Step 1 is realizing you’re discussing with someone who’s hostile by default to you. That’s what’s missed by all the types whose style of debating relies upon pointing out logical fallacies in arguments—the fact that debate spaces have not been sterilized against problems of a social nature, and no amount of sound object-level reasoning will fix that. There’s always going to be a crowd hanging around a comment section that’s there to bring you down and for no other purpose.
From here, you can go in two different directions. Either play on the “battle of wits” mode, return the hostility, do your damnedest to humiliate the other in a way that makes you look good rather than petty, or try to bring the hostile arguer… well, not to your side, but to a neutral basis of discussion. Getting people to just give you a chance, let alone playing that chance well, is amazingly difficult. At least on LW there’s a consensus that we should be aiming for the second mode of discussion, but if that’s not a constant occurrence here, imagine how bad other places have it.
The attitude you listed is just one of the many tricks people employ to make your life hard, to narrow down the winning condition in an attempt to disqualify as many people as possible from passing the test. The only answer that would kick the asker down a step or two would be “as a matter of fact yes, I am an economist.”
Either play on the “battle of wits” mode, return the hostility, do your damnedest to humiliate the other in a way that >makes you look good rather than petty, or try to bring the hostile arguer… well, not to your side, but to a neutral basis of >discussion.
I will have to practice this more, I think the third alternative is just to leave the discussion because the other person is just locked.
The typical response to this is flat incredulity. This is particularly effective if your screen-name is not your actual name, and doubly so if you are the least bit reluctant to reveal your identity.
Step 1 is realizing you’re discussing with someone who’s hostile by default to you. That’s what’s missed by all the types whose style of debating relies upon pointing out logical fallacies in arguments—the fact that debate spaces have not been sterilized against problems of a social nature, and no amount of sound object-level reasoning will fix that. There’s always going to be a crowd hanging around a comment section that’s there to bring you down and for no other purpose.
From here, you can go in two different directions. Either play on the “battle of wits” mode, return the hostility, do your damnedest to humiliate the other in a way that makes you look good rather than petty, or try to bring the hostile arguer… well, not to your side, but to a neutral basis of discussion. Getting people to just give you a chance, let alone playing that chance well, is amazingly difficult. At least on LW there’s a consensus that we should be aiming for the second mode of discussion, but if that’s not a constant occurrence here, imagine how bad other places have it.
The attitude you listed is just one of the many tricks people employ to make your life hard, to narrow down the winning condition in an attempt to disqualify as many people as possible from passing the test. The only answer that would kick the asker down a step or two would be “as a matter of fact yes, I am an economist.”
My favourite instance of this merely because of its antecedent improbability.
[EDITED to fxi tpyo]
Ha!
That would certainly be very effective.
I will have to practice this more, I think the third alternative is just to leave the discussion because the other person is just locked.
The typical response to this is flat incredulity. This is particularly effective if your screen-name is not your actual name, and doubly so if you are the least bit reluctant to reveal your identity.