Addressing the most stupid of opposition’s arguments is not an enlightened way of discussion, but it’s still way better than manufacturing and spreading widely false statistics.
If the other side played equally dirty, we would see articles like: “Did you know that 95% of violent crimes are committed by Social Justice Warriors?” or “Woman is most likely to get raped at the feminist meeting (therefore, ladies, you should avoid those meetings, and preferably try to ban them at your campus)”.
[EDIT: After some thought, removed a realistic example of a specific form of attack against a specific person, because that kind of thing should not appear in LW discussions. Just leaving a hint: Imagine how a successful support for a false statistics could be used to design an ironic revenge at the very person who supported it.]
I hope this sufficiently illustrates that the belief that the other side already is fighting as dirty as they can, and you cannot give them ideas by fighting dirty yourself, is completely false.
Addressing the most stupid of opposition’s arguments is not an enlightened way of discussion, but it’s still way better than manufacturing and spreading widely false statistics.
You seem to be confused. Both of the things you mentioned are examples of “playing dirty”.
If the other side played equally dirty, we would see articles like: “Did you know that 95% of violent crimes are committed by Social Justice Warriors?” or “Woman is most likely to get raped at the feminist meeting (therefore, ladies, you should avoid those meetings, and preferably try to ban them at your campus)”.
But this is a very stupid way to play dirty because it is transparent and can backfire. Making a public example of the other side’s inarticulate idiots is extremely unlikely to backfire.
Just leaving a hint: Imagine how a successful support for a false statistics could be used to design an ironic revenge at the very person who supported it.]
Just a hint: If you are using consequentialist arguments against playing dirty, then you are open to playing dirty if you can be shown it works. I submit to you that you have a failure of imagination.
I hope this sufficiently illustrates that the belief that the other side already is fighting as dirty as they can, and you cannot give them ideas by fighting dirty yourself, is completely false.
Strategic mimicry is not one of my arguments. You seem to be arguing with someone else. Regardless, see the “consequentialist” point above.
Someone links a URL but it is broken in an obvious way. If you truly interested in arguing for the sake of argument, you could fix the URL and go to their link. But you could also take the opportunity to complain that they are just wasting your time and aren’t really serious.
Sometimes, there is a finite amount of time or space for your opponents to reply to you in. You can pick arguments whose articulation is economic, but whose rebuttal is not. This puts a huge volumetric burden on them such that they will be unlikely to be able to reply to all your points. Later you can point out that they “ignored many of your best arguments”. This is an old debater’s trick.
You’re going to have a live debate online for a public audience. 45 minutes beforehand, you receive an e-mail from your opponent indicating that they are having difficulty connecting to Skype and suggest the debate be moved to Omegle. You can play nice and get the debate to happen, or you can pretend that you didn’t see the e-mail in time and then gloat that your opponent didn’t show up because of “technical difficulties” har har har.
Abuse the last word. If you’re in the final stretch of a debate, bring up new issues that your opponent cannot address because they are out of time. This technique is actually heavily penalized in high school debate competitions, but people get away with it regularly because adults are more biased than teenagers.
Addressing the most stupid of opposition’s arguments is not an enlightened way of discussion, but it’s still way better than manufacturing and spreading widely false statistics.
If the other side played equally dirty, we would see articles like: “Did you know that 95% of violent crimes are committed by Social Justice Warriors?” or “Woman is most likely to get raped at the feminist meeting (therefore, ladies, you should avoid those meetings, and preferably try to ban them at your campus)”.
[EDIT: After some thought, removed a realistic example of a specific form of attack against a specific person, because that kind of thing should not appear in LW discussions. Just leaving a hint: Imagine how a successful support for a false statistics could be used to design an ironic revenge at the very person who supported it.]
I hope this sufficiently illustrates that the belief that the other side already is fighting as dirty as they can, and you cannot give them ideas by fighting dirty yourself, is completely false.
You seem to be confused. Both of the things you mentioned are examples of “playing dirty”.
But this is a very stupid way to play dirty because it is transparent and can backfire. Making a public example of the other side’s inarticulate idiots is extremely unlikely to backfire.
Just a hint: If you are using consequentialist arguments against playing dirty, then you are open to playing dirty if you can be shown it works. I submit to you that you have a failure of imagination.
Strategic mimicry is not one of my arguments. You seem to be arguing with someone else. Regardless, see the “consequentialist” point above.
Simple examples of playing dirty:
Someone links a URL but it is broken in an obvious way. If you truly interested in arguing for the sake of argument, you could fix the URL and go to their link. But you could also take the opportunity to complain that they are just wasting your time and aren’t really serious.
Sometimes, there is a finite amount of time or space for your opponents to reply to you in. You can pick arguments whose articulation is economic, but whose rebuttal is not. This puts a huge volumetric burden on them such that they will be unlikely to be able to reply to all your points. Later you can point out that they “ignored many of your best arguments”. This is an old debater’s trick.
You’re going to have a live debate online for a public audience. 45 minutes beforehand, you receive an e-mail from your opponent indicating that they are having difficulty connecting to Skype and suggest the debate be moved to Omegle. You can play nice and get the debate to happen, or you can pretend that you didn’t see the e-mail in time and then gloat that your opponent didn’t show up because of “technical difficulties” har har har.
Abuse the last word. If you’re in the final stretch of a debate, bring up new issues that your opponent cannot address because they are out of time. This technique is actually heavily penalized in high school debate competitions, but people get away with it regularly because adults are more biased than teenagers.