Argue Fu: For the Win!
Nov 18th
Victorious warriors win first, then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
– Sun Tzu
Okay, so we’ve defined what an argument is; now we need to realize what our intent is in even participating in this argument. There are a few reasons that people argue. See if you can spot the one that doesn’t belong.
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To showcase your arguing skills.
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To make an opponent look stupid.
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For fun.
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To correct misinformation to those who might believe your opponent.
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To change your opponent’s mind.
If you said the odd man out from this list was anything other than #5, I have some sad reality to drop on you. Unfortunately, arguing is not about changing someone’s mind. And if that’s why you’re arguing, I’m going to let you in on the terrible truth right from the beginning: it’s not going to happen. People are incredibly stubborn about their beliefs. Most people, quite illogically, hold their own sense of value to be equal to the information they believe.
This is, for anyone not emotionally involved in the battle, patently ridiculous.
Seriously, how easy is it in today’s society to be given wrong information? The biggest source of research for most people is Wikipedia, which practically anyone can edit. Granted, they do have a team of knowledgeable people overseeing it, but it is stupendously easy to get some horrible misinformation. And people make mistakes. People have off days. People stumble over words, or mumble, or you don’t hear them correctly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius, you are more than capable of storing, believing, and repeating some false information.
And that’s not even counting the commonly held misconceptions! I have repeated to people the Phil Collins/drowning myth. My wife argued heatedly with me about Ring Around the Rosie being about the Black Plague. I believed that lemmings committed suicide, that people only use 10% of their brain, or that eating turkey makes you sleepy. All without question, and repeated to anyone who asked. Guess what? All wrong.
And not to be the first to toot our own horns, but we both score fairly highly on IQ tests. Which, it turns out, don’t accurately measure intelligence.
Misinformation is rampant, but we all hate to be wrong. Because being wrong, in most of our heads, equates with being stupid. Because a smart person could never believe something that was false, even if they had absolutely no way to double check it.
See what I mean?
So don’t expect to change someone’s mind, even if you have Stephen Hawking and the ghost of Albert Einstein floating behind you. Not Stephen Hawking floating, as that wouldn’t be happening. Neither would Einstein’s ghost, of course, since ghosts aren’t real, but you get my drift.
With unproven or improvable beliefs, people get even more indignant. Because they’re banking on them being right, and in some cases, notably with religion, they’re basing their life choices on them. To tell them the thing that provides structure and meaning for their life is wrong tells them, once more, that they have no value as a person, and that they can’t possibly take care of themselves. Which again, is ridiculous.
So you won’t get a knock out punch right out of the gate, no matter how good your arguments, nor how prepared your information. People will not let go of their ideas easily, and if they will, you really don’t have an argument on your hands. You have a correction.
So argue for the right reasons.
To showcase your arguing ability is a good reason – verbal banter sharpens your mind, and you have to have great listening skills to fend off someone else’s arguments. Most people won’t appreciate your abilities, so having an audience might help. But when you find someone who appreciates a good argument, you will have found bliss.
If you don’t care about hurting the other person, and you realize they have their identity wrapped up in their opinions, by all means, make them look stupid. This is sort of a low blow, like fighting someone while they are blindfolded and tied up, but hey, sometimes it’s necessary. Remember, you’re not convincing them that they’re wrong, but you might be saving someone listening to them from spreading their misinformation.
But if you do it for fun, and to protect your listeners, and don’t care about changing your opponent’s mind, a win is as simple as others coming to your point of view, or your opponent getting frustrated and giving up. Remember, a forfeit is a loss, no matter how they’ll try to spin it afterwards. Being told that there’s no arguing with you, because nothing convinces you, is akin to a boxer saying that there’s no way to beat his opponent, because none of their blows are having an effect.
See why I like the fighter metaphors?
(Note: You can tell I enjoy using Snopes.com to dispell myths. But, like anything else, there’s is a chance that what is on there is false. It’s unlikely – they explain their methodology, but always bear in mind that information can be faulty. Which is why I favour arguing without depending on the facts, and focus more on proving my opponent wrong by what they say, and how they say it.)
Quick Note…
Nov 16th
Hey all,
In the middle of sort of a huge family thing. It has kept my creative juices to a complete nil. I will be back hopefully soon with some insightful, or at least existent, content.
Music is my Imaginary Friend
Nov 13th
Music is my beach house
Music is my hometown
Music is my king size bed
Music’s where I meet my friends
Music is my hot hot bath
Music is my hot hot sex
Music is my back rub
My music is where I’d like you to touch- CSS, “Music is my Hot, Hot Sex”
Sometimes I listen to that song, and my head explodes a little. In a good way.
So, for those of you just tuning in, or who haven’t been paying attention, I am in a band. I know, I know, it’s a total douche thing to say. “Dude, I’m in a fuckin’ BAND!” (and much throwing up of the horns. Not, like, vomiting horns. That would hurt. I mean like the hand gesture. Do Catholics throw up a halo?).
But it’s true. A while ago, a musically obsessed friend of mine got a group of his buddies together, each having a vague musical inkling, and formed a garage band. That played in his basement, because he had no garage. He was desperate to get us into full-on rock and/or roll status, mostly because his wife was clearly cheating on him with Collective Soul. True story.
I had grown up with a smidgeon of musical talent. My Dad was one of those people you want to smack who can effortlessly play any song he hears on his guitar, by ear, with no ability to read music. He would actually improvise Spanish guitar solos in the middle of playing Led Zepplin, so you can see what I mean. I never really had his ability (if it was genetic, I should point out he’s my step-father. So I didn’t get it in the blood.), and I never picked up the knack of finger-plucking. So I was a passable rhythm guitarist, and by “passable”, I mean that my friends were nice enough to not inform me of how much we all knew I sucked.
Other than that, I had played trumpet in high school, which doesn’t translate well to the rock milieu. Which I don’t know if anyone has ever referred to by those specific words, so in a way, I’m a pioneer. At least, according to my daughter’s definition, which is simply “doing something first”.
So, my music-obsessed friend made a suggestion. In much better language then I’m going to use here, he suggested I try bass guitar, because the field of bass players is strewn with half-assed guitarists who were never going to get any better.
Obviously, it was a perfect fit.
Now, I’m not that much better than I was at rhythm guitar, but the beauty of bass is that with the right song, you really don’t have to be. There’s a lot of camouflage in rock music. Provided the lead vocals and lead guitarist are decent, you tend not to notice bass fuck ups.
Shortly after that, that band broke up, because my music-obsessed friend was trying to use the band to heal his marriage, which, hey, nice try bud. But that ship had sailed, with “Gel” blaring loudly from the speakers.
And we formed a new band, which has morphed through a couple of iterations and names, and finally settled on “The Finger Guns” (Don’t click on the link, as there’s no page there yet. We just wanted to keep the domain.), which is all kinds of awesome, and once more I try to hide my bass inadequacy behind the lead guitarist, and the lead singer.
Of course, bear in mind that I am also the lead singer. Yeah, I’m a little confused on that one too.
We do have a little problem that I’m not sure how most bands overcome. Y’see, we’re a group of geek dudes who find toilet humour funny, and snicker at emo rock. So we’re finding it difficult to write original songs that aren’t flat out comedies. So far, we’ve written a song about his wife destroying Japan (“Matron of Honour”) and a thinly disguised bowling-metaphor-for-sex song (“Three Fingers Deep”). We’re working on songs about cannibalistic babies, and one simply called “Awesome Sauce”. And we improvise stuff about pubic hair and evil clowns.
Which begs the question: How the hell do guys write meaningful lyrics? Seriously? If I busted out a love song, about how beautiful and angelic my wife was, I would be laughed out of the room. And yet, rock stars write deep songs all the time. How do you stop the fucking giggles from ruining the song creation process?
And this isn’t idle speculation. Any input would be welcomed.
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On a side note, I’m thinking about trying a little experiment with my other domain, MrJones.ca. Since I’m basically abandoning that blog, I thought a nice way to get some use out of it was to make it a link blog. For photos or videos or podcasts on the go, using the Posterous service. Once I get it set up, it should update in my Twitter feed, on Facebook, and everywhere else. We’ll see how it works.
Jonsian Logic in a Cloud
Nov 11th
Coolest thing I’ve seen today, (which I found by way of The Bloggess), is Wordle, a funky web app that takes a block of text, or the URL of your blog, and creates an artistic word cloud. You can control the colour scheme, font, and alignment, as well as removing words that you don’t want in there.
Click on mine above to see it in all its glory, although it seems appropriate that you can clearly read the word “argument”, which I talk about way too much, and “people”, who I always complain about. Apparently, the way this generator works involves the more incidents of the word occurring, the larger size in the word cloud. Is it right that for me, “compromise” seems as large as “logic”?
Oh, and the word “Toilet” is in there as well. Capitalized. Which means I use that word, as the start of a sentence, more often than “friendship”. Which also sums me up quite well.
Argue Fu: My Definition is This
Nov 11th
If you go in for an argument, take care of your temper. Your logic, if you have any, will take care of itself.
– Joseph Farrell
Part 2: Definitions
One of the most crucial things to any argument, the very framework on which it lies, is definitions. It is so easy to get lost in verbal combat, striving desperately to prove your point while undercutting your opponent’s, and the whole time being unaware that technically, you’re not even arguing about the same thing.
Easy example? I once had an argument with a friend about whether animals were self-aware. It got fairly heated, and there was quite a bit of back-and-forth, until we stumbled to a halt over a point of mine, which revealed that we actually had two very different definitions of “self-aware”. He thought of it as a metaphysical thing, about knowing your place in the universe, and I was being literal, and took it to mean knowing you were a separate entity from the other cat.
We laughed about it at the time, but we could have just as easily gotten enraged that the other person couldn’t even follow this much reasoning.
So, let’s start talking about arguing by defining it.
What is an argument? Well, the simple definition, without looking at a dictionary, would be two or more people with different information, trying to convince their opponents of the validity of their information, and that their opponent’s information is incorrect.
That seems a bit vague. My problem is that people tend to mistake arguing for other things. And maybe that’s the key, defining an argument not solely by what it is, but also by what it isn’t.
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An argument is not a debate
Although they serve a similar purpose, namely, convincing someone else that their point of view is incorrect, the two get grouped together. But a debate is highly structured, with time limits, and specific rules on how and when to phrase your refuting of your opponent’s facts. A true argument doesn’t tell you how long to speak, or when. If you have a point halfway through your opponent’s statement, wait for a break, and then interject. Debating also involves outside scorekeepers, which diminishes an argument if it’s done as a spectator sport.
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An argument is not a fight
Again, the two are very similar, and more people use the two terms interchangeably than any others. Here’s the difference, and it’s a simple one: emotion. A fight is what happens when two people are angry with each other. There can be personal attacks thrown in, trying to hurt the other person. Maybe that’s the most important point: hurting the opponent. An argument can be heated, of course, and quite passionate, but you should be able to walk away afterward without a harsh thought towards your opponent. They simply had misinformation, which doesn’t define them as people. That, however, does not mean an argument cannot turn into a fight. The line between argument and fight is a very thin one, and to the uninitiated, can be crossed quite easily. And usually, without the possibility for reversal.
If you are aware of what an argument should not be, it can help steer you away from it accidentally spilling over and turning in to either a debate (unlikely) or a fight (quite possible).
Remember: a person is not their beliefs. A person is their actions, and their experiences, and they should not be demeaned simply because a person gave them some poor information. Trust me, not everything in your head is accurate either. That’s one of the reasons we argue – as sort of a self diagnostic to figure out if someone else can correct our misinformation, or if it holds up under fire.
And remember that before any argument, you should always make sure you’re talking about the same thing. Unless of course, you’re not, which is a strategy we will explore at a later date.
