Comic Strips

See so my kneejerk response to this on seeing it, is, oh, someone's going, literally line by line of my comment, and, line by line, refuting what I say. That's what I would classically kind of think of as, oh, this is a bad faith argument, especially because you extrapolate from my post and say, oh, you must've been accused of arguing in bad faith constantly, and are trying to convince everyone that bad faith arguments are actually epic and cool! This is not the case, that's not what I'm really arguing. Despite these somewhat clear signals, in my mind, I'm going to respond, because I'm a hypocrite, of course.

I'm not disputing the actual definitions of sealioning or strawmanning, or that these can be potentially useful terms, what I'm doing is I'm saying that people should put more thought into what it is other people are actually doing with their argument, and what it is that they want out of their engagement with other people, rather than just labeling someone else as something, and then going about their day.

That doesn't really help anyone, it's just a kind of self-satisfying thing to do. Anyone reading the comment has to trust that the person doing the labeling is doing it correctly, and to responsibly confirm that, they're going to have to have read the preceding comment and made their own mind up about it. So it's not helpful to just label something as "misinformation", and then move on as though you've provided some sort of divinely ordained moral service to everyone passing by. I've encountered that sort of mentality before, that debates aren't really done out of like, an intellectual curiosity, or to kind of, talk through your own viewpoints while listening to someone else and they're input, they're done for some third party audience. Which I think is, you know, a less helpful way of viewing debates, viewing arguments. Less helpful for a third party, but also less helpful for yourself. If you're doing it correctly, it shouldn't matter much whether or not your opposition is arguing with you in bad faith, because you, and everyone else, should still be able to get something out of it.

I'd also say, a bulk of my point was in the latter half of my comment, the part that you didn't respond to line by line. My point is that, realistically, bad faith arguments can come from anywhere, even from people who insist and fully believe that they're not arguing in bad faith, i.e. people who are actually arguing in good faith and just doing so really poorly because they're dumb. This being the case, that the signals are kind of indistinguishable, and it also being the case that bad faith arguments are kind of, doomed to happen, my advice is that people should either ignore them completely, and not let them kind of, occupy as much free rent as they do, in their minds, or they should work to try and get something out of them despite their bad faith. That was the point I intended to make. Arguing in such a manner, is more beneficial to an observing third party, it can potentially solve the problem of separating signals between bad faith arguers, and poor arguers, and it can help you figure out what your real opinion is on something, and make you better at debate.

Edit: To clarify, what I'm arguing against in my post is people who just summarize someone's argument as "oh, here's a list of all the logical fallacies you've performed", and then they haven't done any of the work to say why that's important, or how those fallacies affected something. I don't think that's a helpful function, to anyone, and it leads to a bunch of people who don't know what any specific fallacy is, other than that it's something that they can just kind of slap onto arguments they hate.

Strawman is a pretty common fallacy that I've noticed this happen to. I'd also like to comment that, you know, sure, am I creating a strawman by arguing against that type of behavior? I don't fuckin know. I was under the impression that a strawman was when you were arguing against someone, and then you basically put words in their mouth and extrapolate positions in their argument that they never really took. When I posted that comment, I wasn't arguing against any specific person, I was just commenting about a general thing I've experienced. I wasn't putting words in anyone's mouth, because I wasn't responding to anyone.

"cuntiness"

That is a kind of cynical worldview, i will admit. I think with the amount of people responding to my post that kind of, haven't really gotten what I'm trying to get across, I think I've failed with making my point, perhaps.

To put it better, I think it realistically shouldn't matter. People looking to score points, people looking for easy targets for bad faith pesterings and attacks. The mentality and approach I've taken, which I would espouse as advice to others, is that, despite the kind of, stupidity of the internet, if you are going to respond, you should attempt to get something out of it. Even just to be conscious of what you're getting out of it, would be a step up, too many people take easy owns because they want to reaffirm their own ego, and aren't even conscious that's what they're looking to do. It would even be better, I would think, if people were conscious of that, even if they still did it in the end. I mean that's probably what we're all doing to some extent.

In any case, I think, actually trying to present an external argument, right, it's harder, it's not as rewarding, most people aren't going to do it. But I think passersby will still appreciate it when it's done, I think it's objectively more useful, than an easier to parse, easy own, and I think potentially, if done correctly, it can more legitimately distinguish between bad faith arguers and people who are just arguing poorly, which can hopefully make people less cynical and more satisfied with their existence online. It's a sisyphean task, sure, but sisyphus is also jacked, and we all needed the exercise anyways.

This is not really to counteract any of what you're saying, though, I think we're kind of, making points on two different levels. You're arguing a more kind of, societal reality point, which I would totally agree with, I'm arguing an individual goal kind of point, like an actionable advice kind of thing. Hopefully, anyways.

That's not a very hot take.