From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 22:36:14 MST
Brett writes
> Nathanael wrote:
>
> > Then the media takes hold of the positions and propaganda
> > flourishes. Before you know it you have two people arguing
> > over wither France sold Iraq illegal weapons. To argue about
> > something when neither party in the argument can give accurate
> > information is futile.
>
> It's only futile if you assume the point of all arguments is to
> communicate or to find the truth. In political forums this is almost
> never the case. In political forums the point of argument is seldom
> to persuade the person one is ostensibly arguing with the point is
> to make some sort of impression on the far greater numbers of
> people listening in.
You are definitely on to something here. The key question that will
shed light on this is: "How different would the discussions be if
they were between N*(N-1)/2 pairs instead of between N people?"
Many people's behavior would be substantially different. They
(a) feel quite driven by a cause, or (b) don't realize what an
infinitesimal effect their exhortations really have and what
a limited number of people are going to even hear them. And
so if they were just talking to one other person, they'd have
a lot less energy. They might even wax more contemplative!
But I don't think that what most people write would
change very much. I've continued off-line discussions
with some very rational people, and you couldn't tell
the difference!
> In political forums it is more often numbers that
> count, not the power of an argument.
Another deep point. Who here can claim never to be
affected by numbers? If I had found, when I joined
this list, that everyone else interested in immortalism
and the other Extropian Principles was a flaming leftist,
I would have been affected. But just as my atheism since
age 18, and my political convictions all through college
survived the weight of numbers, I'd probably still just
suppose that as clearly as you all thought on other issues,
you were just disturbingly and wrongly unified on political
matters for some strange reason.
> A powerful argument is only of interest politically when
> it results in larger numbers of people agreeing with what
> you (or your government) want them to agree with.
Yes, and as I said before, that's not going to happen.
Especially here. Now when certain celebrities speak,
e.g. Michael Jackson, or even certain economists, many
listen. But for 99.999 percent of us, no way: we won't
be really be *listened* to.
> > It would be like me trying to argue that two people on this
> > list I don't know, but I heard [about] from this third person,
> > are idiots. The argument is meaningless.
But after you do know something about them, it becomes
less so. For example, if you're into sports (I certainly
am not) or even into chess, you become familiar with some
personalities. So if a certain grandmaster chimes in on
an argument between Fischer and Spassky, then it could be
far from meaningless.
> It's only meaningless if you keep thinking in two dimensions as
> an argument being basically about two adversaries engaged in
> a search for the truth. If you think that the speakers are speaking
> for the benefit of the audience then a lot more things will make
> sense.
All true. But I still say that (as above) you can have
rather heated-sounding arguments between people committed
to the truth. Consider the fiery debate between the
mathematicians Cantor and Kronecker for an extreme example.
> The truth is almost never the point in political discourse, because
> political discourse is concerned with creating an environment that
> will facilitate a particular outcome and this usually takes numbers.
Wrong. (How's that for cooperativeness ;-) The truth really *is*
often the whole point. I was in a long debate with my opposite
number, Jeff Davis, on this list a few months ago. We both totally
agreed on the existence of the truth, and how we both wanted it very
badly. Using my experience in such matters, I readily came to believe
that he was sincere. We had two primary differences: he believed
that one of us could have the Absolute Truth and that the other
was Dead Wrong, while I believed that we simply had different
ideologies based (probably) on deep underlying value differences.
Secondly, he is a leftist, and I'm a libertarian/conservative.
> > The first question of an argument should be "what are we
> > hoping to solve" [if the answer is "nothing" then] what's
> > the point?
I totally agree. I would prefer that while, yes, it's helpful
to get criticism of one's highest level opinions (e.g., "Invading
Iraq is wrong"), you'd think that intelligent people would tire
rather quickly of the same old arguments going on and on.
But they don't tire of it. There are several reasons that I
know of for this. One is that they seriously can't believe
that their political adversaries have logically consistent
arguments. (Sure, if you haven't been arguing politics for
years, you might think that, but seriously...how can experienced
people possibly believe this??) Since it is so hard to believe,
they just keep hammering away, evidently without suspecting that
the deep ideological divisions are based on value differences,
or perhaps even personality differences.
One other reason is the pure entertainment of it. It's sometimes
fun to see if you can eloquently expose a flaw in someone else's
arguments---almost like a chess game.
Third, some current events trouble one at a deep level, and
discussion with others is cathartic. Expressing yourself,
and seeing what others think about these troubling issues,
scratches that itch.
Lee
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