[Politics] The state of political debate on both the Escapist and the internet

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Ultimately, I would love for debate on the internet to reach the ideal of what the Roman Orators or the Greek forums were believed to be: logically constructed arguments that weave both personal belief and rational arguments into compelling constructing and rebuttal statements.

Meanwhile, in actual Roman oratory:

"Your argument is invalid because you are a massive fag!"
"No U!"
"Mate, your belt is so loose. You are basically a woman. Get on my belt-tightness level."[footnote]God, why were Romans so fucking obsessed with belts[/footnote]
"You use fancy words to try and persuade people of things.. That is mad gay bro! You are basically a male prostitute."
"Once there was this guy who wore perfume, and you are so like him! Do you even wear a belt?"

Huh, hat is a bit absurd

regardless, i will be better going forward not to refer to oratory in Greek and Roman context

As for some other points i'm seeing.
-I use argumentation in the strictest sense to describe arguing for a point and a position.
-Yes, some positions are irrational and not worth asking or talking about but the approach in that case is to consider the why behind it and countering that way. Yes, this may not be peaceful but an understanding is still important
-I find the idea that civility is overrated to be odd. Yes, defiance is needed at times but there is always a time and a place. Violent defiance isn't always the best solution.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I never said the internet doesn?t matter or that it doesn?t entail real people; in the spirit of the thread (i.e.: the volatile nature of online debating,) I was trying to make the point that arguing with people on the internet isn?t effective. If anything, it?s the very arguing that dehumanizes people. Few people like being yelled at for their beliefs, stances or opinions (meaning those things objectively; not debating the right or wrongness of said beliefs fewer still like being yelled at by anonymous strangers to whom they need not answer, likely will never see, and least of all hold themselves accountable to. You BECOME just words on a screen that an incited person can freely flail at until they?re blue in the fac? er? ?fingers.? It becomes a battle of right and wrong where both sides ?know? they?re right and rules of civility be damned.

And let?s not conflate ?arguing? with ?complaining.? Complaining is a start, an acknowledgment and statement of dissatisfaction; from there, civil discord, understanding and change can occur as long as both sides are willing to listen and be heard. Arguing is a failure; it means the lines of communication have broken down and any discussion has digressed into a fight. I have never changed someone?s mind on a subjective matter by arguing, telling another person not only what they should think, do or feel, but personally attacking them; it just doesn?t happen. It?s the difference between a ?peaceful protest? and a ?riot;? one is constructive, the other? Very much not so.

Yes, the internet is a very powerful tool and very much a shared ?reality,? but like any tool, it can used for god AND ill; ?arguing? is more often than not the latter.

Are you sure your mind has never been changed via argument? Mine has. Not by people telling me Nazis are ok, but I have had my mind changed before.

Civility is overrated. Civility is a tool of oppression meant to make good people look bad and evil arguments look good cause 'well, he politely asked for all Jews to die, unlike that uncivil jerk who thinks Nazis deserve to be punched'. I wish my Civility Topic wasn't gone.

The only times my mind has changed in argument is when I learned I was objectively wrong, i.e.: ?whoops, you?re right; Jack Nicholson is the actor and Jack Nicklaus is the golfer; sorry I called your mother a whore.? It?s had nothing to do with what I believe, those tenets that define me as a person to which any affront is an attack and requires defense, often in the form of an attack of my own. No reasonable person should be expected to rationalize in earnest their attacker?s motives or beliefs. Can my beliefs change? Be swayed? Absolutely, I may not be an open book, but I?m a textbook open MIND, but I ask that anyone seeking to do so come at me decently. I?m willing to read your pamphlet as soon you take it out of your clenched fist which is currently down my throat.

Civility is overrated? A tool of oppression? Saelune, I understand your frustration, I seriously do, but that sounds very radical. You?re conflating civility with cowardice, unfair concession, weakness. I?d offer it?s a strength utilized by reasonable and rational people to affect change. If you don?t see the opportunity to affect change outside of unfettered outrage and violence, TRUE tools of oppression, then we don?t have to look far to find people exactly like that whom [I?d hope] we would both agree are not righteous people.

The difference between a peaceful protest and a non-peaceful protest is 50 years of LGBT rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

I can marry cause people stopped being peaceful about it.

The riots you cite didn?t change the minds of the people they attacked; if anything, it likely steeled the hearts and minds of those people affected firmly against the LGTBQ community. I doubt that during the heat of the riots, amidst the turmoil, the legislators were grabbed by the nap of the neck and forced face down onto the pages on which they would pen the new laws, no; civil discourse followed, and the laws changed. The riots were a catalyst; that doesn?t make them the right way to have handled it. And please do not take that as my belittling what they clearly mean to you and those like you; I just wish you could see a path to the changes you want to see that doesn?t necessitate an utter disregard for the basic pillars of a decent society and those of us willing to listen.

 

[Saelune]

I never said the internet doesn?t matter or that it doesn?t entail real people; in the spirit of the thread (i.e.: the volatile nature of online debating,) I was trying to make the point that arguing with people on the internet isn?t effective. If anything, it?s the very arguing that dehumanizes people. Few people like being yelled at for their beliefs, stances or opinions (meaning those things objectively; not debating the right or wrongness of said beliefs fewer still like being yelled at by anonymous strangers to whom they need not answer, likely will never see, and least of all hold themselves accountable to. You BECOME just words on a screen that an incited person can freely flail at until they?re blue in the fac? er? ?fingers.? It becomes a battle of right and wrong where both sides ?know? they?re right and rules of civility be damned.

And let?s not conflate ?arguing? with ?complaining.? Complaining is a start, an acknowledgment and statement of dissatisfaction; from there, civil discord, understanding and change can occur as long as both sides are willing to listen and be heard. Arguing is a failure; it means the lines of communication have broken down and any discussion has digressed into a fight. I have never changed someone?s mind on a subjective matter by arguing, telling another person not only what they should think, do or feel, but personally attacking them; it just doesn?t happen. It?s the difference between a ?peaceful protest? and a ?riot;? one is constructive, the other? Very much not so.

Yes, the internet is a very powerful tool and very much a shared ?reality,? but like any tool, it can used for god AND ill; ?arguing? is more often than not the latter.

Are you sure your mind has never been changed via argument? Mine has. Not by people telling me Nazis are ok, but I have had my mind changed before.

Civility is overrated. Civility is a tool of oppression meant to make good people look bad and evil arguments look good cause 'well, he politely asked for all Jews to die, unlike that uncivil jerk who thinks Nazis deserve to be punched'. I wish my Civility Topic wasn't gone.

The only times my mind has changed in argument is when I learned I was objectively wrong, i.e.: ?whoops, you?re right; Jack Nicholson is the actor and Jack Nicklaus is the golfer; sorry I called your mother a whore.? It?s had nothing to do with what I believe, those tenets that define me as a person to which any affront is an attack and requires defense, often in the form of an attack of my own. No reasonable person should be expected to rationalize in earnest their attacker?s motives or beliefs. Can my beliefs change? Be swayed? Absolutely, I may not be an open book, but I?m a textbook open MIND, but I ask that anyone seeking to do so come at me decently. I?m willing to read your pamphlet as soon you take it out of your clenched fist which is currently down my throat.

Civility is overrated? A tool of oppression? Saelune, I understand your frustration, I seriously do, but that sounds very radical. You?re conflating civility with cowardice, unfair concession, weakness. I?d offer it?s a strength utilized by reasonable and rational people to affect change. If you don?t see the opportunity to affect change outside of unfettered outrage and violence, TRUE tools of oppression, then we don?t have to look far to find people exactly like that whom [I?d hope] we would both agree are not righteous people.

The difference between a peaceful protest and a non-peaceful protest is 50 years of LGBT rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

I can marry cause people stopped being peaceful about it.

The riots you cite didn?t change the minds of the people they attacked; if anything, it likely steeled the hearts and minds of those people affected firmly against the LGTBQ community. I doubt that during the heat of the riots, amidst the turmoil, the legislators were grabbed by the nap of the neck and forced face down onto the pages on which they would pen the new laws, no; civil discourse followed, and the laws changed. The riots were a catalyst; that doesn?t make them the right way to have handled it. And please do not take that as my belittling what they clearly mean to you and those like you; I just wish you could see a path to the changes you want to see that doesn?t necessitate an utter disregard for the basic pillars of a decent society and those of us willing to listen.

And people argue against objective fact too, all the time. Just recently someone claimed Trump was a Democrat.

When terrible is the norm, sensibility is a radical concept. I am only radical because sanity is not common place. We have a nut job as President, a radical idea would be having someone fair and competent running the government instead. I am not conflating anything, it is ignorant people conflating calmness with good. It is not wrong to be upset that the government and police are abusing their power! Anyone who is calm about that is the unreasonable one.

And about those people who's minds werent changed...fuck them. They suck, and we dont need to wait for them to stop sucking! We need the others, the people who know its wrong but dont want to do anything to do something! We need the people who can be convinced to be convinced! Its not about convincing Nazis to stop being Nazis, its about convincing everyone else to stop caring what Nazis want or think!

Its not about waiting for people to be willing to listen, it is about MAKING THEM LISTEN! That is why I yell, because I need to be heard through the fingers in their ears.

Say what you want, but people hear me here. Some may deride me, may put me down, may mock me, they tell me to be quiet, to sit down and shut up, but I am loud, I am proud, and I am justified, and they will hear me just as you are hearing me now.

 

[Agema]

Ultimately, I would love for debate on the internet to reach the ideal of what the Roman Orators or the Greek forums were believed to be: logically constructed arguments that weave both personal belief and rational arguments into compelling constructing and rebuttal statements.

Yeah. They weren't really like that, though.

The Athenian assembly ended up in the hands of demagogues (e.g. Cleon, Cleophon, Hyperbolus) who swayed the crowd with emotion. Frankly, the likes of Pericles did too, it's just Pericles was deemed more responsible in terms of governance. As per Socrates' trial, it's pointed out that the Athenian courts were dominated by crass appeals to emotion: suspects putting the family up to wail in misery to make the jurors feel sorry for them.

In Rome, Cicero for instance was famous in large part for rhetoric - but a great deal of rhetoric was not really about the precision of a logical argument, it was in stylistic tactics of persuation. And his speeches were full of personal attacks. The term "Philippic", although actually derived from an Athenian statesman, is most closely associated with Cicero, who levelled a series of brutal attacks on Mark Anthony, a large amount of which was really just character assasssination. Cicero was not unusual in heaping abuse on his opponents, merely in how successful he was at it.

To explain further. I feel that the dialectic, the core principles of debate, are being forgotten and tossed aside on some level for overly emotive or overly fallacious argumentation.

Fundamentally, rational debate of that level requires participants capable and honest enough. This is not the case. There's no arbiter of logic, and the ability of people to simply refuse to accept (or fail to realise) that they are logically wrong is virtually infinite. In some ways, it's even worse in the intelligent, because they are so much better at finding excuses and arguments to pretend they aren't wrong. In terms of honesty, I don't so much mean conscious deception, but more that convincing people is not just a logical task but a psychological one. People have emotional attachments to their beliefs and the task of persuasion is overwhelming that attachment. Try telling someone religious for 30 years that God doesn't exist. That's not just a logical argument, that's asking someone to accept the pain and insecurity of realising 30 years of life have been wasted on a mistake.

What I would definitely say, however, is that whenever you come across someone heavily arguing by levelling accusations of fallacy against anyone who disagrees, they're nearly always people who grossly overrate their capabilities of reason and underrate everyone else's.

 

[CaitSeith]

Sad but true

I suppose my idealism is pointless or not useful anymore?

I hope one day they become useful again.

 

[Kwak]

Civility is overrated.

Not completely, there is a practical reason for it being maintained in verbal debate. Incivility distracts from the simple points of the argument - provoke an emotional response and people will respond to that, ignoring whatever factual points you may have used, to just focus on the insult. And there's a perception that if you can get someone to respond emotionally, you have 'won', no matter the actual merits of the real argument.

 

[Saelune]

Civility is overrated.

Not completely, there is a practical reason for it being maintained in verbal debate. Incivility distracts from the simple points of the argument - provoke an emotional response and people will respond to that, ignoring whatever factual points you may have used, to just focus on the insult. And there's a perception that if you can get someone to respond emotionally, you have 'won', no matter the actual merits of the real argument.

I am very civil with people who respect human rights. But the idea we need to be respectful to white supremacists is stupid. They are terrorists and need to be stopped.

People would be surprised how polite I am in day to day life.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Civility is overrated.

Not completely, there is a practical reason for it being maintained in verbal debate. Incivility distracts from the simple points of the argument - provoke an emotional response and people will respond to that, ignoring whatever factual points you may have used, to just focus on the insult. And there's a perception that if you can get someone to respond emotionally, you have 'won', no matter the actual merits of the real argument.

I am very civil with people who respect human rights. But the idea we need to be respectful to white supremacists is stupid. They are terrorists and need to be stopped.

People would be surprised how polite I am in day to day life.

Can't help but agree with you on that point, chief.

 

[Nedoras]

The issue with that is the image of people thousands of years ago having true intellectual discourse is heavily romanticized. Also debates themselves are not always useful. It completely depends on the topic being discussed. Some things truly aren't worth debating and sometimes people are just wrong. Not wanting to "listen to the other side" and give concessions and be "civil" is romanticized nonsense. It's partly the reason why climate change is STILL an issue that people are even "debating" anymore here in the States. If you keep "debating" over something like that all it does is muddy the waters. Which is the point by the way; to muddy the waters enough to where dumb positions seem like they're not so dumb. To make people think this is still worth discussing and a legitimate part of the national discourse. But it would be "mean" to shut down some lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry claiming "the science isn't in" or whatever and not give them the time of day. That wouldn't be very "civil" would it? We need all sides of the isle talking about this and all of their opinions matter equally. Fucking Christ.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Ultimately, I would love for debate on the internet to reach the ideal of what the Roman Orators or the Greek forums were believed to be: logically constructed arguments that weave both personal belief and rational arguments into compelling constructing and rebuttal statements.

Meanwhile, in actual Roman oratory:

"Your argument is invalid because you are a massive fag!"
"No U!"
"Mate, your belt is so loose. You are basically a woman. Get on my belt-tightness level."[footnote]God, why were Romans so fucking obsessed with belts[/footnote]
"You use fancy words to try and persuade people of things.. That is mad gay bro! You are basically a male prostitute."
"Once there was this guy who wore perfume, and you are so like him! Do you even wear a belt?"

Proof that Xbox Live Chat was the true successor to the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition.

I can't tell you of how convinced I was after the fiftieth teenager who claimed to have engaged in sexual congress with my mother.

OT: Debates on the internet rarely cause people to re-examine their perspectives, so if you go into them with that as a goal, you're most likely going to have a bad time. Now, if you go into them with the goal of having fun in the argument itself, or looking for ways to practice talking points for later use, then you may more likely have a great time.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

If the mark of an educated mind is being able to entertain an idea without embracing it, I believe that the mark of an educated debater should be being able to acknowledge an argument as valid when reached through a certain logical pathway not his own, without agreeing with it. The moment one fails to do that debating any further is pointless because if you aren't working within a shared framework of principles and values you're talking about a different reality compared to that of the other person so there's no place for mutual understanding.



Without having this much, without playing with this as the default condition everything springs forth from, everything turns into a battle for other issues and not the actual thing being debated, it becomes about the virtue of the parties involved or about the evils of the parties involved or of other people, steeped in ad-hominem and sprouting from within it a climate of fear that stifles honest exchange of ideas.


If you ever wish to convince anyone, first you really have to understand them and then you need to work from within THEIR framework to come up with a reason why they are better off doing what you believe to be right.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

*Yawn.* We pretend debate is a thing beyond academic circles, but the cold, unfeeling reality is that real discourse, the kind that happens within communities, is often based on mutual agreements to not broach certain subjects that inflame the passions or upset the status quo, historically often under threat of violence.

Proof that Xbox Live Chat was the true successor to the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition.

I can't tell you of how convinced I was after the fiftieth teenager who claimed to have engaged in sexual congress with my mother.

Seriously though, the greatest innovation of the XBoxOne was not including a headset and creating an ever-so-small barrier to getting to me. My gaming is so much more peaceful without rude pre-teen assholes screaming sexually and racially charged obscenities at me.

 

[09philj]

Debate having any value relies upon all participants being open to altering their ideas on the fly in order to accommodate useful information and ideas introduced by other participants, and the other participants in question being able to frame their ideas within a context that makes sense to the person being questioned. Mainstream political discourse is essentially didactic; individuals tell each other that they should want the same things they want, without justifying why within any ideological or moral framework, and also the things that are meant to be wanted are often very vague. It doesn't help that the fact that people do have fundamentally different ideas about what constitutes morality to each other seems to have been forgotten, despite how obvious it is. The complete breakdown in coherency has proven fertile ground for shysters, charlatans, bigots, idiots, and fascists (who are all of the above), as people smile and nod as a coterie of emotionally dead white machismo casualties explain that the world needs less empathy and understanding and a whole lot more scope for brutality towards anyone who may be inconvenient to the conversion of western democracies into white male privilege theme parks, and their liberal and left wing opponents inexplicably crumble in the face of having to come up with something that may sound appealing to the average working class man.

 

[Shadowstar38]

There's a few basic things people could do to improve things like

-Assume your interlocutor wants whats best for society.

-Stick to rational civil discussion without being snide, condescending, and inflammatory. In fact, just generally try to keep your emotions out of it.

-Don't generalize and label entire groups or political parties

-Don't toss around accusations of deception haphazardly but instead seek clarity

Unfortunately most conversations are framed as right vs wrong or good vs evil and people try to just assert the superiority of their position rather than try to legitimately convince people of anything or understand their opposition. So things end up going nowhere.

 

[EvilRoy]

Attempting to have a debate on a contentious topic in any format that isn't face to face is usually doomed to failure simply because once you take away the danger of getting clocked for being a prick or being called out by your friends for being a shit head all the filters fall away. Then you call your enemies evil or child rapists or slavers or on and on and guess what nobody cares what you have to say anymore. At best you managed to insult someone enough for them to call you evil or a child murderer or a practitioner of bestiality. People love to claim that civility holds you back, but to be frank civility is the only reason someone might actually listen to you on the internet - in real life if you tried to call someone any of the above you wouldn't get too far into your thesis because talking is hard with no teeth, so you have to actually get good at making good arguments, calls to action, orating, finding middle ground without splitting the difference - things that are critical for actually having a good debate or even conversation or just reaching the conclusion . The lack of that danger means that people go straight for screaming bullshit, and that means that they never actually developed the skills required to carry out an intelligent debate.

And so every screaming dipshit becomes convinced being angrily loud will get them noticed when the reality is that they are typically dismissed as trolls, 4channers, losers, bandodgers, puppet accounts and blah blah blah. That thing you see on twitter where the with it guy/girl posts a gif of themselves rolling their eyes and blocking a dozen people who are doing anything from disagreeing respectfully to screeching profanity at them? That happens in all directions at all times. Its not just that millennial twitter star that you agreed with peripherally that one time who does that, all the people you say shit to do that as well, quite likely to you, because the CAN because they know even if they tried to engage chances are the average internet dweller lacks the basic abilities required to actually produce a conversation worth having. The certainty that nothing of value is lost by knocking out dozens to hundreds to thousands of people out of a potential discussion pool is absolutely the result of the abandonment of civility and exactly the reason why debate on the internet at large is doomed.

 

[Marik2]

Debate is extremely rare. What we have on the internet are fights. We even unironically call them bloodsports at time. "Internet Kumite" is a thing. Shitposting is considered a positive thing.

Only come to the internet if you expect fights. Go somewhere organized if you want debate.

Debate is extremely rare. What we have on the internet are fights. We even unironically call them bloodsports at time. "Internet Kumite" is a thing. Shitposting is considered a positive thing.

Only come to the internet if you expect fights. Go somewhere organized if you want debate.

Pretty much this, people can't agree on a damn thing anymore, all they want to do is argue.

Nothing ever gets done, and nothing changes.

This

 

[Agema]

Pretty much this, people can't agree on a damn thing anymore, all they want to do is argue.

Arguing (I mean properly, not like raging and invective) can be a form of intellectual exercise and entertainment, like crosswords or logic problems. Thus sometimes it's simply the process that's desired, without any interest in the actual topic.

 

[tstorm823]

I think that fear, of being ridiculed for having a wrong opinion or having a career destroyed over something like that leaves a lot of the people that want to debate in good faith sitting on the sidelines because they'd rather not get pulled into the fight. I spend very little time on Twitter debating anything actually important for this very reason and it bums me out, because I love having a good discussion, but not at the risk of some random person coming in, taking what I said out of context and throwing me to the wolves.

Don't debate people on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or reddit. Social media is like 10% social 90% media. Those platforms aren't designed for discussion, they're designed for performance. You say people forget there's another person on the other side of the screen, but that's not the problem. The problem is there are thousands to millions of people on the other side of the screen, the one other person talking hardly matters in comparison.