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Approaching Internet Debates:

Step 1 - Read the topic
Step 2 - Weave Nazism into said topic
Step 3 - Accuse opposition of being Nazis
Step 4 - Grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and step back to survey your hard work.

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE LIKED TEA AND BISCUITS??! HITLER! YOUR POINT IS OBVIOUSLY WRONG BECAUSE SOMEONE PEOPLE GENERALLY DISLIKE LIKED IT!!

You know who else argued on the internet? Hitler.

People only argue on the internet because they hate freedom.

Lol...
Accusing the person of Butthurt always helps as well.

My answer to the OP is don't, the internet is not the forum for intense discussion, the internet is the bridge 'neath which the trolls lurk.

Debate on a public forum between strangers is for idiots and people killing time when they should be working (I love it when I am in multiple categories ). Anyone trying to be more deep than that, on the internet, need to seriously get a life.

It's true that Hitler was a big fan of cream cakes. He wasn't into biscuits so much.

Kilkrazy wrote:He wasn't into biscuits so much.

He was more into things that were half-baked.

Mostly I just do it for fun, bevuase I know better thanto think I can change someone's mind.

How do I approach debate on the internet? I generally don't.




Unless I'm in it for the lulz, y'know, victim blaming and suchlike.

BLAME THE VICTIM!

NOTE: There is a greater point after everything else. The following is a wall of text and then a suggestion as to why it all happened in the first place at the end.

Well if I actually believe something then I try to defend it as much as I can. After all if you truly believe in your opinion, then shouldn't you debate that as much as possible? I will concede in the face of outright facts that prove my opinion is wrong, but I get really irritated by this "wall of opposition" that you face on the internet sometimes. There are people who will not even consider someone else's opinion. They will not even bend a little.

Case in point, you can see how I am in the Steampunk movie list. I pulled a bunch of suggestions off of the net and made sure they were found in many lists. Yet the OP was a brick wall against a bunch of my suggestions and then did not even glance at the rest. I do not know what whats going through his mind when he saw Mary Poppins, but it is generally widely accepted across the internet that MP inspired Steampunk. Now that may not be enough to consider it a steampunk movie but it is relevant to the discussion and deserves a place on a list even if that list is just a "Movies that Inspired the Steampunk Genre" list.

When I look at a thread like that, I say to myself is it worth the arguement? Does it hurt the OP to make a list of movies that inspire something? We are bored to tears in life or we wouldn't make a silly list like that in the first place. Its not like the list is going to be submitted to the President of IMDB for a article that details each movie on the list, and we want to make it right before we send it off.

Now look there. I am doing it again. I am still trying to defend my choices even in a seperate thread. I am not editing this because this is how I approach debates on the internet. I believe in my suggestions and I am willing to let them fall off of the main list into a subcategory list. But to outright disagree and ignore a suggestion just because it doesn't fit your specific criteria is kind of absurd.

I don't have anything better to do at the moment so I am here arguing my point. I believe I am right and when someone casually disregards my suggestions for a silly list, it just gets me all worked up. I could honestly care less if my suggestions were incorporated into a list. The debate itself has evolved into something else for me. "Someone on the internet is wrong!"

And since I truly believe in my side of the debate, why should I stop when someone casually dismisses my suggestions? If I did, then I really didn't believe in m side of the debate now did I?



Now is there a deeper meaning to all this? Probably. More than likely I was one of those people who was always told they were wrong in life. Nobody took them serious and they were causally dismissed in conversations with their peers and parents. So once I get on the net, I have a little more control over my words. I can write something on a post and somewhere someone has to read it, even if it is a Mod who decides to SNIP it out of existence. I have more power on this keyboard then I have in Real Life. The Power of the Keyboard allows me to say something and it there for the world to see. Its the whole reason why people do BLOGs. Most people that do them have no outlet in real life to focus their opinions on, so they write in on the net and it is published for everyone to see.

Heck I even do this in real life sometimes. I will get into arguments with people and I have found the best way to get them to see you side of the story is to write it down on paper and mail it to them. Then they have to sit there in their living room reading my letter and be unable to intercede their comments and brickwalls. They have to read it before they can respond. Pretty devious huh?

Of course that doesn't happen on the net. A Family member will shut up long enough to read your letter, but some guy on the net sitting in his mom's basement half a world away can easily do a fast scrawl through your wall of text.

There are a lot of people who are wrong on the internet. It is my destiny to correct them, even when they have overwhelming proof to back them up.

[/zelot]

Generally if I am incorrect and am shown to be so, I will try and gracefully conceed.

But a lot of the time debates get too specific and focusses on one microsopic point which is just no fun.

Frazzled wrote:Debate on a public forum between strangers is for idiots and people killing time when they should be working (I love it when I am in multiple categories ). Anyone trying to be more deep than that, on the internet, need to seriously get a life.

Read my signature.

Whoops, seems its changed!

Edit: Back now!

In my case, I have the facts I have learnt through study, combined with common sense and logic. I try not to let personal views taint my arguments in that regard. How well I succeed, well...*shrugs*

There have been a few times on this forum I've had to concede defeat to superior facts and logic, and I like to think that because I CAN acknowledge I can be wrong, I do so when it is appropriate. Other times, I've come to a mutual disagreement, not because either party is wrong, but because neither can be irrefutably right. For example, me and MGS were having an interesting discussion about Islam the other day, and what it boiled down to was we disagreed on whether Sharia courts could be inherently sexist. MGS said yes, because he views Islam itself as inherently sexist. Not being academically equipped or knowledgeable enough in that field to try and contest such a claim, and recognising that, we left it there, after a stimulating discussion, which I rather enjoyed.

Those debates are the ones I enjoy participating in, and I try not to engage in debate unless I am relatively sure of my facts.


Alternatively, later on in the same thread, I was quizzing Dogma about his method of debating the opposite side of view to MGS, and was left thoroughly unsatisfied by his answers. I'm not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, and whilst I concede the possibility that there might be some Marilyn Vos Savant IQ level way of interpreting his words that I was incapable of grasping, I did not believe that to be the case. Instead, I thought he was simply not making sense, repeating the same viewpoint I had already countered over and over(despite me having made a point I believed refuted it), and the conversation appeared to be going nowhere. As such, whilst I believed him to not be making good logical sense, there appeared to be no way of persuading him of that, considering he seemed to be ignoring my refutation/refusing to acknowledge it as such. Therefore I opted to drop out of further discussion, knowing that a) He sometimes trolls for fun, and b) continuing would only be a waste of my time.

In this case, I had no stake in the debate either way, and had if anything implied agreement with his viewpoint earlier on. I simply disagreed with his method on an intellectual level. However, having been in Off Topic for a good few years now, I have never seen the chap in question admit defeat, unlike yourself sebster. Therefore I was old enough and wise enough to to simply choose not to continue, rather than succumb to frustration and another four pages of back and forth.

To conclude, I can admit being wrong when presented with the fait accompli so to speak. But for my own knowledge to be overruled, you'd better have some convincing evidence or logic up your sleeve, because I will take apart things I believe to have been formulated from a non-logical/factual basis, and throw them back at you.

sebster wrote:So I'm wondering have any of you ever admitted you were wrong in a debate on the internet? Do you even stop to consider that you might be wrong, or consider that the other person might have a good point, or do you just reflexively disagree with whatever they've said? And for that matter, do you enter threads looking to discuss things and maybe hoping to learn something, or do you look at it as a challenge, a way to take on people with differing views, where conceding a point is not a mark of reasonableness, but one of weakness?

And is this the same way you approach conversation in real life?

I think that you've got a pretty good point there, sir. (Not being too interested in adding another wall of text, that gets TL;DR'ed, i'll try and be brief.)

I think the most frequent reason to why people choose not to give up on an argument, be it really lost, is has to due with one's ego.
- Most often, i experience that many people feel stepped on, if they're getting strongly out-debated. So as to defend themselves, they tend to stick to what they know.

Likewise, the question also goes back to you, Seb'; If you KNOW, that you're right, then why does it come so important for you to argue? (Why not just shrug those shoulders, as you wrote?)

While words not being the same as, say, physical violence, which is more tangible when we're estiating whether or not it is violating the opposite party. Verbally it's sometimes not too clear, whether or not that you're "violating" the other person. If the person is starting to feel that you're trying to verbally dominate him/her, he/she is likely to defend him- or herself.

I hardly think that a person, that has been pushed into defensive position (be it verbally or not) is likely to recieve anything, that you feel you have to offer. If he/she doesn't feel confortable, when listening/reading, it's just impossible to get anything through.

Ketara wrote:
In this case, I had no stake in the debate either way, and had if anything implied agreement with his viewpoint earlier on. I simply disagreed with his method on an intellectual level. However, having been in Off Topic for a good few years now, I have never seen the chap in question admit defeat, unlike yourself sebster. Therefore I was old enough and wise enough to to simply choose not to continue, rather than succumb to frustration and another four pages of back and forth.

Interesting, because sometime last Thursday you proved me wrong (not the thread you're talking about), and I admitted as much.

Though your stance is understandable, as I've only admitted to being wrong a handful of times (well, maybe a bit more than that, 12).

dogma wrote:

Ketara wrote:
In this case, I had no stake in the debate either way, and had if anything implied agreement with his viewpoint earlier on. I simply disagreed with his method on an intellectual level. However, having been in Off Topic for a good few years now, I have never seen the chap in question admit defeat, unlike yourself sebster. Therefore I was old enough and wise enough to to simply choose not to continue, rather than succumb to frustration and another four pages of back and forth.

Interesting, because sometime last Thursday you proved me wrong (not the thread you're talking about), and I admitted as much.

Though your stance is understandable, as I've only admitted to being wrong a handful of times (well, maybe a bit more than that, 12).

I did? I'm afraid that one appears to have slipped my memory old boy, apologies if I'm wronging you here.

No worries, the thread you were talking about was not a high point. I still maintain my correctness, but my tone could have been better.

That said, I was drunk, so there you have it.

I like to be proved wrong- not at the time, not at all, but later on when I realise I know something. I was pretty ignorant about (as an example) american firearms laws when I joined Dakka, and making a bit of a gakker of myself in some threads increased my understanding, which was good. Doesn't mean I'm Mr Graceful about it at the time though I do try.

I just want to make a point, statistics are fun because you can lie with them and when you look at them to make correlations it can be a more substantial lie.

Correlation 'research' by definition does not show causality, only a correlation. Now if I said that suicide rates in young children has risen since the introduction of the "Zero Tolerance' policy in the school systems I can't fairly say that the "Zero Tolerance" policy is responsible now can I?

That's why I tend to ignore statistical correlations, I accept statistics as statistics but nothing to prove that x happens because of y.

Arguments on the internet aren't as fun as real life arguments because of the fact that the internet can't convey emotions so I try to make them as fun as possible in other ways.

I try counter-argument if it matters, and the only time I'll bother is if I feel like it will give someone impressionable what I consider the wrong impression. Rarely I will try and change one person's opinion, but I typically worry about other, later readers.

rubiksnoob wrote:Unless I'm in it for the lulz, y'know, victim blaming and suchlike.

I think that at some level we all do it for the lulz.

Monster Rain wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:Unless I'm in it for the lulz, y'know, victim blaming and suchlike.

I think that at some level we all do it for the lulz.

Oh yeah!

Debate? Internet?

I don't think those words go together.

For more details:

http://www.internetargument.com/

I tend To debate in order to learn something. I mean if somebody points you out as wrong, you learn something. and you get smarter. Knowledge is power, and damn do I love power! I love facts, as they are the building blocks of all truth. I post my Point of view on a topic, And let people who know more shoot holes in my theory. The I combine all of that and come up with a New theory, and so forth. Seb and Dogma, and yes even Frazz have learned me good over the years. I wish more people would debate to learn rather than post defending a dead point in anger.

WITH RAGE AND THUNDER TO SPLIT THE HEAVENS BROW AND FELL ONE THOUSAND ANGELS IN THE NAME OF KHORNE!

Brother Heinrich wrote:

Melissia wrote:You think the Tyranid codex was the only one that has such a map?

Image courtesy of Lexicanum. Map copyrighted to Games Workshop.

The only place where thereis not heavy Ork activity is around the Eye of Terror. Orks completely dominate the galaxy at the moment. Tyranids are a newcomer and don't have even REMOTELY the presence that Orks have. Whether or not they will be able to supplant Orks is subjective. Whether or not Orks dominate more of the galaxy than they do is not.

well after looking up the exact wording used by Lexicanum in the article concerning the galactic disposition of various races, as well as the census data in the upper right hand corner, I concede the point to you Melissia. The Orks are by all counts the most numerous race in the galaxy and thus the, "Top Dog" of the galaxy.

Proof that I have admitted defeat on an internet forum.

The GIFT theorem on Internet debate (NSFW text)

dogma wrote:My guess is that they don't know. Its really hard to discern. I'm a logician, I've even been published a couple of time, and while I know the difference I find that acting upon it is pretty damn hard; particularly given doing so is often against the interests of making friends (which we almost all enjoy).

True, it's likely they don't know. I'm not sure this has to extend requiring people to use strict logic, though... if only because I'm really bad at it.

I think there's a happy middle ground between insistance on absolute adherence to logic and just expecting people to accept the facts as they are.

Really? I've found the opposite to be true. I'm not a great example, because I'm aware of exactly how irrelevant I am, but many of my friends will defend their union (as an example) to the death (literally, I've had fights over this noise) regardless of how useless it might be.

Then again, we're entering into subjective territory here. What is sensible? No one likes farm subsidies, but it would be stupid for farmers to advocate the removal of free money.

To run with the example of a farmer, someone in the city might have some really crazy ideas about farming like all farm animals should be left to wander free with no fences to keep them in, but out on the farm that sort of nonsense isn't going to fly, because those folk would suffer the direct negative consequences of believing something so silly.

You mentioned unions, which do affect our lives, but believing something stupid about them (that every one of them operates purely to improve worker's rights for instance) doesn't really have much of a direct impact on the individual, outside of paying some union fees unnecessarily. In this way it's much the same thing as believing something very stupid about government, having that stupid belief doesn't actually negatively impact the believer, because it's really not part of his everyday experience.

In a different direction: what incentive do those public speakers (most of whom are very bright) have to change a status quo that allows them to marionette the masses?

Oh, absolutely. The politician will only play to the crowd, and the crowd is stupid. My question is why is the crowd so stupid, when it's proven itself so capable in so many other ways. How can a society with the intellect to build skyscrapers and jetplanes still have a significant portion of its population believing in the Laffer Curve.

My suggestion is that if the aircraft designer was intellectually very lazy and accepted some stupid idea about aerodynamics, his planes would fall out of the sky and he'd get fired, or possibly jailed. But he can believe in the Laffer Curve all day long and nothing bad will happen to him. So he suddenly becomes content to believe things that are nice to believe, instead of believing things that are actually true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kilkrazy wrote:It would be an interesting piece of research to do. I expect a lot of people dismiss conflicting information on ideological grounds. We saw in the gun thread that people dismissed statistics from government agencies because those agencies were well-known to be left-wing leaning.

And the only evidence that they were left leaning was that they reported things that the gun advocates didn't want to hear. It's the big problem with shouting 'bias', there's rarely any effort to actually establish the bias is actually there, most often they just shout 'bias', dismiss it and continue believing whatever made them comfortable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:Debate on a public forum between strangers is for idiots and people killing time when they should be working (I love it when I am in multiple categories ). Anyone trying to be more deep than that, on the internet, need to seriously get a life.

But that's the thing. It doesn't matter. I understand politicians lying and twisting the truth, because they have something to gain. But when you're just some clown talking to other clowns over something none of us will ever be likely to influence, why be disingenuous?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Billinator wrote:Likewise, the question also goes back to you, Seb'; If you KNOW, that you're right, then why does it come so important for you to argue? (Why not just shrug those shoulders, as you wrote?)

That's a really good question. I guess, more than an interest in any subject, I really like the idea of people being honest. I guess somewhere deep down I figure that regardless of the issue, if people would be more honest in their discussion then maybe we'd start getting somewhere. A classic example is gun control, where both sides maintain some really fundamentally ridiculous things, and when you can get people to stop the silliness you find most people are fairly happy with a compromised middle ground that's more or less what the position is now, only administered better.

So when people basically refuse to be sensible, I really don't like letting it go.

While words not being the same as, say, physical violence, which is more tangible when we're estiating whether or not it is violating the opposite party. Verbally it's sometimes not too clear, whether or not that you're "violating" the other person. If the person is starting to feel that you're trying to verbally dominate him/her, he/she is likely to defend him- or herself.

True, and a fair point. Lots of time folk look to bully other posters, and it's something that should be avoided. But there will be times when a person feels bullied simply because he's taken an ill-informed position, and he expects people to take it seriously when it really can't be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

halonachos wrote:I just want to make a point, statistics are fun because you can lie with them and when you look at them to make correlations it can be a more substantial lie.

Absolutely, you need to take a close look at any statistic to see what it's made of, and what really explains what's happening.

Correlation 'research' by definition does not show causality, only a correlation. Now if I said that suicide rates in young children has risen since the introduction of the "Zero Tolerance' policy in the school systems I can't fairly say that the "Zero Tolerance" policy is responsible now can I?

That's why I tend to ignore statistical correlations, I accept statistics as statistics but nothing to prove that x happens because of y.

But this wouldn't be taking a close look at the statistic, this would be you saying 'correlation isn't causation' and then ignoring it. To properly determine that the correlation is caused by something else, you have to identify what that is - for instance, gun are more common in rural areas, and so is suicide. However, the increase in suicide for gun owning homes accounts for this, and any other factor describing the risk factor.

It's real and it's impossible to reasonably dismiss thing. But that's okay, it's just one point in a really complex debate, it's by no means a knockout blow or even a particularly important one. Neither side is right on every single point, and the sooner we all recognise that the sooner we can start having a reasonable discussion on the issue.

Arguments on the internet aren't as fun as real life arguments because of the fact that the internet can't convey emotions so I try to make them as fun as possible in other ways.

True, but there's way more crazy people on the internet.

sebster wrote:True, but there's way more crazy people on the internet.

And hopefully people seeing me as crazy will make anything I say so irrelevent that no one will comment on it!

Mwahahahahahahaha!

er...

I sadded myself.