"It's Not My Job to Do Your Research for You"

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

While I do think people should be able to substantiate their claims, Sometimes it is a bit absurd of an argument to expect someone to repeatedly have to provide sources for each and every little thing that should be considered common knowledge by anyone with a basic education. For example, stating something like "The US fought against Britain to form their own country" and some one claiming that to be false, then I do not think that they should be forced to look up every detail of the war and actions that led up to the war to prove it's existence and provide that to the person to cure their ignorance.

Often it can be used just to be irritating to ask someone to provide sources for every single detail of common and widespread knowledge to provide sources just to be annoying repeatedly like asking " why?" over and over.. in the same way. If something is common knowledge, like for example, women fighting for the right to vote, and fighting for women's rights, that extend over long swaths of time and contain many events along the way providing something as basic as a timeline of women's rights should suffice, without having to highlight and source every single event along the way. Providing a source should not be confused with " doing their homework for them", I see " doing their homework for them" as them asking you to provide sources for things that they should have learned in primary education as it should be considered " common and widespread knowledge".

Often interruption to the discussion to ask someone to provide sources for every tiny thing is meant to derail rather than contribute to the actual discussion, however if someone is making unsubstantiated claims, asking them to provide a source would be appropriate. ALTHOUGH, not everything is available on the internet, nor can everything even be found to reference on the internet, so even then the internet is still greatly limited in what you have available in regards to make events, people and cultures in this world, so sourcing everything may not even be possible via the internet unless you scan and upload it yourself.

 

[Maze1125]

This discussion is absurd.
The OP summed the situation up perfectly with his example.
Person A is perfectly in their right to say "Do your own research" but if they do say that then they cannot reasonably expect that such an argument is going to convince anyone reading it.

That's all it comes down it. If your goal is to convince someone you're right then you have to be ready to back that up. Alternatively, if your goal is simply to call someone stupid and then walk away smugly then "do your own research" will suffice.

 

[lunavixen]

The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the person making the positive claim or assertation, no matter the subject (as you cannot disprove a negative).

Think of it like writing an essay in school or university. Person A is writing an essay, s/he needs to cite sources to get their marks or they fail, they can't say to the person B (in this scenario the person marking the essay); "Oh yeah, why don't you show me the evidence" when they are the one making the claim or assertation, not the other. If no reasonable evidence is cited, person B can dismiss the claims of person A as unfounded.

That being said, a lot of the time, people are generally set in their minds and not open to change, so citing evidence may not sway them (if they read it at all), but in something like a debate, it's always a good idea to back up your claim. "If you can't show it, you don't know it."

 

[cleric of the order]

How does argument, devoid of a basis in reality bring you anything except the sound of two people arguing? At best it's then boiled down to a test of rhetoric, or whoever is willing to talk the loudest and longest.

Even if an argument devolves into a wordless mess it can still provide information. If you leave, angry and unresolved more thoughts on the subject will linger and new ideas will come from it. Or you through incident find fault in your words or you opponents words and thoughts, perhaps come to a greater understanding of either. There are a number of less honest examples I could pull out of my arse but that is the truth off it. It's inefficient, in a general sense and that is why people shy away from it. That does not mean even the loudest fights have no consequence in the long term, though it will never be known if those are positive or not.

Keep in mind that unless someone is making claims in the context of a debate or argument, usually controversial claim, this isn't a phrase you SHOULD be running into. If someone is just using it like a bludgeon, to avoid their own burden, to distract from the issues at hand, or just to be a disruptive donger then it's NOT "The Burden of Proof" it's a fallacy.

As always within limits my friend within limits.
Ironically, I thought about how it can be used as a fallacy before posting it. I'd also agree that is a problem, However someone that wishes to argue like has a reason to. Either a strong dependence on the truth of their claims to the point of cognitive dissonance or a manipulative bent. All you can really do is conduct yourself as you can do best, in the latter case what more can you do but provide evidence, remain calm and just show others you are the reasonable party. In there former the person was never interested opinion at all, merely wishing for a mirroring of their own. A I see it, recognizing that this is the case (as I doubt I would be able to, the fool I am), puts some on in a place of immediate but unrecognizable power. I personally would have liked to use it for the sake information that person could provide.

Still, even when we don't call it by a hated phrase, it's something we learn from a young age. The great example is the "Who would win in a fight, Wolverine or Professor X" kind of argument is practically little more than assertions paired with a bit of evidence. One guy points to a particular issue that supports the idea that Wolverine would kick ass, and the other comes back with an example of Prof X really letting it rip. At no point does anyone say, "Oh old bean, could you possibly cite your burden of what what what?" or anything like that.

It only becomes an issue when there is a breakdown in the existing system we all live by anyway.

I can agree, again.
In situations like that one would do best to present their arguments and leave with as much the dignity and grace as afforded. However it is rather easy to diagnosis this. Even if not willing to listen to reason, there is no way of knowing that they would not be without reason later, nor would they not later dwell on it later use and brig them some perspective.
Further more this is the internet, a myriad of people can ready anything you have typed. Would it not be best for those other knowledge seekers to provide this information so they at their leisure could not be made aware. If you have the sources then those would be easy to dredge up and link to, relatively speaking.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Internet arguments don't require sources, just people with too much time on their hands.
<looks around, realizes he's screwing off on the internet>
Goddammit.

Burden of proof is on the one making the claim. It's hard to prove someone wrong when they have as many sources as you do, that say the opposite of yours. In that case, either is free to dismiss the other's claims. That could make for a pretty interesting conversation, assuming it could be kept above "yuh-huh" "nuh-uh."

In your specific example, whoever can't be bothered to post links is at fault. Maybe the other guy won't read them, but serving them up makes it more likely. Isn't as if it's that hard to do.

On the other hand, you can prove ANYTHING on the internet. Just because it's out there doesn't mean it's fact. You want an article that says clouds are made from unicorn farts, or that eating toast every morning will make you live forever, I guarantee it's out there somewhere.

 

[EvilRoy]

Eh, on one hand you really should produce evidence to support an argument you are making. On the other hand there is a hard limit to how far you should really go to do it. If I state that a person made a statement in a youtube video, and I state the name of that video and maybe give you an "eeeh here-ish" timestamp, then yes goddamit - that is good enough. Me taking the additional 10 minutes to que up the video, find the exact spot, then produce a timestamp link just for you does not add anything. Same damn thing with papers as youtube videos. Unless I've giving an exact quote, then a page number and paper title is all you goddamn need. You should be reading the entire page if not the entire paper to make sure you understand the totality of the context anyway. Demanding a specific time or a specific paragraph or a special just for you link is just proof you had no intention of actually attempting to fully understand the evidence to begin with.

There is a minimum level of effort required to participate in a conversation, and if you absolutely require that particular items are spoonfed to you then maybe you should just take a nap instead and come back refreshed.

 

[FalloutJack]

Internet arguments often aren't over matters of truth, but rather over underlying assumptions and ideology. Two people can completely agree on the facts and still come to completely different conclusions. Two different people can agree on the temperature with one saying that's "hot" and another that it's "cold".

Far too often there's the mistaken belief that the two parties share the same ideology and are merely discussing the "facts" with each other.

I would say that BAD internet arguments are this. It isn't the fault of truth or facts that people cause problems.

 

[cleric of the order]

How does argument, devoid of a basis in reality bring you anything except the sound of two people arguing? At best it's then boiled down to a test of rhetoric, or whoever is willing to talk the loudest and longest.

Even if an argument devolves into a wordless mess it can still provide information. If you leave, angry and unresolved more thoughts on the subject will linger and new ideas will come from it. Or you through incident find fault in your words or you opponents words and thoughts, perhaps come to a greater understanding of either. There are a number of less honest examples I could pull out of my arse but that is the truth off it. It's inefficient, in a general sense and that is why people shy away from it. That does not mean even the loudest fights have no consequence in the long term, though it will never be known if those are positive or not.

This assumes an infinite amount of time and energy to be spent on these endeavors, as opposed to ones that offer more reward for that time and effort. Life is short, I'd like to make it count, and I did all of the pointless arguing for arguments sake I ever really care to when I was in my teens.

I am sorry If I didn't make myself clear enough, expressing myself in this manner is not my best suit, in fact it's one of my worst and often makes a lot of problems for me.
That being said, I do not understand how you came to this conclusion.
Inefficiency, (in my mind) expresses this clearly. People to not have infinity energy, nor do they have the drive to commit themselves to actions they are aware of as being generally unfavorable in a mildly economic sense. "why am I wasting my time doing this" sort of thing, they register that there is likely more time and effort put in then the potential benefits will likely be. Dwelling on it later however is something largely effortless as it usually entail an idle mind and that is something I should specify as being mostly out of the realm of wasteful energy. Even if one is not of an idle mind, the unconscious is still processing the exchange and making the adjustments or concepts internally. The other is a product of argument and is thus for someone who has the energy to commit to it.
As I understand nothing here claims that energy is infinite and people should argue all the time. My argument was again that there was that these sorts of arguments, can still amount to something and insofar as I understand that is still congruent inefficient or not.

As always within limits my friend within limits.
Ironically, I thought about how it can be used as a fallacy before posting it. I'd also agree that is a problem, However someone that wishes to argue like has a reason to. Either a strong dependence on the truth of their claims to the point of cognitive dissonance or a manipulative bent. All you can really do is conduct yourself as you can do best, in the latter case what more can you do but provide evidence, remain calm and just show others you are the reasonable party. In there former the person was never interested opinion at all, merely wishing for a mirroring of their own. A I see it, recognizing that this is the case (as I doubt I would be able to, the fool I am), puts some on in a place of immediate but unrecognizable power. I personally would have liked to use it for the sake information that person could provide.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear... I don't mean that I think it's a fallacy, I mean that reversing the burden of proof is actually a specific fallacy. Using demands for proof as a distraction would be a Red herring, etc. I think you'll find that when you break these down, you won't find examples that support making a positive claim without evidence as being found outside of obviously weak claims, or more commonly when dealing with accepted facts that nobody is contesting.

No, no, no. What I meant is I registered an exception to my statement, that extant fallacy. sorry again my way of communicating can be a bit wonky.
Funny that was the precise fallacy I though it was when I was posting. I waved it away as unlikely to be the precise on, I figured there would be a more specific variant for it. Guess I was wrong to do so.

Beyond that, you keep framing this as someone's right to express themselves, which isn't the point at all. You're welcomed to claim that the moon is made of my asshole is you like, and offer "fuck my mother" as proof. Nobody is going to stop you from doing that, or stop anyone else from observing the spectacle.

I fail to see that quite plainly.
I may be a classical liberal but this was not seem logically followed by my statement, to me at least, though I am seeing it more and more.
My product was of stoic intention, I.e. this is happening to you, what do you do. And in that it sought to paint very vaguely the motivations of two different possible encounters of this nature. Assuming the person was of the reasonable party.
Not however that the person needed to provide a claim to be reasonable.
And in that sense I perceive I broke it down well, someone is either arguing the point because of psychological baggage, or of manipulative bent (disingenuous argumentation). And one can do is conduct themselves well and/or leave.
You example does have one thing going for it, that I did not add a non sequitur/troll arguments and the like the definition. Though I would like to clarify the point of these "arguments"/claims/well insults is for public show. In that sense in intention I'd throw it under the latter.

What WILL happen is that reasonable people will dismiss you, and you'll be left with people who either agree with you, are looking to debate someone to pass the time, or people like you who want sift through it all in hope of some insight.

This seems mildly disingenuous. Yes I do go on about the duty of one to provide those claims for people outside of the argument when someone is not inclined to listen to you argument. However the need to provide information to people genuinely interested on an actually argument, or a plausible reality. Seriously stay out of the YouTube comment sections, only that Daemonic abyss could breed such creatures and arguments.
That being said, they still provide the information, people can draw from your premises and citations their own conclusions about you and about your argument if they wished. Which is the important part. The information is there and people are indeed free to judge, an invalid does not invalidate the whole.

We're not all universal "knowledge-seekers"... some of us don't really care about the many many MANY personal beliefs and opinions that make up the rainbow that is the human experience. Some of us DO care, but we like to take that kind of search offline, or in the company of something other than a bunch of random forum dwellers. Some may have a very specific focus, and the value you find from spending time sifting, they would rather spend further focused on their particular interest.

Being in an conversation means someone is attempting to exchange ideas directly, with other people and that is useful. Others can have information denied to you, interesting spins on ideas provided and the like. They can also be idiots and again it can be worthless.
Furthermore no one is shackled towards finding these things out through being an extroverted shit head. People of specific interest and study will gravitate to one another. like in your example, the children are gathered together with some mutual interest, Xmen.
Otherwise, I never specified forum dwellers, my point is the internet in a general sense.

TL;DR You're confusing the process with value judgements about results, then inserting your own values as to what is worthwhile. More, you're seemingly working under the assumption that you have all of the time in the world to do this, and so the quality of any given interaction or its prospects for signal/noise are irrelevant.

The first line is possible true I'll admit that,
I know that the second statement is assuredly false. I never assumed we'd have all of the time in the world, in fact I would have hoped I demonstrated otherwise.
The final statement is true and false in a sense.
I did exempt the type of persons I have never met, and i will concede that,
It can take little effort to produce your information if you have any, I see no reason why that cannot be provided even with the most disingenuous persons.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

To be clear, the "Burden of Proof" isn't about how you are allowed to express yourself... you can say whatever the hell you want. It's about how reasonable people can treat your claims. If you don't care about anything other than adding your voice to a crowd that isn't taken seriously, no one is stopping you. You might as well argue that since it's the internet, you don't have to make sense. You're right, you don't, but don't be upset when people shake their heads and walk past you.

A fair assumption, but there's a difference between shouldering your burden of proof in a context in which you know the audience is receptive (such as a thesis presentation or a business meeting or, heck, even a casual book club meeting) and doing the same in an environment in which the audience's attention span is a complete crapshoot.

That's the issue with discussion forums. Person A might end up taking the time to peruse all of your provided arguments, Person B might zone out halfway there and pray for the existence of some sort of end-of-message synthesis, and Person C might not even care, no matter how much effort you put in.

I think it's wiser to know who it is you're speaking to. If your audience can shoulder your extensive research, have at it. If you've been given reasons enough to suspect that there might be an attention deficit (or a general and understandable loathing of Walls of Text or imposed out-of-site links), then use your proverbial soapbox to synthesize your opinion.

Take the Gamergate debacle. Every now and then, someone pops up with two or three screens' worth of informal investigative work, links and references included. I'm someone who's read master's theses in hard-copy format going for several hundred pages without too much trouble. On-screen, however, my stamina is much shorter. I won't push through that investigative post, no matter how cohesive it might be, because it's too damn long for the Internet.

Considering, I try to adhere to the KISS rule, online. I vulgarize, I compress, I synthesize and use essay techniques to weave my references inside the text proper instead of adding hyperlinks and expecting my readers to follow through. This very response is skirting my personal limits in terms of length, for instance.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

In situations of formal debate it is very important to be able to substantiate your claims.

In situations of informal blithering on forums, while people are unlikely to take you seriously with no substantiation, neither are you likely to care how seriously people are taking you.

It's sort of en vogue to treat every forum post as a dissertation and pick it apart logically. I do it. We all do it. It's especially gratifying to do when it is your impression that the person writing the post was full of shit and you want to rub their nose in it. But you're not winning any points. Best case scenario some like minded people will laugh/applaud and some differently minded people will mark you down as a shit disturbing asshole and that will be the end of that.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Where you are should inform what kind of discussion you're having, and if everyone is trying to have a REAL one then "chill out bro" is just another dodge. If you don't want a debate, on or offline, don't wade into one.

I agree, considering our discussion. If we go back to the OT, then this means that the old tactic of going "Do your own research" is a cop-out. It's an easy way for anyone prone to fallacious arguments or sophistry to essentially say "Well, it's not my fault if you don't have the sources I have!"

Take the health or fitness-related scam websites. Some concepts are poorly understood and articulated in a mediocre fashion, that lack of understanding being used to put forward a fairly erroneous synthesis. Unfortunately, since the same website packs that kale smoothie you found and liked so much, you're prone to considering what's on there as gospel truths. Next thing you know, Facebook's crawling with relatives going "Eat bio or die, everything's crammed with chemicals! Ohmigod!"

Following that example, if you have the tiniest bit of understanding of organic chemistry, then you know that EVERYTHING organic has a chemical formula. This, however, then exposes that the problem isn't so much the burden of proof as it's confirmation bias.

Here's a personal example. A cousin of mine forwards me a story about some woman who supposedly cured her terminal cancer by guzzling pineapples exclusively for the past eight months. The flimsy argument involved is that pineapple juice is packed with antioxydants, so binging on anything acidic qualifies as natural "chemotherapy".

I don't buy into this, and I have a father who's just pushed through Hodgkin's Lymphoma the old-fashioned and clinically accurate way. He's out of his remission period as of last year and can be considered as being officially cured. I mention that, and tell my cousin that I wouldn't be comfortable crossing my fingers and hoping fruit juice somehow does attack my hypothetical tumors.

She tells me that her website has no reason to be providing false information since you obviously can't take matters of public health and safety lightly. As if it were related, she then mentions being a yoga fanatic for the past six years and having never fallen ill despite never having been vaccinated.

Her explanation is that her myriad little food and fitness-related habits are working. My explanation is that she has a rock-solid immune system, while this still isn't any guarantee that she'll never get sick. Marathon lovers with a die-cast bill of health managed to develop cancers, while lifelong chain-smokers sometimes get away scott-free.

I don't know if my belief in science means I have a confirmation bias in its favor, but I do know she has one for her bio food gurus. I've heard variants on "Do your own research!" for the past six or seven years, thanks to social networks.

 

[AgedGrunt]

Now of course it's not A's job to do research for B, but B isn't going to look into A's sources unless A brings them up and explains why they're credible.

Credibility is why arguments on the Internet eventually become worthless; opposing parties will doubt each other. The Internet, a room of people just waiting for someone to say something they disagree with, loves to challenge credibility, and it's as easy as dismissing sources or saying they don't support the claims.

That's not always wrong, either, but in my time here specifically I've noticed a number of people who use the academic research tactic almost exclusively to undermine and discredit people, and too often it's used with contempt by people who are trying to prevent someone from making an argument they disagree with.

There's a proper time to call on someone to show legitimate, sourced examples or "research"; that time is almost never in most internet arguments. The burden of proof is more abused than used.

To the OP, specifically, it depends. The person saying it maybe can't back up what they're saying, can (but would require time and great efforts, usually a waste of time, in my experience) or could be deflecting someone that's abusing the burden of proof.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Ideally, our own bias is isolated from our output, you know?

Ideally, yeah - if your understanding of the scientific method allows that. One of the problems I'm stuck dealing with on a rhetorical basis is the fact that my greater family can be essentially split down the middle between two archetypes.

The paternal side is very scholarly, very focused on concrete and tangible matters. The scientific method is a given for them seeing as I have real estate appraisers and specialized pedagogues on that side. Those who aren't math whizzes or Natural Sciences fans work in various levels of the government and are kind of naturally drawn to Cartesian approaches to their work.

The maternal side, on the other hand, is crammed with old New Agers and diehard homeopathy followers. One side feeds me Science Porn, the other tunes into stuff like "A Haunting" or "Ghost Hunters" religiously. I wouldn't call them spiritual so much as they have a strong dislike of the medical system. I lost an uncle to an abdominal artery rupture who could've been saved if only he'd stopped being such an ass and hadn't spent 24 hours working through crippling gut pains.

I'm somewhere in the middle, the Atheist Fantasy Nerd who views religious texts as valid anthropological data. I grew up with my nurse of a mother's numerous tales about retirement home patients supposedly seeing angels or loved ones before dying, plus plenty of postmortem stuff that'd fit right at home in a Gothic Horror novel.

The thing is, the maternal side thinks science's ability to reassess itself means it's wrong, that there's "more" to life or the universe that our fancy tools and theories can't grasp. Which isn't exactly untrue, since science is *always* finding out more stuff. Where they lose me is when they use that core belief of theirs as an excuse to cling to whatever quasi-transcendental crap supposedly "feels" better than what a qualified physician would tell them.

Science usually shoulders its burden of proof and provides us with ever-more examples to support its claims. The health freaks or conspiracy nuts out there who resort to confirmation bias? They rarely do. The scary part is that these hardcore believers come to base large swaths of their perceived identity on those beliefs, so you can just feel that you're bucking against something deep-seated by opposing them.

That cousin of mine from earlier? She made it fairly clear we'd better drop health-related issues in our conversations, seeing as she somehow always felt attacked. Seeing as I never *wanted* to attack her and never tried to from my perspective - basic refutations aren't exactly antagonistic, I'd say - I agreed to call it quits.

We've talked a couple more times ever since, but we're still diametrally opposed. She's a New Ager health nut who likes country music, I'm a science nerd with a side order of a Lord of the Rings fan who enjoys electronica. XD

 

[happyninja42]

Meh, I've done that. I'm not going to waste my time digging up notes from a university course I took two years ago just so someone on the internet can dismiss them because they don't mesh with their established beliefs. I'm still going to comment smugly because I took the fucking course and bothered to learn the shit. But whether random person on a gaming forum accepts what experts and academics already know to be true doesn't affect me.

But see that's sort of the point. The "random person" is the person most likely to change their mind on a subject. Most debaters will say that they are there for the audience. They know pretty confidently that the person they are debating isn't going to change their opinion, but someone watching might.

So if you're just going to answer smugly anyway, then all you do is look smug, without actually backing your claim. It will probably actually hurt your standpoint on the subject. But if you actually provide evidence to support your claim, then the audience can review it, and possibly change their mind on a subject.

This is the case for any kind of debate, not exclusive to a gaming site. But, it does require you actually caring what the outcome of the debate is. If, like you say, you don't care, then I'm not really sure why you would participate anyway.

 

[rosac]

People ignore the subjectivity of stuff and also seem to think that opinions should be the same as fact. Sometimes an opinion is just that, an opinion. Doesn;t need hard data, just needs to exist.

 

[happyninja42]

People ignore the subjectivity of stuff and also seem to think that opinions should be the same as fact. Sometimes an opinion is just that, an opinion. Doesn;t need hard data, just needs to exist.

If the person says something along the lines of "This is simply my opinion on the matter." or "I can't back this statement at this time, but it seems to me that..." or "I think that...." I generally don't expect them to source their statement. They've prefaced it with a disclaimer that it's basically an opinion, and I'm fine with that. But when they present it as a declarative statement of fact. "This happens because of X, period." Then they've got to back it up, or else their statement can be disregarded.

The problem I think that comes up in forum debates most often, is the blurred line between stating an opinion and a fact. The poster might use phrasing that suggests they are stating a fact, when they really mean to simply state an opinion. This is fixed by proof reading your post before hitting the send key. Most people don't do this, so we get fuzzy posts. The other issue I think is that, like you said, people sometimes assume statements made are factual, and not opinion. This could be because of the quality of the post they are reading, or their own comprehension and interpretation of the post. We've all likely witnessed a post we made taken entirely out of context by someone, and you are left there, looking at your screen thinking "How in the hell did you think I said that??" So it's likely a mixture of the two.

My bottom line on the issue is, if you say something, and someone asks you to provide evidence to back up your statement, this is a good thing. Accuracy on the internet is something we should all strive for. Questioning statements on the net, and asking for verification is an admirable way to behave. Be skeptical, question what you are told. If the statement is an opinion and not a fact, then simply state so in your response. I've done that myself on plenty of occasions when I've made a comment that, upon reflection, seemed to be more declarative than theoretical. And I have no problem replying saying "I have no data to support my statement, as it was simply a theory, or opinion of mine." I even happily stated that I could be totally wrong in my supposition, and happily tell people to disregard my statement if they wish, since I can't back it with sources. And this is perfectly fine in my opinion. I don't have a problem with someone disregarding my input on a discussion, when my input is simply an opinion. They want facts that can be verified and discussed for voracity. I don't lose any sleep over it.