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An interesting article, expanding from means of disagreeing to methods used I'd add a few observations. There's the shotgun refutation where a poster quotes alm

by ix 19y ago

An interesting article, expanding from means of disagreeing to methods used I'd add a few observations. There's the shotgun refutation where a poster quotes almost every part of a post with a weak disagreement making responding to every point almost impossible and there's the essayist who writes a needlessly long response making finding and responding to their central point much harder. Essayists often use deliberately ambiguous passages so they can claim you don't understand rather than explaining clearly. Another internet or more general debate strategy is to refer to the voluminous works of others as if you've read them and behave as if your opponent cannot respond until they've read every last page, often with little attempt to explain or apply the supposed arguments and facts that come from those sources. Most internet posters are unable to state things clearly, partly because people are taught to obfuscate and because they're embarassed to put their points in view so nakedly.

cabalamat 19y ago
ix: "Most internet posters are unable to state things clearly [...] because they're embarassed to put their points in view so nakedly." This is even more true of politicians. From Orwell's Politics and the English Language: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.

by ix 19y ago

cabalamat 19y ago

ix: "Most internet posters are unable to state things clearly [...] because they're embarassed to put their points in view so nakedly." This is even more true of politicians. From Orwell's Politics and the English Language: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.