I don't care for debates, simply because they typically turn into personal arguments. One person will present facts/studies, the other person will present other facts/studies, and then it turns into "My facts/studies are better than your facts/studies" and it just goes downhill from there. I like discussions on writing because most of the time it means that people (even if they're just lurking) will see the various ways things can be done instead of believing there is only The Way. But even those can get heated when people decide they have to turn their opinions into facts (This is how I do it/This is what I like/This is what I've read - and if you disagree that makes me wrong so I have to prove you wrong instead!). Basically I just like to see a balanced discussion versus 'propaganda'.
I rarely see this. If it were facts vs facts, there are ways to compare the validity of said facts. If there weren't, you'd have more than one reality instead of more than one interpretation. I do appreciate that the bulk of this forum is about writing. It is what we, including me, are here for.
...and this is the prime example of why there are arguments. Some people believe there aren't two sides to a discussion, there is only the right side(theirs) and the misinformed/wrong side(anyone who disagrees with them).
I rarely argue. It's simply not in my nature. I may disagree, but will rarely push a point. Unlike Ginger, my mind doesn't analyse that way, and unless I can come up with the 'goods' so to speak, any argument I try to form will not hold water to those reading it. So why bother? I've tried to develop the ability to form cogent arguments, trust me, it ain't happening. I have trouble believing the validity many of studies and statistics when it comes to it, especially when it comes to the unnamed masses. Despite this, I do enjoy watching others debate, back and forth, but never when it ends up resulting in personal attacks. Me too. When it comes down to it, my innate ability to empathise, and look at an argument from all sides, is what leads to personal growth. Not my somewhat lacking ability to argue a point. Eesh... I just made myself sound like a voyeur. Didn't I?
@erebh Quit it, you! I have visions of you standing, with a wicked grin on your face, and a long handled wooden spoon in your hand. But, I love it. Humour is a wonderful tool. It can prevent a thread about arguing descending into an argument.
@GingerCoffee This reminds me so much of one of Terry Pratchett's little observational gems : Truth is out there somewhere; lies are in your head. While I tend to back off many of the arguments that come up on the forum (I'm here for writing and not much else) I do think they help to polish up our powers of persuasion. You might not change someone's mind very often, but you can always try. If you're courteous and attempt to start your 'argument' from THEIR perspective and work towards your own, you just might succeed.
You mean like when a question arises about why do we argue and then it turns into argument about why we argue? Your visions are not far off
We argue because we like to win. It's a ego trip to prove others wrong and to prove our intelligence or debating skills. I tend not to argue (in public), life's too short. And as they say,'We're all right even when we're wrong'.
I've tried to read Pratchett, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Maybe I should try again. That is exactly the case. And we all have those distorted versions of the truth in our heads, I'm no exception. I just try to have as few or as minimally distorted truths in my head as I can. @obsidian_cicatrix: Critical thinking and supporting an argument are not just about scientific studies. For example, I don't need a scientific study to know that if two politicians are saying the opposite, there may be another source I can go to for the 'true' answer. And it's not automatically somewhere in the middle. It might be, it might be there are pros and cons that all people don't place equal value on, or it may be one politician is outright lying and the other isn't. And I don't need a scientific study to find out which political ideology and funding is behind any report issued by an 'institute'. All I need to know is that a lot of these institutes are funded by people with agendas. I don't need scientific research to learn that marketers are now using fake news reports to sell products because apparently we believe the news (though I can't imagine why) more than we believe commercials. And some of those viral videos are also carefully orchestrated product promotions. There was one recently outed that purported to show three guys taking about 20 steps across a lake before sinking. It looked plausible, if you go fast enough and use surface tension like a bug does. But not only did it turn out to be completely fake, it was a disguised ad for the shoes they were wearing. When I say, "support a claim" I don't just mean with scientific research. Sometimes I say scientific evidence based beliefs. When I use the phrase, evidence based beliefs, a lot of people who don't use that philosophy of determining reality will say they are going by the evidence too. It's like when religious people dismiss science as just another religion. Living in a scientific evidence based reality is not about defining those words in a fungible way. It's not about a religion or set of beliefs, it's about approaching the world using a certain process: question one's own conclusions, don't take all claims at face value, understand how the brain draws false conclusions so you can avoid that, use the principles of science and critical thinking which you know by their history of success. This is where I lack a natural ability. It's not that I don't try. But there's another point here worth consideration. False beliefs are not always due to a knowledge deficit. I'm reluctant to give an example here, last time I did it launched a contentious sidetrack debate on my example. Suffice it to say we all build our beliefs from a lifetime of experiences and when some of those beliefs are false, it's not always because the the true information was unavailable. It can be because we chose one conclusion over another for a dozen different reasons. But all those different versions of reality cannot exist except in our heads. And like the Pratchett quote, there is one reality out there.
i'll only argue if i see/hear something being presented that i know from experience/study/observation/common sense is untrue to some extent and could lead those who don't know any better astray... i don't enjoy doing it and enjoy even less occasionally being accused of being too nit-picky, but that seems to be one of my intended raisons d'etre... hence, my 'official' title!
@GingerCoffee Personally, I find Terry Pratchett immensely insightful, although he dresses his opinions in whimsy. One doesn't necessarily have to adopt a serious attitude to get a message across. His style is not for everyone, however. I do realise that, Ginger, I was merely making a quick example. My cynicism has a far reach, and I would rather trust in the things I know, than surmise. I don't have the mental faculties that you apparently do. I'm not running myself down, that's just fact. I have great difficulties with concentration and holding on to information. In fact by the time I got to your second paragraph, I was lost. (Not because I couldn't understand what you were saying to me, but the detail was lost upon recall.) But that said, I'm not ignorant either. I don't buy 'free range' eggs from supermarkets. I am naturally suspicious of any claim I can't sound out for myself. Therefore, I source my eggs from my friend's pet chickens. He has a mind like yours, and does the donkey work for me. I know this man, inside and out, and I will quicker trust his judgement, than believe what it says on a supermarket egg carton, because I know what kind of person he is, and his agenda. He uses ethically sourced grain to feed them, (and he goes to great lengths to ensure this) and provides his chickens with everything they need to live a healthy life. Aggrandisement is not what he's about. He's proved it to me over the course of our 20 year friendship, time and time again. His agenda is simple. Do what you, personally, can. Debating an issue is not a skill of mine, but I do still make a stand, this is just one example. When it comes to political debate, you can lead a horse to water...
Until one realizes just how few 'facts' there are compared to theories or studies or even possibilities. And there are partial facts used as well. Apples are red. Fact? Apples are green. Fact? Some apples are red, some apples are green. Fact. So this is where facts can contradict - because people aren't looking at the whole picture, only those parts of it that support their claim. When we bring studies into the picture - oh, lordy, then we got real problems!
Regardless of the conclusions one might falsely make, "I only know red apples, ergo all apples are red", the truth in your example would be, red and green apples exist. All you can do is draw conclusions from the information you do have. But a critical thinker, upon seeing or hearing about green apples would not say, "must be something else because all apples are red", the critical thinker would instead grow their world view to incorporate the new information. It's not what we believe about the Universe that is the truth, it's the Universe that is the truth. And if there is a real Universe out there, then we can make it our goal to believe as close to the truth as possible. Once again, we can discover the best methods of getting closest to that truth by seeing which methods of observing and drawing conclusions are successful. Sacrificing kids to the gods wasn't a very successful way of avoiding droughts. Scientific study of drought resistant food crops, on the other hand, successful.
What is truth? Is it simply that which is verifiable? That which is logically coherent? Is there objective truth?
The field of 'science' is rife with periods of unabashed ignorance. This is not a religion-only human fault. In the 1940's, shoe stores all across the country were using 'shoe-fitting fluoroscopes' to x-ray customers feet in order to fit them for shoes. There were 10,000 of them in widespread use in the US. Of course the machines were deadly dangerous, but even in the 1950's, 'scientific studies' were claiming they were completely safe. By the 1970s, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were almost universally banned, but damage had already been done; foot cancer began to rear its ugly head in many older patients, and there was little question of what was to blame. This just one example of many where the majority felt they knew the truth and were wrong. In this case, dead wrong.
As I'm defining it, and as I think Pratchett was in the quote Jan shared, truth is the actual Universe, the real thing that is really out there. Now if you want to imagine we are all in the Matrix, or that there is only our minds and no real world, meh, I don't find that kind of Universe contemplating to be all that 'successful'. Our brains do not take incoming data/sensations and record them like a camera. Instead everything is interpreted and stored through filters. You can easily demonstrate this with some optical illusions that even when you know it is an illusion, you cannot see the thing any other way. Sorry it's so big, I haven't learned the new board code for sizing images. A and B are the exact same shade. You can prove it by covering up everything but the two squares. But no matter what the truth is, you cannot make your brain see the same shade in those 2 squares when looking at the whole picture. The truth is the two squares are the same shade. You can conclude they are or are not. Only one conclusion would be true. You have to know how your brain interprets visual stimuli to understand it. You have to compensate for the brain's automatic filtering of incoming visual stimuli to think critically in this situation. It's not just visual stimuli we do this with. We do it with knowledge. We fit a new fact into our existing framework. We can also compensate for the errors this causes by being aware of where the mistakes occur, and again, using success as a guide, know when we should be compensating. For example, personal experience is a powerful belief creator that is very often wrong. We error in seeing causal relationships which are really only coincidental. Being aware of that helps you not make that common error.
Straw, no one made this claim. It's about the process, JJ, not every single conclusion. Did you read the red and green apples example?
But again, I'm talking not about "truth", whatever that is, but how "facts" can be mis-used or misunderstood in discussions, and how sticking to the facts can still lead to arguments (versus discussions). To take it a step further, one could also say "All apples are green." is a fact - because they are, indeed, green until some ripen to red - or green - or yellow. Or speckled. Or multi-colored. I've just seen too many so-called discussions deteriorate into arguments because of this type of thing. People know what they know, they've got the "proof", and if someone else's facts are different, well, that someone must be mistaken.
I'm reminded of the 'envelope paradox' that proves that sometimes, even though something may be a correct course of action, it is not always the right one. I assume some of you may have heard of this before, and some of you may have not. The situation is this: You have two indistinguishable envelopes that each contain money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. You pick at random, but before you open the envelope, you are offered the chance to take the other envelope instead. Now, the question is: Do you swap for the other envelope, or do you stay with the one you picked? Well, unfortunately for the majority of us, this is actually a math-based type thing. It goes something along the lines of this: 1. I denote by A the amount in my selected envelope. 2. The probability that A is the smaller amount is 1/2, and that it is the larger amount is also 1/2. 3. The other envelope may contain either 2A or A/2. 4. If A is the smaller amount, then the other envelope contains 2A. 5. If A is the larger amount, then the other envelope contains A/2. 6. Thus the other envelope contains 2A with probability 1/2 and A/2 with probability 1/2. 7. So the expected value of the money in the other envelope is 8. This is greater than A, so I gain on average by swapping. 9. After the switch, I can denote that content by B and reason in exactly the same manner as above. 10. I will conclude that the most rational thing to do is to swap back again. 11. To be rational, I will thus end up swapping envelopes indefinitely. So, logically the correct action is to spend the rest of your life swapping the envelopes. We would never do that, we would accept whatever envelope we picked, head on down to the pub and toast the fact that we just got free money. There are those who think that they lack opinions, because they have 'science' or 'evidence' on their side, but when it comes down to it, all they have is usually the most popular current opinion, which is not always correct.
See, the world's greatest paradox is that @GingerCoffee and @JJ_Maxx aren't on the same side, because they would be an unstoppable force if they were. Actually, maybe that's a good thing, ahaha.
As I mentioned earlier, I would say that Ginger and I probably agree on 99% of things, as we are both scientific-minded. Yes, we may have different conclusions on social issues or issues of faith, but the 'hot-button' issues really constitute a small minority. They only seem large because those fringe issues are the ones we discuss the most.
