TBH the #1 rule should be: set a limit of time for arguing with individuals or groups of individuals who are dogmatically sure in something for which they don’t even provide any argument for that could conceivably been this convincing to them. E.g. “why you are so sure exactly 1 God exist”, “well, there’s a book, which i agree doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it says it was written by God...” what ever, clearly you aren’t updating your beliefs to ’50% sure god exists’ when presented with comparable quality argument that god doesn’t exist, and by induction, no amount of argument can work, therefore there’s no use arguing.
Unproductive arguments usually are genuinely result of at least one side being stupid, or insane, or doesn’t care. Typically the count is 2, because why the hell is the other person arguing with the stupid, or insane? edit: there can be reason in public arguments though.
edit: also, this is why steel-man ing the other side arguments don’t work in practice. Usually, if it could have worked, there wouldn’t have been an argument in the first place. In theory, 2 intelligent people come to intelligent disagreement, and one side can steel-man other side’s argument and then disprove it, and the other person will be enlightened. In practice, virtually all of the time, at least one side is being stupid, and often that includes you, and nothing good is going to happen out of your motivated re-interpretation of other side’s argument. edit: actually, scratch that. If you can steel-man other side’s argument that they didn’t steel-man already, that would typically be result of other side’s lower intelligence or ignorance to begin with. Proving lower and upper bounds in math, that’s the steel man that works, but in verbal stuff, not so much.
TBH the #1 rule should be: set a limit of time for arguing with individuals or groups of individuals who are dogmatically sure in something for which they don’t even provide any argument for that could conceivably been this convincing to them. E.g. “why you are so sure exactly 1 God exist”, “well, there’s a book, which i agree doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it says it was written by God...” what ever, clearly you aren’t updating your beliefs to ’50% sure god exists’ when presented with comparable quality argument that god doesn’t exist, and by induction, no amount of argument can work, therefore there’s no use arguing.
Unproductive arguments usually are genuinely result of at least one side being stupid, or insane, or doesn’t care. Typically the count is 2, because why the hell is the other person arguing with the stupid, or insane? edit: there can be reason in public arguments though.
edit: also, this is why steel-man ing the other side arguments don’t work in practice. Usually, if it could have worked, there wouldn’t have been an argument in the first place. In theory, 2 intelligent people come to intelligent disagreement, and one side can steel-man other side’s argument and then disprove it, and the other person will be enlightened. In practice, virtually all of the time, at least one side is being stupid, and often that includes you, and nothing good is going to happen out of your motivated re-interpretation of other side’s argument. edit: actually, scratch that. If you can steel-man other side’s argument that they didn’t steel-man already, that would typically be result of other side’s lower intelligence or ignorance to begin with. Proving lower and upper bounds in math, that’s the steel man that works, but in verbal stuff, not so much.