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How to Disagree

paulgraham.com

21–30 of 238 posts

Re: How to Disagree

#21

I thought this was a pretty good essay. Timely as well. There was considerable disagreement over PG's last essay. You could see the hierarchy of responses on both sides, including straw man arguments. If comments could be tagged with hierarchy levels, it might raise the general level of argument. "Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional." I totally agree with this, particularly…

Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments.

I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...

Re: How to Disagree

#22
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote a great book on tricks people use to "win" arguments. You could call it the Bible of sophistry: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controve...

"Conversational terrorism" outlines more techniques used by conversational bullies: http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

Re: How to Disagree

#23
Paul Graham does a good job outlining the different forms a disagreement can take and evaluating their effectiveness. I agree with his analysis. I'm going to expand on it.

It seems this piece was written in response to the various criticisms he received because for his "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" essay. In addition to objecting to the form these criticisms took, I think he could also have talked about one of the fundamental causes of most disagreements on the internet - lack of charitable interpretation.

Many interpreted his essay as an attack on big-company programmers - using as evidence the analogies he used, the frankness of his writing style, etc. - and reached the conclusion that he had an elitist attitude about his profession. Now, this may or may not be true (having met him, my opinion is a firm "not true"). But the point is that it doesn't matter. If we interpret charitably, we remain agnostic on what his argument implies about him (thus abstaining from DH1 and DH2 attacks) and instead focus on the actual argument. Some critics managed to do that. But many didn't. And the worst part is that the lack of charitable interpretation obscured their actual disagreements, so now we've wasted time talking about "how to disagree" instead of "what are the correlations/effects of company type on programmer happiness/ability/prospects".

Of course, an author should be careful to frame his arguments in a way that minimizes the danger from misinterpretation. In other words, an author should try to write well.

Re: How to Disagree

#24

I thought this was a pretty good essay. Timely as well. There was considerable disagreement over PG's last essay. You could see the hierarchy of responses on both sides, including straw man arguments. If comments could be tagged with hierarchy levels, it might raise the general level of argument. "Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional." I totally agree with this, particularly…

Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments. I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...

Those kinds of tags are too broad. I was thinking of some javascript to let you highlight subparts of a comment then tag it with a more specific label, like "Straw Man Argument."

People would probably view the comment differently, but readers (and the author) could then see 60% of people thought part of his comment wasn't useful. Ad hominem and straw dog attacks, for example, might be unintentionally inserted in the heat of argument. Right now, comment rating is very blocky.

Re: How to Disagree

#25
post #14

If you "win" an argument (especially in person), are you really winning?

Yes, by definition.

No, by definition (or at least English convention) if you "win" an argument you are not winning, but rather "winning" in the sarcastic "wink, wink" sense.

Re: How to Disagree

#26
post #12

If you "win" an argument (especially in person), are you really winning?

Are you questioning whether it's important to argue, or whether it's important to win?

I can't say for sure what he's referring to, but maybe it's Dale Carnegie's philosophy that you can never "win" an argument because even when you "win" an argument, you haven't usually accomplished your objective of persuading the person. I looked for an excerpt and didn't see one. There's a small summary here, but the book says it best:

http://www.carsonified.com/biz-tips/how-to-win-an-argument

On a personal level, a relative of mine has alienated enough people that I have trouble bringing him out because he continually needs to be "right."

What good have you accomplished if you're "right", alone, and you've convinced no one.

The dynamic is different in a public debate, however, where you might be trying to persuade people other than the person you're debating, but Mr. Carnegie's ideas are still useful to remember.

Re: How to Disagree

#28

If you "win" an argument (especially in person), are you really winning?

I argue to learn more. If you disagree with someone, they usually spend their valuable time teaching you stuff that they would otherwise not. They get the satisfaction of winning the argument and I get the satisfaction of learning something.

Re: How to Disagree

#29

The author's main point seems to be x. As he says: But this is wrong for the following reasons: Who is this guy and what authority does he have to write about these topics? I haven't read the essay, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about i…

You're obviously lying when you say you didn't read the essay.
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