The problem is that you often don’t know until you actually start arguing with them that they are irrational or just confused and misled.
George H Smith has a pretty good essay about arguing with people to convert them to rationality, ” Atheism and the Virtue of Reasonableness”. For example, he advocates the “Presumption of Rationality”—you should always presume your adversary is rational until he demostrates otherwise. I don’t know if the essay is on-line or not, I read it as the second chapter of “Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies.”
The problem is that you often don’t know until you actually start arguing with them that they are irrational or just confused and misled.
George H Smith has a pretty good essay about arguing with people to convert them to rationality, ” Atheism and the Virtue of Reasonableness”. For example, he advocates the “Presumption of Rationality”—you should always presume your adversary is rational until he demostrates otherwise. I don’t know if the essay is on-line or not, I read it as the second chapter of “Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies.”