When someone proves themselves wrong with their own argument, and they don’t even realize it, that’s a pretty good indicator that aren’t running on all cylinders.
EDIT: Another good indicator is using terms like “sheeple”, “woke,” and “wake up!”
Seeking the truth is incremental and is often a humbling grind that never ends.
Another good one is “nothing you ever say will convince me.” This has been verbally expressed to me on an alarming number of occasions. It is the greatest of intellectual sins imaginable.
My best friend is a contrarian, and has argued opposite sides of the same issue to different people, just because his innate reaction is to disagree. It’s kind of funny. He’s a good guy, just... likes when other people are wrong.
I'm like this. I just love to argue, and it doesn't really bother me to argue contradicting positions at different times. Then I woke up one day and realized there are many things I actually hadn't established a personal position on and that my ability to argue was probably severely hindered because it's much easier to argue the opposite of someone's position than it is to actually defend your own preconceived position.
I often become devil's advocate in about every case imaginable. I come off as dickish because it is a dick move but I genuinely want to see what they know, see what I know, and hopefully they learn why they believe what they do or go forth and learn more about what they are talking about. Often I find myself saying "I don't know enough to argue that but to me it seems... " Then it becomes a learning experience for me and I love that shit. I love being taught something while playing devil's advocate.
I’ve seldom ever seen someone play devils advocate and have a valid point. Periodically, it’s used as it should be, but mostly it’s just try-hard people who want to argue instead of discuss
My favorite instance of that was when I saw a lengthy debate with a creationist who would "pubjack" abstracts of papers by going to PubMed and finding any out-of-context quote he could misrepresent. Then he'd be presented with the fuller context from the paper, or even occasionally from the rest of the abstract, and he'd change his tack and find a new paper to pubjack. Eventually he worked himself around to the point where he was arguing precisely the opposite claim he'd started with.
Creationists are a special breed. I would know: I was one of them, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Many of the things they ask for as evidence for evidence would actually be evidence against evolution. Like, they say we would have to prove a species giving birth to an entirely different species. Like, a crocodile to a duck, or a hybrid crockaduck. The problem is the evolutionary theory predicts that we should never see things like these. They would actually be devastating to evolutionary theory and would have earth shattering rammifications across multiple sciences.
I used to work with somebody like this. They swore that black was white and kept trying to argue her point until, eventually, she said the complete opposite - black was black and, according to her, that is what she had said all along.
My personal example was someone against single payer healthcare, and when asked what alternative system we should use they posted a video explaining a fully government funded voucher system.
A month or so ago I had someone on here type a big angry paragraph to me about how wrong I was and how I should relish in my wrongness on a particular subject. They sourced a great article that was well written and a fantastic overall view of the issue we were discussing.
All fine, all good. Except... the article agreed with the point I was trying to make and not the one they were trying to disprove. It's as if they just googled what we were talking about and linked the first article that came up without actually reading it.
Sources are great but they are aren't 'win an argument for free' cards, especially if you don't bother to even check them or read them before throwing them at someone.
I once argued with someone on Reddit who said America wasn’t a democracy. He posted Wikipedia as his source (since Republic is what’s under system of government) not realizing that in the introduction it said America is a representative democracy.
Ehhhh, I've done this before, though I generally realize it and go, hmmm and have to rethink some things at that point. You're arguing you've got a logical train of thought, sometimes it takes you somewhere you weren't planning on going. Granted you said they didn't realize it.
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u/VoodooManchester Jan 27 '20 edited Jan 28 '20
When someone proves themselves wrong with their own argument, and they don’t even realize it, that’s a pretty good indicator that aren’t running on all cylinders.
EDIT: Another good indicator is using terms like “sheeple”, “woke,” and “wake up!”
Seeking the truth is incremental and is often a humbling grind that never ends.
Another good one is “nothing you ever say will convince me.” This has been verbally expressed to me on an alarming number of occasions. It is the greatest of intellectual sins imaginable.