[lemmsjid]

I partially agree with you but have some counter thoughts.

Tone is something that can be adopted intentionally or unintentionally. If you hear a pilot on a radio dryly say something in a calm and detached tone, it could be in the context of an emergency. Pilots are enculturated to adopt that tone (for various reasons). Meanwhile particular cultures have different levels of acceptability when it comes to tone: some cultures perceive other cultures as more angry, or detached, because of the norms of communication within those cultures.

In short, I think the tone of “calm, scientific detachment” is often weaponized to lend undeserved credibility to an argument, because people tend to believe people more when they adopt that tone.

Furthermore, tone does have a purpose if used alongside a well done argument. For example, in the article the OP linked to, there is a rather exhaustive refutation of the book in question. The tone of the author previews that their entire opinion on the book is negative, given all the arguments they put forth in their review. If the author of the review had adopted a calm and thoughtful tone, perhaps it would indeed have been more effective because the reader would decide. On the other hand, most people won’t read the entire review, so the tone of the author makes it clear what their opinion is.

That said I am not wholly disagreeing with you: would be interesting to do a study using some varying markers to identify tone, and identify, I don’t know, argumentative complexity, and see if snarkiness is associated with a lack of complexity. Assuming you can find markers with predictive power.

[norswap]

I think what actually convinces me more than tone is nuance. If you can fairly assess arguments on both sides, recognize when either side makes a good point, and mention when you're confused about your conclusion, or when some point of evidence doesn't mesh with the theory. Things that are all one-sided are usually wrong (though I suppose there are cases where the truth is indeed one-sided, it's just pretty rare, and less likely to be things that people that you otherwise consider serious would argue about).

Even that attitude can be weaponized I suppose, if nuance convinced more people, than more people would learn to fake nuance to push their favorite outcome. Though I'd like to think that the process would change them a little bit for the better too.