This will just be an off the cuff post (mostly rambling). I’m filing these under a new category “Rants” to separate them from the rest of my content.
The otherwise intelligent
Sometimes, I find myself in a conversation with someone online and wonder if they’ll be a good conversation partner. I usually avoid conflict with people online, as it’s very easy to ignore someone I don’t like (one of the reasons I hate writing to people and prefer face to face interactions), but some people stand out as more intelligent than others, making me wonder if it’s perhaps worth talking to them.
Most people don’t like thinking. For them, thinking is a strenuous activity that drains their energy instead of invigorating them, and they find uncertainty confusing instead of inspiring and exciting. I don’t find these people interesting enough to talk to, let alone disagree with, as I’ve never had any fruitful discussions with them—it always feels like we’re always on the wrong page.
But sometimes, these people are highly intelligent. With a little bit of guidance, perhaps they could achieve far more if only they learned how to properly reason.
The same page
Most people argue to win; without guidance, the more intelligent people are the greater the risk of them falling into this trap. I suppose this is because their natural intelligence helps them win most arguments, even through their childhood, causing them to become addicted to the thrill of winning without any conscious effort to carefully reason—in other words, they take winning arguments for granted and may even believe it to be the goal, resulting in a “lazier” attitude towards reasoning.
But the point of an argument is not to win—it’s to learn. What’s the point of winning an argument if you turn out to be wrong? You both lose. If both parties become convinced that a particular position is correct, even if it is blatantly wrong; then how could either be said to have won?
Arguments are about knowledge. Both parties should be trying to learn—trying to investigate the truth. The opponent isn’t the other party; the opponent is ignorance. Against a common enemy, why do most arguments involve so much friendly fire?
I met someone like this about a year ago. This person was otherwise intelligent—precocious, even—yet he never really learned how to reason. In the time I’ve known him, it became obvious he was very used to winning arguments, which explains most of his uncharacteristically-dogmatic and rigid views. The problem with winning all the time, is that one never really learns how to lose—it is only in losing time to time do we learn from our mistakes. After all, is there anyone who’s never had incorrect beliefs? How can we ever change them if we refuse to be proven wrong?
The fear of misinformation
I’ve never really seriously debated with anyone online (again, I prefer face to face conversations), but this time I thought it was a good topic since it was about something I wasn’t familiar with myself—it seemed like a good opportunity to learn. Plus, my background from other fields was relevant enough for me to be relatively confident in my position, so I gave it a shot.
To clarify, by seriously debate I mean far too much (for a regular conversation) text and data in response to any questionable claims. This is not on purpose, it’s just that I can’t seem to condense everything no matter how hard I try. My messages are riddled with edits as I try to shave off word after word trying to make them as short as possible, but I still end up with character counts in the five-digit ranges, which really frustrates me because I know nobody wants to read a wall of text in response to one sentence they said.
But it was necessary, as I could not simply refute his claim with no reasoning or data. In an argument, I’m usually the last person to be convinced—especially of my own position. I constantly worry about feeding others the wrong information—I worry about winning an argument only to find out that I was wrong afterwards, which makes me extremely paranoid about my arguments and claims. I fear ignorance and misinformation far more when it comes from me, because it means I was directly responsible for further polluting the world with it.
I worry if the people I convince go on to spread the erroneous conclusions, and if more people than there would have otherwise start becoming misinformed because of me. I have on several occasions contacted people after a couple weeks just to admit my mistake and tell them to disregard my conclusion, although they usually react with a confused expression.. This is why winning an argument is not the main priority for me: ignorance is the enemy, not the interlocutor.
Though I am human and will irrationally defend certain points, I still try my best to remain as curious as possible and avoid taking a personal stance on anything at all if possible, in order to reduce that irrational insistence on the veracity of a potentially-incorrect belief.
An attempt
Anyway, in this case, I was mostly frustrated because as I started debating more formally with him, he started to reply slower and slower each time. Part of me wonders if he’s just not used to losing an argument and is trying to process it, part of me wonders if my argument is so ridiculous and flawed he can’t even begin to describe how wrong it is without coming off as impolite.
As days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, I started wondering why I was doing this in the first place. I really wanted both of us to learn something from this, and thought he would be better able to catch any errors in my reasoning if he was better at reasoning himself, but I started becoming frustrated by how he just took longer and longer to reply each time.
And the replies also barely addressed any of the data or arguments, as if he isn’t sincerely trying to learn the facts about the situation more than trying to win. The research was sloppy and careless and the writing was emotional—as if feeling pressured while typing, while still conveying absolute certainty in word choice.
It would also be relatively brief (only about a tenth of what I write each time) with little to no data or reasoning supporting his claim, often trying to play with “we don’t know this therefore I’m right“, once again as if trying to win; not to learn.
The research was careless because it had no regard for confounding variables. Selection bias was not considered, sample sizes were in the low single digits, and anecdotal or personal assumptions (e.g. it’s more likely that x) with no data to back them up were often used in place of important statistics. An example would be:
A: “There are a lot of white swans in the lake today.”
B: “No, it’s more likely there are more black swans because I saw mostly black swans when I took a quick look earlier.”
A: “I’ve counted all the swans in the lake and the data significantly more white swans in total.”
One month later…
B: “I’m not sure I buy that*, it doesn’t make sense for there to be more white swans because everyone I know likes black swans.”
*verbatim, and a very annoying way of speaking
I was tempted on many occasions to angrily point out the many non-sequiturs and yell “that’s not how you do research” at him, but that would only cause him to become less resistant to change, not more, as people tend to shut down when under emotional pressure.
As seen from the example, it’s incredibly frustrating to talk to someone who makes claims like these only to disappear for weeks in-between. Even more frustrating is the fact he’s far too intelligent for this level of reasoning.
What now?
In my frustration, I felt tempted to directly address the elephant in the room, as I didn’t want to keep this one-message-per-month (and increasing) interval any longer.
“If you’re not actually curious about the answer and only want to win, I’ll just let you win.”
Of course, the problem of saying it this way is it sounds extremely insincere and condescending, which is almost guaranteed to trigger a strong negative reaction and defeat the entire purpose of trying to deescalate. I want to find a better way to give in, but it feels like such a waste because I spent a lot of time gathering a large amount of data and the data strongly supports my position.
This is complicated in two ways:
Firstly, I can’t easily drop it due to my pride (my pride says I have to let him know that I know I’m right), in addition to the disproportionate amount of effort I’ve put into uncovering the facts.
Secondly, if I give in and agree with something I strongly suspect is incorrect and doesn’t line up with any reasoning or evidence found so far, am I not, then, complicit in contributing to misinformation?
Is this not in itself also a form of condescension—to look down on someone as being too unreasonable to adjust their beliefs according to the evidence?
Should I continue this tedious conversation, believing that he is more than capable enough and will listen to reason eventually?
Maybe I misjudged him from the start, maybe he’s just like everyone else and won’t change.
I know his pride won’t let him drop it even if he’s backed into a corner, but this has got to be the slowest debate I’ve ever done, only exacerbated by how little he’s providing with each reply only addressing a small fraction of the problems.
No… I’ve decided, this isn’t worth my time. The next time he replies, I’m just going to agree even if he says the Earth is flat and put an end to this exhausting debate. Seriously frustrating. I would rather argue with a bigoted old man who’s hard of hearing than go through this again.
Forget about my pride, forget about the misinformation and disingenuity, this really isn’t worth my time.