3 ms·
> This is argumentation, what lawyers do. It's designed to win at all costs. Conversations are battles to be won. Combine that with some nice rhetorical tricks
by goatlover 8y ago
> This is argumentation, what lawyers do. It's designed to win at all costs. Conversations are battles to be won. Combine that with some nice rhetorical tricks and there's really no need to discuss facts anymore.
Sounds like what the ancient Greek sophists taught. That rhetoric was a useful tool for winning debates and being persuasive, particularly in politics.
- DanielBMarkham 8y agoAfter writing that, that's what I was thinking too. Two thousand years later, and Socrates is still relevant.
- gaius 8y agoThat rhetoric was a useful tool for winning debates and being persuasive, particularly in politics But that cuts both ways: two skilled rhetoriticians in debate each won't permit the other to deploy a logical fallacy. Therefore they will always converge on the truth. Rhetoric can only be weaponised when your opponent is unaware of it, and is powerless when they don't care about debate because their mind is already made up.
- DanielBMarkham 8y agoBut that cuts both ways: two skilled rhetoriticians in debate each won't permit the other to deploy a logical fallacy. Therefore they will always converge on the truth. Been thinking about this all day. I didn't want to flippantly disagree, but there was something about your comment that bugged me. I think maybe you have overstated. I would phrase it this way: skilled rhetoriticians _tend_ to converge on a semantic definition around the meaning of words and phrases. I don't think they come to any ultimate truth, no matter what the greeks thought. I think what happens in any productive conversation is something more along the lines of shared mental model alignment, which I would argue is vastly more important. Thanks for giving me something to cogitate on yesterday!