, or stop sending American citizens to El Salvadorian prison camps. You win the argument if they do those things. And you can win some of those arguments, by ethos, pathos, logos, deal-making, bribery, or force. That's not the same kind of argument where people are trying to change their minds. Those are the ones you can't win or lose, because "changing your mind" is not black and white. I've had plenty of arguments where my understanding changed by a few inches, and their understanding changed by a few inches, but we were still far apart in our opinions. That's fine! That's a successful argument. The author's world is one where there are two takes on every topic and one person is arguing Black and the other is arguing White and you should flip to the other binary sometimes when you're wrong. No. If your opinions are regularly flipping from one binary to the other, then your opinions suck. The world is much more complicated than that. Opinions are much more contextual than that. I'm never going to switch from "evolution is real" to "all life was custom-built by God" after a conversation with one person -- no matter how persuasive they are -- because my belief that evolution is real is not that fragile. It's intertwined with all my other understandings about how the world works, and I can't just flip it independently of other things. My goal when I have an argument is to improve my understanding of the world just a little bit, even if it's merely "why do people believe this shit?" If the person I'm arguing with isn't trying to do the same, they're the only one that's losing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | dingnuts 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
>stop sending American citizens the person who was sent, and who should not have been sent, was a Salvadoran citizen and a legal resident alien of the US. Please refrain from hyperbole in these times. If/when US citizens start getting sent to prison camps, we need to be able to tell each other that it is happening, and if you cry wolf now, nobody will believe you when it does actually happen. It is bad enough that it happened to a legal alien. It's more important than ever that we be precise. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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