Being good at talking is not equal to being right. Falling victim to manipulation is not equal to being wrong.
No.
Source: Tried to argue with an antivaccer…
If you are right, why didn’t you win?
You can try it right now, actually.
Because you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into. You’re not arguing with facts, you’re arguing with people, and if you argue with stupid people, they’ll drag you down to their level and best you with experience.
Some people don’t respond to reason or facts.
Yeah like all ML ;)
🙄
What does winning look like?
Recognizing you’re wasting valuable oxygen and limited emotional bandwidth on someone who doesn’t want to be reached.
Sadly, this seems to make up the vast majority of people.
I mean… I’m not much or a people person for that reason. They are fucking exhausting.
Same. So I guess that means we’re done here. See ya around. 😁
I believe the common analogy is it’s like playing chess with a pigeon:
You know you’re smarter and do everything right, but they knock all the pieces over, shit on the board, then strut around like they won.
Cause being right doesn’t mean you know how to argue with that person. It also doesn’t mean you remember all the relevant facts that would make winning possible.
Because “right” and “good at winning debates” do not necessarily correlate.
antivaccer
There are people who deny the existence of vacuums now? Smh my head
Yeah, they don’t like anything that sucks more than they do.
So, I assume you’re a guy (or at least have those “parts”) since you’re smacking two heads…
Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
So no is my answer. But we could argue about it.
No. Just because I’m uneducated about something or not intelligent enough to convince someone else about something, it doesn’t mean I’m necessarily factually wrong or morally wrong about something.
The view I agree with is: If I can’t win an argument I should consider changing my mind.
Absolutely not. No one wins an argument and it’s the least likely form of communication to result in any part changing their mind. Even formal debate with rules and timers doesn’t lead to changed minds often.
I personally strive to be factually and logically correct about anything I might discuss (that can be validated by facts or logic). Despite spending large portions of my time reading and researching so that I understand the world I live in better, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to change someone’s mind.
The truth is it’s very hard, bordering on impossible to change someone’s mind who isn’t open to it and most people are not. It’s easier to make a snap judgement and never reconsider it or let someone else form one’s opinion of something than to do the work to understand a topic enough to warrant having an opinion at all.
The extreme polarization of opinion and the politicization of basically everything makes it so that it’s rapidly becoming functionally impossible to interact with people of different ideologies as they now encompass most of one’s life.
Important distinction for this thread:
- A dialectical argument is one where both sides compare views to see if they can together arrive at a higher truth by realizing their mistakes. Good for changing your mind. Requires good faith on both sides.
- A debate is a rhetorical battle, often more for the sake of presenting views to an audience than for the sake of the debaters. Do not change your mind because you’ve been rhetorically outmanoeuvred. This is the common type of argument for politicians and public discourse.
IF one can’t win the argument because the opposing-position is true, correct, framed-rightly, presented-accurately, etc,
THEN one must ( according to integrity! ) change one’s mind.
ELSEIF one can’t win because the opponent WON’T frame things rightly, because they WON’T accept-as-valid-anything-outside-their-axioms, the WON’T allow correct-reasoning to be valid, the WON’T tolerate anything outside of their ideology/prejudice/“religion”/formal-system,
THEN one ought ditch the “discussion” & find somebody with intellectual-integrity to discuss things with, instead.
Go see some stuff on Peter Thiel, or the ones who hold that the world is being overtaken by evil because women have rights…
Go see some of the ones who hold that Trump is pristine, & all others are evil…
Go see some of the fascist stuff…
Go see some of the Communist-Imperialism stuff…
Go see some of the zionist/christofascist/islamist/fundamentalist-atheist/hindutva/“buddhist”-genocider-of-Tamils/etc stuff…
& see that you can’t win an argument against any of these axiom-based ideologues, & that’s a feature, not a bug:
they’re enforcing that their-continuums/souls get locked into what they want, & that will enforce that their-continuum/soul WILL “reap” the consequences of what they want, until their souls grow up.
That’s how enforced-evolution-for-all-souls/continuums works:
ALL energies contained-in-EndlessStreamOfUniverses gets recycled!!
Including my-continuum/soul, including your-continuum/soul, ALL continuums included.
Endlessly.
Purification’s enforced & guaranteed, & natural-ignorance AND intentional-ignorance are allowed, because that’s Free Will, & it’s required, for continuums/souls to have their own way, their own path, their own lessons, their own realizations.
No escape, ever, until a given continuum has earned ALL of its-own meanings, & ALL of its-own purifications, & ALL of its-own Truths…
So, if someone, anyone, holds-to retarded-“meaning”, why should that convince more-awake-one to hold to more-retarded-“meaning”??
Hold to what’s framed-universally, livingly-True, upright, correct, open, BEing-integrity, etc, … & let the world enforce its ignorance & its intentional-ignorance,
& if that means that one only gets prejudice & contempt, well that’s just good honest aversion-therapy, to help one break one’s attachment-to-getting-caught-in-human-existence, isn’t it?
( it is. )
( :
_ /\ _
I can’t win arguments because I’m bad at arguments.
By that logic, I would probably end up changing my beliefs every week or so or end up believing something absurd because someone who believes it is good at sophistry.
But then again, this is also why I try not to argue much. It’s a waste of time and just makes everything worse.
I will, however, hear people out if I think they might have some good points.
No. If I believed that, I’d turn into a racist chud because I have never been able to “win” an argument with racist chuds as I tend to argue with logic and facts.
deleted by creator
I replied on X and blocked it, but he took a screenshot of my post and replied by saying “he blocked it out of fear”.
deleted by creator
No, generally not. It’s possible to lack the knowledge or the intellectual sophistication to disprove an argument that is, in fact, false. So if your life experience or your intuition has caused you to come to believe something, you shouldn’t abandon that belief just because you can’t disprove an argument against it, or you will become vulnerable to various scams and descriptions.
The more reliable approach is to accept the existence of an argument that you can’t disprove as evidence that you might be wrong. Enough evidence should change your mind, even if one piece doesn’t.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” – Jean-Luc Picard
That’s kind of stupid stance to have.
I mean I can get into a argument of ideas with a MAGA idiot about how you shouldn’t support the current Epstien File POTUS and present all kinds of evidence about how the current president is an idiot, that he has ballooned the deficit more than any modern president for no rhyme or reason, that his immigration policy and tariff policy are complete and utter failures that extremely hurt the American economy and families and the MAGA idiot would steadfastly refuse to acknowledge facts, crap all over the table and declare victory.
I certainly didn’t win the argument and I certainly shouldn’t be supporting the “I can identify a Squirrel” in Chief because I couldn’t convince a cult member they’re a moronic cult member.
If I can’t win an argument because the other guy has good points I need to reconsider my opinion.
If I can’t win because me not gud talk, maybe not.
No.
As others have said already, some people argue without reason, and so you can never win an argument against them; it has no bearing on whether or not you’re right, so it should have no effect on your opinion.
There’s also situations where you’re arguing from a perspective you aren’t fully confident in. If you can’t win, it’s not that you should change your mind, it’s that you should investigate the topic more deeply. It could be that that leads you to changing your mind; it could be that it reinforces your views; but not being able to win the argument, in that case, is only a sign that you should go learn more about the subject, I’d say.
Depends what you mean. If, as the commentators appear to be assuming, you mean you lost a yelling match with the worst person imaginable at lunch then no, not a great idea to change your mind. If, as someone who assumes you are a reasonable competent human would, you mean a specific point which has been thoroughly examined for some time, then yes, change your mind.
