Great article. Paul provides a useful illumination of the issue. The great medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas operated at level DH6, often with devastating effect. He would formulate and state the argument he planned to refute with clarity, depth, accuracy, and precision. He often would make his opponent's case better than the opponent had done! I believe his secret was that he was humbly interested in the truth wherever it led. Given his lack of a pre-conceived agenda, he could take a proposition and explore its implications 20 plies deep, giving it the benefit of the doubt and making the best case for it at each step. Having fully plumbed an idea and 'grokked' it, then he could unwind the stack as it were, and state his conclusions in a powerfully convincing manner. Humility, detachment, an agenda-free willingness to listen and follow the truth where it leads, and strength in defending hard-won truth when found all seem to be good places to start.
Aquinas wasn't quite so thorough in all his works. It's mostly the Summa Theologica which is so rigorous. I agree with the application however, for one to brook disagreement with another, one should usually understand the subject better than that person. This implies understanding your opponent's arguments better than your opponent. If don't understand your opponents arguments better than he, who are you to say that he is wrong in making them?
(trivia about Aquinas: his handwriting was so bad, that there are only about 10 people or so in the world today that can read it.)
This is when you preempt that with which you would disagree by stating your case in such a way as to elicit quick disagreement (in the form of DH0 to DH6). Usually done by noticing a subset of all data, forming a hypothesis to explain only that subset, and presenting it as a conclusion. Often done without even realizing it.
The relational database model is dead.
There is no future in enterprise software.
<Language du jour> is clearly the best.
No one else is doing <xyz>, so it must be a deadend.
I think the Flamebaiting category is a useful addition to PG's hierarchy.
The new category brings to mind an interesting property of this hierarchy though, namely that it seems to be difficult to respond to an "argument" with a higher order technique than that which was originally presented. For example, if one were disagreeing with a purely ad hominem rant, one would find it futile and nearly impossible to disagree with the rant at any higher level; how can one truly refute an argument that has no central point? It's somewhat depressing because, if true, it implies that a discussion is upper bounded at the level of discourse that initiated the discussion.
The way out of this, as far as I can tell, is recognizing that statements are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes the only way to raise the level of discourse is to engage in a sort of meta-disagreement. In other words, sometimes the point of a statement is not the content, but the context. While it works to classify criticisms of tone, for example, as weak if one were dealing with a substantive argument, the metadata (tone, speaker, etc) around the content of a non-argument may allow one to say something intelligent about the statement by tying it to the broader context in which it was made.
Text-based disagreements aside, I'd like to do an arc off this comment - to talk about the importance of perspective. Guess which two perspective(s) can fuel disagreement...
The God perspective (Yeah, you the expert?)
"This restaurant is the best in town"
The 2nd person perspective (Why should you know what I should do)
"You really should try this restaurant."
The 1st-person perspective (the only one you can truly own)
"I really like this restaurant. I like the cooking and I feel like I am welcome here."
Honestly I think you'd have to move his DH0 to DH-1 and then put flamebaiting as DH0. The straight up 'u r a fag!!!1' insults require much less effort than flamebait.
Although really, flamebaiting is just a more subtle way to call someone (or their idea) retarded, so maybe it's just a special (more eloquent) case of DH0.
Here's something to think about. According to Aristotle's Rhetoric, a person making a point to an audience has three things to offer:
-- Ethos -- who they are and why they speak with authority.
-- Pathos -- empathy with the audience.
-- Logos -- the substance of the argument.
So, an opponent can try to undermine any of these three.
Undermining a person's ethos can be nasty "yo' momma" style language, or it can be more sophisticated. If the person's argument relies on their ethos, however, it may be legitimate. For example, when Nobel laureate William Schockley argues for racial eugenics on the strength of his physics background, it's legitimate to say "Professor, your expertise is in physics, not genetics." This is helpful with anyone who says, effectively, "I'm a bigshot so what I say must be true."
Undermining pathos can also be helpful. For example, "thus-and-such software marketer doesn't want to help you and me, she wants to sell more software licenses for her company. Do not blindly accept her claims that her product is better."
Of course, undermining the logos -- the substance of the argument -- is a very effective way to disagree.
But, my point is, undermining a speaker's pathos and ethos are also legitimate, especially when their argument critically depends on those aspects of their rhetoric.
Not sure if it's significantly different from DH6, but Karl Popper's style of debate might be termed DH7.
It's similar to DH6, but first you patch up the opponent's arguments to make the best possible case. Then you find the central point in that case, even if the author doesn't explicitly state it. It's what he really meant to say and might indeed have said if he was on good form. (If there's a stronger or more general version of that point you might select that instead.)
Actually I thought of making DH7 something similar: not merely refuting what your opponent said, but also explaining what led him to make that mistake. But I wasn't sure, so I left it out.
That's a good point that you should patch up their argument first. But also, you shouldn't think of it as their argument. It is an argument. If you want to find the truth you should look for the best arguments on all sides, not refute a shoddy one.
Paul Graham does a good job outlining the different forms a disagreement can take and evaluating their effectiveness. I agree with his analysis. I'm going to expand on it.
It seems this piece was written in response to the various criticisms he received because for his "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" essay. In addition to objecting to the form these criticisms took, I think he could also have talked about one of the fundamental causes of most disagreements on the internet - lack of charitable interpretation.
Many interpreted his essay as an attack on big-company programmers - using as evidence the analogies he used, the frankness of his writing style, etc. - and reached the conclusion that he had an elitist attitude about his profession. Now, this may or may not be true (having met him, my opinion is a firm "not true"). But the point is that it doesn't matter. If we interpret charitably, we remain agnostic on what his argument implies about him (thus abstaining from DH1 and DH2 attacks) and instead focus on the actual argument. Some critics managed to do that. But many didn't. And the worst part is that the lack of charitable interpretation obscured their actual disagreements, so now we've wasted time talking about "how to disagree" instead of "what are the correlations/effects of company type on programmer happiness/ability/prospects".
Of course, an author should be careful to frame his arguments in a way that minimizes the danger from misinterpretation. In other words, an author should try to write well.
Many times people will enter a passionate debate if they feel their lifestyle or livelihood is at stake. It's the same reason news media have long focused on crime, sex, and scandal - BAD THINGS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!
But in forming an actual dialogue, such all-or-nothing viewpoints make people defensive. The behavior of monopolies that have been obsoleted by technology is little different from that of the Luddites - they try to stop the change, even when it's irrational to try. "Irrational self-interest" is a pretty neat term to sum it up.
"You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" strikes keenly and precisely at the employed, because it primarily lists benefits of startup life, presenting an unbalanced picture. The title certainly doesn't help matters. That PG's arguments are pretty strong, and he has some established weight in online communities, makes him hard to dismiss out of hand, which further increases the tension.
Internet discussion tends to stay low on the hierarchy because the people replying are mostly stuck in defensive mode. Pragmatic, nuanced thinking doesn't seem to come naturally to humans.
"an author should be careful to frame his arguments in a way that minimizes the danger from misinterpretation"
I find this takes more effort than any other part of writing. There is a point where this doesn't necessarily make the text better because it becomes less succinct since the author must clarify against every possible non-charitable interpretation.
One of the things I really like about YC news is the fact that it's a great place to disagree. I would even say that it is one of the sites defining characteristics. Whenever I hold an unpopular or controversial view here there will of course be replies - but very rarely do I experience namecalling, trollig or other fluff that doesn't add to the conversation. The replies are always tactful, and often very insightful. Sometimes I even have to take my words back, convinced by another user that I was wrong. And we all learn from it.
Right behind you on this one. After reading the article I was terrified that YC.News would line up behind PG - how refreshing to see that the community is more than happy to dissent. I don't agree, but I really respect the forum which he was instrumental in creating.
The author's main point seems to be x. As he says:
<quotation>
But this is wrong for the following reasons: Who is this guy and what authority does he have to write about these topics? I haven't read the essay, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it.
Well, the main problem with this essay is that sometimes mocking someone's argument is the best way to disagree with it. The parody of PG's last essay on having a boss was highly effective at this: http://www.jsequeira.com/blog/2008/03/24.html
Is this a lower form of disagreement than DH6? Most definitely, however, the English language has a rich tradition of satire and mockery going back at least as far as Jonathan Swift.
Depends on what you mean by "the best way to disagree". If you are preaching to the choir (and most disagreements on the web fall into this category), then mocking is the best way, because it entertains, whereas the alternative does nothing at all.
But if you care about making someone understand your argument for the first time, why would you put extra layers on it, which will have to be unwrapped to get to the inner logic?
I think I know why most people do it. The point made in the form of mockery is laborious to refute, so nobody bothers. And if somebody bothers, the refutation is laborious to follow, so nobody bothers to read it. Thus mockery, however idiotic, often stays unrefuted, and to the author and his camp that's close enough to "correct".
Have you been to Reddit lately? Half of all disagreements are in the form of (idiotic) mockery. It wasn't like this early on.
The authors are idiots. Of course they would write something like this, they probably make their living off selling these sorts of pie-in-the-sky ideals to people. The whole tone of this article is pretentious and insulting. Personal attacks are perfectly valid forms of argument and communication. If you look at these things in terms of effectiveness, they are usually more practical approaches that yield results, especially in the political realm. One thing they write is:
'If you can't find an actual quote to disagree with, you may be arguing with a straw man.'
That isn't true. Using analog-situation arguments and reductions to absurdity to point out the fallacies of a point is a long-used, valid practice. The central point of their writing seems to be that addressing substance using reason is the most effective way of arguing. They write:
"The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point."
and point out that refutation is the strongest from of argument against some other point, Well, "strongest" is a subjective evaluation and I would like to point out that in the history of argument and in particular political discourse, usually it is the loudest, angriest, and downright scariest people in the argument who win; for example, look at the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s So these people have it just plain all wrong.
There, now, did I miss anything? =)
Great piece, really, I loved it. Thanks for putting it out there!
One thing that isn't mentioned in this essay is an appreciation of the concept of having a "preponderance of evidence." In U.S. law, for example, this concept is introduced directly through the burden of proof hierarchy (terms like reasonable suspicion, clear and convincing evidence, reasonable doubt, etc.).
While only DH4-DH6 can strictly prove an argument wrong, there are many, many situations in which it is infeasible to unilaterally determine "truth." In these cases, DH1-DH3 can be used to determine the probability of a statement being true.
Take ad hominem. Sure it's a weak form of argumentation, but it is reasonable to exercise a certain amount of skepticism based on the nature of the speaker. For example, the New York Post tends to be a more conservative newspaper, while the New York Times tends to be more liberal. Obviously, neither of these facts can definitively prove or disprove a statement, but they can inform an analysis of these papers' claims.
If I'm making a counter-argument I care about, I try to take a "defense-in-depth" approach and attack the original statement at all levels that are useful and try to establish credibility in all the ways I can. I don't think arguing well maps directly to using a higher form of rhetoric. At the end of the day, it depends on your audience. Just ask Karl Rove and James Carville. ;)
I thought this was a pretty good essay. Timely as well. There was considerable disagreement over PG's last essay. You could see the hierarchy of responses on both sides, including straw man arguments.
If comments could be tagged with hierarchy levels, it might raise the general level of argument.
"Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional."
I totally agree with this, particularly on YC News where there are a lot of smart people. When the words fly, there's a tendency to overreact and say things that wouldn't occur if we were face-to-face. I admit having done this. It would be great if some optional tagging feature were built into a comment system, so writers could get some feedback when others thought they strayed.
Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments.
I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...
What I would love to read is an essay about "absolutism": the belief that there's only One Truth and that it can be really proved. I think many people disagree precisely about this, they think that being an absolutist is bad. Among programmers, the incidence of absolutism seems to be much higher (the closer to math, the higher?).
So I think that PG's essay is quite good (as most others), in that it looks for this "absolute truths", he tries to analyze stuff and make a contribution, say something that will last. I find this very scientific, which is good in my opinion. The problem is that many people don't see it that way. It is very difficult to stick to the principle of "egoless disagreement".
I wish more people wrote stuff like this. There are a million writing books on grammar and style, but god forbid someone ever write something about what makes good ideas...
That's a fine hierarchy and all. But I have the feeling that a more efficient way of conversation is to get rid of the notion of 'winning' and argument and move to 'solving' the problem. That goes beyond the intellectual and into the cultural - and that is makes it harder - but it would have also more leverage.
Winning is only a problem if your definition of it is fucked up. Winning an argument means you have found or are closer to a particular truth.
The poisoning of various phrases and words leads to you focus on the emotions that are evoked rather than the definition.
This is why I dislike arguing about politics or anything else. No one wants to really argue (where the argument is a logical and reasoned debate), they want agreement or acknowledgment that their beliefs are okay.
This is a nice catalog of some common forms of disagreement, but I'm not convinced that this set of six is exhaustive, nor am I convinced that if other forms are added that the set will remain well-ordered.
I agree that it's nowhere near exhaustive, most obviously because it doesn't address the ways that writers try to directly deceive the audience (appeals to flattery, conservatism, etc).
I remember being part of an Academic Games league in high school. One of my favorite games was simply called "Propaganda." Everyone sat in a big room, listened to arguments, and identified the type of rhetorical technique being used. It may sound lame, but it was actually pretty fun and cultivated some useful skills.
Each level (DH0,1,2,etc.) could include a variety of forms of disagreement, instead of just one. The resulting chart would become a rough guide to their relative strengths: move "up" the chart for better forms, and "down" for the bad ones (eliminate the one-to-one relationship between "DH-level" and "Form of Disagreement").
It would become more comprehensive, but also harder to present in a simple, compelling, immediately understandable way. Not sure if it'd be worth it.
How do you account for disagreeing, not with someone's conclusions, but with the means that they used to arrive at them?
I usually think it in vain to post a comment on something that I fundamentally disagree with, because I rarely find an author with a strong point of view who has not already found a choir to preach to, so that speaking up would be futile—I would be drowned out, or villanized.
The only kinds of comments which seem to me to be worth making are those in which:
You agree, and offer some novel corroboration;
You agree with the conclusion, but disagree with the means;
Or you raise a question, without treating of the conclusion at all.
The obvious possibility would be to reproduce the entire hierarchy, but to a different purpose.
DH0: "Stop agreeing with me, you're making me look bad."
DH1: "You should let someone else make that argument."
DH2: "That (arrogant,presumptuous,juvenile) tone won't go over well."
DH3: "You're going to offend people who believe X."
DH4: "I heard an argument Y against this," or "How do you solve problem Y"?
DH5: "Have you considered solution Z' to problem Z?"
DH6: "You're formulating your own belief incorrectly."
But I don't think that your bounds hold here. DH0 is still maximally unhelpful, but DH6 may be just as bad. DH1 may be the wisest advice that you can receive. DH3 is less helpful than DH2 (better to be asked to express your beliefs more politely, than to be asked to conceal them). And DH4 is more polite than DH5 (better to solicit the author's opinion on a difficulty, than to obtrude your own).
[+] [-] gregfjohnson|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astine|18 years ago|reply
(trivia about Aquinas: his handwriting was so bad, that there are only about 10 people or so in the world today that can read it.)
[+] [-] agentbleu|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edw519|18 years ago|reply
DH-1. Flamebaiting.
This is when you preempt that with which you would disagree by stating your case in such a way as to elicit quick disagreement (in the form of DH0 to DH6). Usually done by noticing a subset of all data, forming a hypothesis to explain only that subset, and presenting it as a conclusion. Often done without even realizing it.
[+] [-] pius|18 years ago|reply
The new category brings to mind an interesting property of this hierarchy though, namely that it seems to be difficult to respond to an "argument" with a higher order technique than that which was originally presented. For example, if one were disagreeing with a purely ad hominem rant, one would find it futile and nearly impossible to disagree with the rant at any higher level; how can one truly refute an argument that has no central point? It's somewhat depressing because, if true, it implies that a discussion is upper bounded at the level of discourse that initiated the discussion.
The way out of this, as far as I can tell, is recognizing that statements are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes the only way to raise the level of discourse is to engage in a sort of meta-disagreement. In other words, sometimes the point of a statement is not the content, but the context. While it works to classify criticisms of tone, for example, as weak if one were dealing with a substantive argument, the metadata (tone, speaker, etc) around the content of a non-argument may allow one to say something intelligent about the statement by tying it to the broader context in which it was made.
[+] [-] wallflower|18 years ago|reply
The God perspective (Yeah, you the expert?) "This restaurant is the best in town"
The 2nd person perspective (Why should you know what I should do) "You really should try this restaurant."
The 1st-person perspective (the only one you can truly own) "I really like this restaurant. I like the cooking and I feel like I am welcome here."
[+] [-] pg|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xichekolas|18 years ago|reply
Although really, flamebaiting is just a more subtle way to call someone (or their idea) retarded, so maybe it's just a special (more eloquent) case of DH0.
[+] [-] JoeBackward|18 years ago|reply
Here's something to think about. According to Aristotle's Rhetoric, a person making a point to an audience has three things to offer:
-- Ethos -- who they are and why they speak with authority. -- Pathos -- empathy with the audience. -- Logos -- the substance of the argument.
So, an opponent can try to undermine any of these three.
Undermining a person's ethos can be nasty "yo' momma" style language, or it can be more sophisticated. If the person's argument relies on their ethos, however, it may be legitimate. For example, when Nobel laureate William Schockley argues for racial eugenics on the strength of his physics background, it's legitimate to say "Professor, your expertise is in physics, not genetics." This is helpful with anyone who says, effectively, "I'm a bigshot so what I say must be true."
Undermining pathos can also be helpful. For example, "thus-and-such software marketer doesn't want to help you and me, she wants to sell more software licenses for her company. Do not blindly accept her claims that her product is better."
Of course, undermining the logos -- the substance of the argument -- is a very effective way to disagree.
But, my point is, undermining a speaker's pathos and ethos are also legitimate, especially when their argument critically depends on those aspects of their rhetoric.
[+] [-] tungstenfurnace|18 years ago|reply
Not sure if it's significantly different from DH6, but Karl Popper's style of debate might be termed DH7.
It's similar to DH6, but first you patch up the opponent's arguments to make the best possible case. Then you find the central point in that case, even if the author doesn't explicitly state it. It's what he really meant to say and might indeed have said if he was on good form. (If there's a stronger or more general version of that point you might select that instead.)
And _then_ you carefully demolish it.
[+] [-] pg|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xlnt|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsrivast|18 years ago|reply
It seems this piece was written in response to the various criticisms he received because for his "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" essay. In addition to objecting to the form these criticisms took, I think he could also have talked about one of the fundamental causes of most disagreements on the internet - lack of charitable interpretation.
Many interpreted his essay as an attack on big-company programmers - using as evidence the analogies he used, the frankness of his writing style, etc. - and reached the conclusion that he had an elitist attitude about his profession. Now, this may or may not be true (having met him, my opinion is a firm "not true"). But the point is that it doesn't matter. If we interpret charitably, we remain agnostic on what his argument implies about him (thus abstaining from DH1 and DH2 attacks) and instead focus on the actual argument. Some critics managed to do that. But many didn't. And the worst part is that the lack of charitable interpretation obscured their actual disagreements, so now we've wasted time talking about "how to disagree" instead of "what are the correlations/effects of company type on programmer happiness/ability/prospects".
Of course, an author should be careful to frame his arguments in a way that minimizes the danger from misinterpretation. In other words, an author should try to write well.
[+] [-] rtf|18 years ago|reply
But in forming an actual dialogue, such all-or-nothing viewpoints make people defensive. The behavior of monopolies that have been obsoleted by technology is little different from that of the Luddites - they try to stop the change, even when it's irrational to try. "Irrational self-interest" is a pretty neat term to sum it up.
"You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss" strikes keenly and precisely at the employed, because it primarily lists benefits of startup life, presenting an unbalanced picture. The title certainly doesn't help matters. That PG's arguments are pretty strong, and he has some established weight in online communities, makes him hard to dismiss out of hand, which further increases the tension.
Internet discussion tends to stay low on the hierarchy because the people replying are mostly stuck in defensive mode. Pragmatic, nuanced thinking doesn't seem to come naturally to humans.
[+] [-] gregwebs|18 years ago|reply
I find this takes more effort than any other part of writing. There is a point where this doesn't necessarily make the text better because it becomes less succinct since the author must clarify against every possible non-charitable interpretation.
[+] [-] mixmax|18 years ago|reply
You don't see that in many forums.
[+] [-] wehriam|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omouse|18 years ago|reply
Actually I do not. There are many good long replies here but Reddit, at least for some of the submissions, also has some good long discussions.
[+] [-] unknown|18 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anewaccountname|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kaizyn|18 years ago|reply
Is this a lower form of disagreement than DH6? Most definitely, however, the English language has a rich tradition of satire and mockery going back at least as far as Jonathan Swift.
[+] [-] pg|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdflkj|18 years ago|reply
But if you care about making someone understand your argument for the first time, why would you put extra layers on it, which will have to be unwrapped to get to the inner logic?
I think I know why most people do it. The point made in the form of mockery is laborious to refute, so nobody bothers. And if somebody bothers, the refutation is laborious to follow, so nobody bothers to read it. Thus mockery, however idiotic, often stays unrefuted, and to the author and his camp that's close enough to "correct".
Have you been to Reddit lately? Half of all disagreements are in the form of (idiotic) mockery. It wasn't like this early on.
[+] [-] mascarenhas|18 years ago|reply
Edit: and on a more recent (and cynical :-) ) note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right
[+] [-] pg|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcc99|18 years ago|reply
'If you can't find an actual quote to disagree with, you may be arguing with a straw man.'
That isn't true. Using analog-situation arguments and reductions to absurdity to point out the fallacies of a point is a long-used, valid practice. The central point of their writing seems to be that addressing substance using reason is the most effective way of arguing. They write:
"The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point."
and point out that refutation is the strongest from of argument against some other point, Well, "strongest" is a subjective evaluation and I would like to point out that in the history of argument and in particular political discourse, usually it is the loudest, angriest, and downright scariest people in the argument who win; for example, look at the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s So these people have it just plain all wrong.
There, now, did I miss anything? =)
Great piece, really, I loved it. Thanks for putting it out there!
[+] [-] pius|18 years ago|reply
While only DH4-DH6 can strictly prove an argument wrong, there are many, many situations in which it is infeasible to unilaterally determine "truth." In these cases, DH1-DH3 can be used to determine the probability of a statement being true.
Take ad hominem. Sure it's a weak form of argumentation, but it is reasonable to exercise a certain amount of skepticism based on the nature of the speaker. For example, the New York Post tends to be a more conservative newspaper, while the New York Times tends to be more liberal. Obviously, neither of these facts can definitively prove or disprove a statement, but they can inform an analysis of these papers' claims.
If I'm making a counter-argument I care about, I try to take a "defense-in-depth" approach and attack the original statement at all levels that are useful and try to establish credibility in all the ways I can. I don't think arguing well maps directly to using a higher form of rhetoric. At the end of the day, it depends on your audience. Just ask Karl Rove and James Carville. ;)
[+] [-] jimbokun|18 years ago|reply
I believe their area of expertise is propaganda, not argument.
(But I suppose both could be a form of rhetoric.)
[+] [-] lunchbox|18 years ago|reply
"Conversational terrorism" outlines more techniques used by conversational bullies: http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html
[+] [-] DocSavage|18 years ago|reply
If comments could be tagged with hierarchy levels, it might raise the general level of argument.
"Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional."
I totally agree with this, particularly on YC News where there are a lot of smart people. When the words fly, there's a tendency to overreact and say things that wouldn't occur if we were face-to-face. I admit having done this. It would be great if some optional tagging feature were built into a comment system, so writers could get some feedback when others thought they strayed.
[+] [-] PieSquared|18 years ago|reply
I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...
[+] [-] pauek|18 years ago|reply
So I think that PG's essay is quite good (as most others), in that it looks for this "absolute truths", he tries to analyze stuff and make a contribution, say something that will last. I find this very scientific, which is good in my opinion. The problem is that many people don't see it that way. It is very difficult to stick to the principle of "egoless disagreement".
[+] [-] rms|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ken|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xichekolas|18 years ago|reply
(DH3 ftw!)
Edit: Irony.
[+] [-] kerrynitz|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|18 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iamelgringo|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcurtis|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zby|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omouse|18 years ago|reply
The poisoning of various phrases and words leads to you focus on the emotions that are evoked rather than the definition.
This is why I dislike arguing about politics or anything else. No one wants to really argue (where the argument is a logical and reasoned debate), they want agreement or acknowledgment that their beliefs are okay.
[+] [-] brlewis|18 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pius|18 years ago|reply
I remember being part of an Academic Games league in high school. One of my favorite games was simply called "Propaganda." Everyone sat in a big room, listened to arguments, and identified the type of rhetorical technique being used. It may sound lame, but it was actually pretty fun and cultivated some useful skills.
Anyway, here's the technique list they used: http://mlagonline.org/Prop_ABCE.pdf [pdf]
and a more detailed but somewhat different list of logical fallacies: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
[+] [-] h34t|18 years ago|reply
It would become more comprehensive, but also harder to present in a simple, compelling, immediately understandable way. Not sure if it'd be worth it.
[+] [-] ruricolist|18 years ago|reply
I usually think it in vain to post a comment on something that I fundamentally disagree with, because I rarely find an author with a strong point of view who has not already found a choir to preach to, so that speaking up would be futile—I would be drowned out, or villanized.
The only kinds of comments which seem to me to be worth making are those in which: You agree, and offer some novel corroboration; You agree with the conclusion, but disagree with the means; Or you raise a question, without treating of the conclusion at all.
The obvious possibility would be to reproduce the entire hierarchy, but to a different purpose.
DH0: "Stop agreeing with me, you're making me look bad." DH1: "You should let someone else make that argument." DH2: "That (arrogant,presumptuous,juvenile) tone won't go over well." DH3: "You're going to offend people who believe X." DH4: "I heard an argument Y against this," or "How do you solve problem Y"? DH5: "Have you considered solution Z' to problem Z?" DH6: "You're formulating your own belief incorrectly."
But I don't think that your bounds hold here. DH0 is still maximally unhelpful, but DH6 may be just as bad. DH1 may be the wisest advice that you can receive. DH3 is less helpful than DH2 (better to be asked to express your beliefs more politely, than to be asked to conceal them). And DH4 is more polite than DH5 (better to solicit the author's opinion on a difficulty, than to obtrude your own).