Avoidance
It's very easy to avoid an argument. All you have to do is say, "You're right, I'm wrong."
Fortunately, you don't actually have to be sincere when you say this. Unfortunately, some people seem to think it means, "I wish to keep arguing about this. Please continue to try and prove to me that I'm a fucking retard in the hopes that I will cut my wrists after I realize I can never live up to the awesome standards you've set for humanity."
To rewind, I made a slight error of assumption.
Someone said that it was possible to do the same thing twice at once in a certain program. I filled it in as meaning twice at once for a period of time that would actually be useful, since why on earth would he be wasting my time talking about it if it's a stupid parlor trick that won't help anyone out?
I quickly realized, as three other people were hounding me about how wrong I was, that they didn't mean that. I was fast to just say that they were right and I'm retarded.
A day and a half later I get a message (screenshots and all) where one of my buddies took probably an hour out of his day to prove to me (after I already said I was wrong and they were right) that you can, in fact, do something useless in the program for a short duration.
Now I don't know what to do, because I'm so busy sitting here crying and cutting myself because I'll never be good enough to prove to someone something that they already took my word for and didn't care about to start with.
On a serious note, it seems like there are a lot of people out there that do this regularly. I'm not trying to be a douche because I really have no beef with these friends that progresses past annoyance, but there's a time to grow up.
It seems that the people who do this sort of thing...these attempts to display their intellectual machismo in the face of all apathy...are of a certain breed.
Everyone I meet who does that has grown up in a relatively normal household, breezed through school (minus the sports, which they didn't do well at), and were never really popular outside of their little cliques. Now that high school is over, they seek out other remotely intelligent people and argue with them about shit they don't care about. Like it's some kind of achievement to beat someone at a game he doesn't want to play.
They'll never argue with you about your own area of expertise, because if and when they failed, they'd fail on that whole basis of their youth's development - their intelligence - and it would render all those years of failing to be able to fit in or excel at anything other than math as being totally moot.
Although to give credit where it's due, one guy I know will argue with you about your own expertise. He'll find something that you've been doing for years, maybe even competitively and successfully, and argue with you about it. But only online, and not without having an online encyclopedia open so when you trip up on one mundane detail that no one cares about, he can pretend that that was the focal point of his entire argument and that you're a total fuckstick.
I just don't get it. People don't seem to outgrow it. Specifically, I remember the teacher who taught me to play chess trying to castle queenside to beat me in a match once. Is it that important? Are these people's egos really so fragile that they have to cheat against 7th graders to feel good about themselves? That they have to decide, "Okay, tonight I'm going to read up on the invasions of Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American war, and when I say a factoid that he doesn't know, I'll pretend like he doesn't know crap about the entire subject and make fun of him. I'm awesome. Despite a life of inferior argumentation skills, I live satisfied because of my talent at being extremely annoying without invitation."
Really there are only a handful of types of debater:
1) The Sniper: These failures of logic are the type I've been droning on about. They only have one shot, so they'll save it for that slight mistake you make. The army of facts and logic surrounding that mistake don't matter: they'll hit their mark and then run away to hide again.
2) The Salesman: This guy's facts and reasoning are perfectly in order and run like a charm...if you take his word for it. A bullshitter through and through, if you don't know your material, he'll make up rubbish for hours for the attention, the victory, or just to see how long he can.
3) The DJ: He's got so much spin that by the time you're done dancing in circles you just want to go home and pop some asprin to get the pounding of the DJ's voice out of your head. Facts don't matter when he remixes everything you say to sound the way he wants it to.
4) The Logician: Logicians might not know what they're talking about, they might not even have any facts, but they'll try to rope you in with enough if-thens that you'll think you're reading a freshman's Visual Basic program. If this, then that, and if that, then this, and if this, then obviously there can be only one answer. Once they arrive at their one answer, their systems shut down and all other possible solutions return only input error lines.
5) The Claymore: This guy will sit silent and wait for you to finish saying whatever you might possibly have to say. He'll nod and mmhmm you for a half an hour before offering even the slightest opinion. Once you're done speaking, he'll explode total-recall shrapnel all over you in an attempt to decimate everything you just said point by point, leaving you wishing you'd just walked the other way.
6) The Adolf: More charisma than a can of sunshine and more solutions than an Asian in a calculus class. The Adolf will dominate the argument by forcing all eyes on him. The second you try to interject, he'll simply speed up the production of his inspiring speeches and starve you from the spotlight so long that when you do speak, no one will remember what your points were to start with because the liquid awesome seeping from his very pores is overpowering their senses.
There are a number of ways to approach each of these methods. You can play aggressive, you can play ignorant, you can play the victim, you can play the pro. But all in all, most people fall into one of these categories (I'm usually a claymore, myself).
Note that not listed is someone who patiently listens to the opposing side, considers it, and offers a well thought out factual rebuttal until a consensus or compromise can be made. This person does not truly exist. The closest thing you can get to this would be:
7) The Nihilist: Nothing you say really matters, because he can flow in and out of any form of argumentation that suits the minute in order to achieve victory on all fronts. Three days later riding in your car, you'll think of a brilliant point and wish that you would've thought of it arguing with him before. Ultimately, though, it wouldn't have mattered, because he'd have schooled you so bad anyway that your entire argument might as well not have existed in the first place.
In my opinion, I've listed these different types in the order of increasing effectiveness on a general level. It would seem, though, that how intelligent a person feels he is versus how intelligent he knows he isn't determines his placement along the ladder of argumentation ability.
So, to all you smart motherfuckers out there, learn to argue effectively and stop sniping. Seriously. No one likes you more for it. You might be the top of the intellectual totem pole, but no one's going to notice because they're too busy not respecting you.
Fortunately, you don't actually have to be sincere when you say this. Unfortunately, some people seem to think it means, "I wish to keep arguing about this. Please continue to try and prove to me that I'm a fucking retard in the hopes that I will cut my wrists after I realize I can never live up to the awesome standards you've set for humanity."
To rewind, I made a slight error of assumption.
Someone said that it was possible to do the same thing twice at once in a certain program. I filled it in as meaning twice at once for a period of time that would actually be useful, since why on earth would he be wasting my time talking about it if it's a stupid parlor trick that won't help anyone out?
I quickly realized, as three other people were hounding me about how wrong I was, that they didn't mean that. I was fast to just say that they were right and I'm retarded.
A day and a half later I get a message (screenshots and all) where one of my buddies took probably an hour out of his day to prove to me (after I already said I was wrong and they were right) that you can, in fact, do something useless in the program for a short duration.
Now I don't know what to do, because I'm so busy sitting here crying and cutting myself because I'll never be good enough to prove to someone something that they already took my word for and didn't care about to start with.
On a serious note, it seems like there are a lot of people out there that do this regularly. I'm not trying to be a douche because I really have no beef with these friends that progresses past annoyance, but there's a time to grow up.
It seems that the people who do this sort of thing...these attempts to display their intellectual machismo in the face of all apathy...are of a certain breed.
Everyone I meet who does that has grown up in a relatively normal household, breezed through school (minus the sports, which they didn't do well at), and were never really popular outside of their little cliques. Now that high school is over, they seek out other remotely intelligent people and argue with them about shit they don't care about. Like it's some kind of achievement to beat someone at a game he doesn't want to play.
They'll never argue with you about your own area of expertise, because if and when they failed, they'd fail on that whole basis of their youth's development - their intelligence - and it would render all those years of failing to be able to fit in or excel at anything other than math as being totally moot.
Although to give credit where it's due, one guy I know will argue with you about your own expertise. He'll find something that you've been doing for years, maybe even competitively and successfully, and argue with you about it. But only online, and not without having an online encyclopedia open so when you trip up on one mundane detail that no one cares about, he can pretend that that was the focal point of his entire argument and that you're a total fuckstick.
I just don't get it. People don't seem to outgrow it. Specifically, I remember the teacher who taught me to play chess trying to castle queenside to beat me in a match once. Is it that important? Are these people's egos really so fragile that they have to cheat against 7th graders to feel good about themselves? That they have to decide, "Okay, tonight I'm going to read up on the invasions of Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American war, and when I say a factoid that he doesn't know, I'll pretend like he doesn't know crap about the entire subject and make fun of him. I'm awesome. Despite a life of inferior argumentation skills, I live satisfied because of my talent at being extremely annoying without invitation."
Really there are only a handful of types of debater:
1) The Sniper: These failures of logic are the type I've been droning on about. They only have one shot, so they'll save it for that slight mistake you make. The army of facts and logic surrounding that mistake don't matter: they'll hit their mark and then run away to hide again.
2) The Salesman: This guy's facts and reasoning are perfectly in order and run like a charm...if you take his word for it. A bullshitter through and through, if you don't know your material, he'll make up rubbish for hours for the attention, the victory, or just to see how long he can.
3) The DJ: He's got so much spin that by the time you're done dancing in circles you just want to go home and pop some asprin to get the pounding of the DJ's voice out of your head. Facts don't matter when he remixes everything you say to sound the way he wants it to.
4) The Logician: Logicians might not know what they're talking about, they might not even have any facts, but they'll try to rope you in with enough if-thens that you'll think you're reading a freshman's Visual Basic program. If this, then that, and if that, then this, and if this, then obviously there can be only one answer. Once they arrive at their one answer, their systems shut down and all other possible solutions return only input error lines.
5) The Claymore: This guy will sit silent and wait for you to finish saying whatever you might possibly have to say. He'll nod and mmhmm you for a half an hour before offering even the slightest opinion. Once you're done speaking, he'll explode total-recall shrapnel all over you in an attempt to decimate everything you just said point by point, leaving you wishing you'd just walked the other way.
6) The Adolf: More charisma than a can of sunshine and more solutions than an Asian in a calculus class. The Adolf will dominate the argument by forcing all eyes on him. The second you try to interject, he'll simply speed up the production of his inspiring speeches and starve you from the spotlight so long that when you do speak, no one will remember what your points were to start with because the liquid awesome seeping from his very pores is overpowering their senses.
There are a number of ways to approach each of these methods. You can play aggressive, you can play ignorant, you can play the victim, you can play the pro. But all in all, most people fall into one of these categories (I'm usually a claymore, myself).
Note that not listed is someone who patiently listens to the opposing side, considers it, and offers a well thought out factual rebuttal until a consensus or compromise can be made. This person does not truly exist. The closest thing you can get to this would be:
7) The Nihilist: Nothing you say really matters, because he can flow in and out of any form of argumentation that suits the minute in order to achieve victory on all fronts. Three days later riding in your car, you'll think of a brilliant point and wish that you would've thought of it arguing with him before. Ultimately, though, it wouldn't have mattered, because he'd have schooled you so bad anyway that your entire argument might as well not have existed in the first place.
In my opinion, I've listed these different types in the order of increasing effectiveness on a general level. It would seem, though, that how intelligent a person feels he is versus how intelligent he knows he isn't determines his placement along the ladder of argumentation ability.
So, to all you smart motherfuckers out there, learn to argue effectively and stop sniping. Seriously. No one likes you more for it. You might be the top of the intellectual totem pole, but no one's going to notice because they're too busy not respecting you.
posted by red at 03:52
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