> Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives 1. Your original charge was

> Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives 1. Your original charge was that Noam is arrogant, not that he is dismissive. Dismissiveness and arrogance are not the same thing. 2. Noam isn't dismissive in this particular. Refusing the reply to the email or replying only with terse non-acknowledgements would be dismissive. Spilling hundreds of words worth of ink to elucidate why you don't want to have a conversation is anything but dismissive. 3. Charging Noam with being dismissive toward his critics is a different claim with a different burden. It requires analyzing the preponderance of evidence, not one specific case. Just because Noam is dismissive of one particular critic doesn't mean that he's dismissive of his critics in general. > A religious person telling a scientist that a debate about religion with him would be "pointless" is indeed dismissive I fail to see how this is necessarily the case. For example, if the scientist's point is to change the religious person's mind, and the religious person is firm in their faith, then the religious person isn't being dismissive. On the contrary, the religious person is saving both parties from a fruitless and frustrating endeavor. > It may end up being pointless to the people making the arguments but not necessarily for the listeners. More analogous to Noam/Sam, if the scientist's point is to demonstrate the falseness of religious by disproving transubstantiation, and if the religious person explicitly said they do not believe in transubstantiation, then the religious person is well within reason to refuse an invitation, because regardless of the outcome of the conversation, the end result won't be informative to anyone. 3. If the Scientist pushes for a debate even though the religious person is not interested, he's most likely being a bit of jerk.