501–510 of 599 posts
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide. On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at argui…
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I made $xxx,xxx.00 last year, that is a fact, I can definitively prove it via deposits to my bank account. It is a fact. Climate change being man-made or not definitely does not fall into “this is a fact”
So it's only a fact if you can verify it, and not if the scientific community can? And you're consistent about this via all scientific findings you haven't verified like the balance in your bank account? You reject as fact any astronomical data or microscopic results you haven't seen with your own eyes? Or any satellite data you haven't analyzed yourself?
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> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality? I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.
There is of course absolute certainty and there is a lot of it, absolute and unquestionable
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> No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective. I disagree, and offer the world of 2026 as anecdotal evidence lol. Most of what you wrote implies that every person participates in arguments honestly, with full faith, and are both cognitively capable of, and actively willing to, receive, evaluate and ultimately accept the argument as a zero-sum "winner". In reality, illogical appeal…
> In reality, illogical appeals to emotion tend to win the day Not to a neutral party. Debates and arguments that can change the course of a project happen in front of a neutral committee (ideally) in that case logic can win. > This also kind of refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people simply don't feel the need to be right; some people move in silence, others just don't care for the friction, or need the accolade…
For what it's worth, I did read your post twice before I replied, just to see if I didn't get it on the first pass. What I took from it, and maybe I'm thick as molasses, was that humans defacto love to argue due to biological imperative, we stratify social value based on the success of arguments, and ultimately promote argument as a contact sport that you can dominate in for personal gain and personal validation. Dominate instead of mediate, which I've found through life experience to come most often from people who are deeply insecure with themselves.
When I came back to the thread, I noticed that the submission title had been updated to Most arguments are about ego, not ideas and saw your replies to my post + siblings, and felt like that new title encapsulated your responses perfectly. You and I simply disagree on the purpose and value of argument.
Persuasive people rarely argue. Persuasive people do not need to be unequivocally right. The most persuasive people do get what they want in the end, but you often don't even realize you've been persuaded.
Argumentative people leverage power if they have it, and data, and sometimes "win", but rarely succeed in persuasion.
And that's just my opinion! Feel free to disagree, I've no interest in an argument LOL
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I’m someone who operates in both modes on the receiving end, so I think I can answer some of this. I’m going to come at it from a slightly different angle, but I think the spirit will get there. Sometimes, I’ve been working on troubleshooting my PC for hours already. I’m tired. I’m angry because I’ve spent all that mental capital, etc., so I come to friends to rant a little bit. And then they start offering solutions…
Why can't it be the other way around, you don't know that I am out of spoons too and rather than talk about why I am out spoons I should not be expected to validate other people's vibes or spoonfeed them... And so forth. As an exhausted person the issue is not being given advice. It is being given wrong, ignorant, or inappropriate advice.
And if the “listener” / fixer is in a state where they can’t do the work of finding out what kind of help and/or fixing is needed, then maybe *they* need to step back and have a break, too.
In my experience, fixers tend to completely miss the cues of “please stop word-vomitting at me, you’re not helping” and continue offering unsolicited suggestions. And then it’s my job, as the person that was talked at, to make them feel better, *further* exhausting my current state.
The solution to both of our problems is to ask and listen and hear. And then move forward. It’s true, we both exist. (Though I would argue that sometimes “bad advice” is just “advice I already tried, or that doesn’t work, but you don’t know that because you didn’t ask”).
And the solution to both is setting ground rules about what each person in the conversation can give and is expected to give.
If a fixer can’t empathize for a bit, and that’s what the other person needs, they should be allowed to step out of the conversation, too.
Context, as always, is basically everything.
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I respectfully submit that your neat categorization of interactions into those three profiles may reflect a gap in your understanding of others. Namely, that your definition of what makes a "good faith" conversation may not be the only one, nor the only correct one. The vibe that people care about - that's the unspoken channel in any conversation. Physical, emotional, thoughts that don't get said. Perhaps to the one…
People are allowed to care about what they care about, I think you're right there. My only point is that, for me, if I'm discussing a subject where I'm exasperated and am complaining in a questioning way, say (to take a random example): > Why are my local supervisors are advocating and incentivizing return to office!?! Having to go into the office is pointless and terrible! Suppose this policy seems insane to me, and…
I personally agree with you. I want that municipal finance nerd to speak up and tell me that as well. I think I get a little jolt of endorphins whenever I learn something new, so for me there's actually almost a physical draw to people who can give that to me. I wonder if it's the same for you.
I think you're describing a position of resignation on your part: you've almost sort of given up, and tried to convince yourself that you're ok obliging people in the surface level conversation that they seem to want. And I suspect, resigned yourself to the fact that most people you meet day-to-day won't be able to give you those little endorphin boosts.
I struggled on this path myself. First: recognizing that you seem to want more from conversations than most other people are willing/able to give. Second: finding that your mind, which naturally draws you to learning new information, is not the mind that everyone has. Third: developing almost a sort of disdain for people who you find do not meet your imagined bar. Fourth: identifying the disdain and feeling bad about it. Fifth: telling yourself that ok, you'll just give up looking for it and also you'll stop being disdainful towards others for not being able to give it.
The sixth part is the first big leap: realizing that it's not that you want more from conversations, you want different. And what is engaging for you is not necessarily engaging for someone else. And that neither of you is righter or wronger in that.
The seventh, hard part that I suspect you may not have gotten to yet. You can't expect that people can give you the kind of connection you're looking for, that they can scratch that itchy brain of yours, without first allowing yourself to truly believe that their mind is just as deep and rich as your own, and accept that it's just rich and deep in different ways. The challenge, then, is to stop asking yourself "what is it that I have that all these other people don't seem to have" and start asking "what am I missing? what are all these other people experiencing that I am not?"
If it helps, you can consider it an intellectual challenge. Try to really empathize, imagine what it's physically like to exist in their body. Force your brain to consider the fact that in this moment, in this conversation, their experience may actually be richer than yours - just in ways that you can't, by default anyway, see.
LLM-generated slop. Please don't post wastes of our time like this
One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide. On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at argui…
I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
This article really resonates with me. During college and graduate school studying philosophy, picking apart someone's argument and pointing out the esoteric and nuanced ways which made it wrong was celebrated. The general attitude in my cohort was: "I want to be wrong, because when I realize I'm wrong, I've become smarter." This was probably the most intellectually fulfilling period of my life. (Note here: some of t…
Went from working in a highly specialized DoD lab to corporate america, and this too was a horrific surprise. Everyone turning work into the promotion hunger games was great for the mental health.
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I "argue" constantly with my coworkers: they are savage in PR reviews identifying mistakes/improvements, and I give it back the same. It's collegial, not hostile or insulting. Yet it's arguing nonetheless. We are exchanging ideas to create better software. Using steelmans and devil's advocate to evaluate new ideas / approaches. Ego-less arguing is easier with engineering work because people are not emotionally invest…
When you say you "give it back the same," are you saying you also are savage in reviewing their PRs, or that you are savage when replying negatively to their feedback? If just the former, I strongly disagree that the two of you are arguing.