The biggest mistake people make when arguing online is thinking that their objective is to convince "the other person".
Convincing your adversary is possible, but not necessary, to carry an argument to conclusion. The people likely to want to spend time defending their stance are also likely to be a bit stubborn about it. However, quiet people by the sidelines, reading without posting, hold their opinions much less fervently.
Even if you make a really convincing case, you may not get your opponent to concede, but you may sway many bystanders.
edit: I see that a lot of us agree on this. A bit redundant now.
In my 15+ years of conversing online, migrating from usenet to slashdot, to reddit, to eventually here, I've learned that online arguing by and large is a waste of time - most of the conversations superficial, many of the thoughts I express and agree with, or even disagree with, having little to no consequence on anything tangible.
I've gotten lots of positive responses over the years, from sideline viewers and even the people I was directly conversing with, but I've also received more than my share of negativity, 'trolling' and hostility.
I agree with you, that one way to carry an argument to a conclusion is to avoid aiming to convince the other person of anything, to simply illustrate your point, and allow whoever is reading to be able to read your point without feeling as though their own ideas and beliefs are under attack.
The slightly humorous thing is, the more people agreed with me and rallied behind me, the less I wanted to converse. I neither sought debate for the purposes of constructing heated arguments, but I began to fear that I had learned some kind of argument algorithm, that made my perspective more appealing to listen to and agree with. I felt as though I was combining elements of logic and rhetoric in ways that seemed to directly reveal truth, but when I walked away from my computer, I felt none the wiser for what I had expressed. On top of this, I realized much of the time, I wasn't even really thinking about what I was saying, and in retrospect, I wound up trailing down paths of ideas that seemed to have more control over me, than I did over them, just because the argument itself seemed to stitch itself together so eloquently.
I pop my head in from time to time, place to place, but I think it's much more enjoyable and valuable to learn what my opinions are, isolated, than what they are, publicly. I have had far more questions about my own ideas, when I don't feel compelled to distill them down to something easily digestible, easily understood, and easily communicated.
There is a lot of loneliness in this, I will say that. And there was a lot of growth I had myself, in conversing with so many people, so I don't discredit it entirely. A balance between knowing one's own self, and being able to effectively communicate one's own ideas is probably the ideal, but this itself requires just as much, if not more time, to achieve directly, than it does to experience life, observe it, derive opinions from it, and express them on any other subject matter. It was that realization, that made me realize how superficial my opinions were. These were ideas that I connected strongly to my identity, and because of the response I received, I thought they were valuable, deep, well thought out, worthy of holding tightly to.
I'd like to learn to converse again, one day, but I would hope that the things I get to talk about affect both myself and the people who want to interact with me, in ways that are not so short lived. Small talk can be nice, but I've learned that even the most intellectually challenging subjects can find ways to turn themselves into small talk. When I hit that realization, I felt that every bit of knowledge I had acquired had just turned into one giant dump of 'stuff' that I had to sift through once again, to distinguish fluff from truth.
With regard to bystanders though - I wouldn't be so quick to make assumptions. In many internet contexts, I am inclined to agree with you, in theory and from direct personal experience and observation. I don't know if it's some sort of effect of psychological projection - when I used to quickly jump to agreement while following along a well sustained and well worded conversation with multiple participants, I thought it was obvious that everyone would be in agreement easily, their minds skimming and snapping into the same places my mind would. Even if they were in silent disagreement, that too was knowable, capable of having something said about it, without it being directly revealed. But the more time I spent in disagreement, in silence, the more doubt I have on that kind of certainty. It has taken me years to learn enough self control, such that I can still interact while disagreeing, without communicating any sort of passive disagreement - and this I am sure I have yet to master. But it's just possible that every mind is like that - there is no predictability in knowing how anyone will respond to anything, and even through thorough observation, there is no certainty that what is to be observed in the future will conform to what was observed in the past.
Most people want to be right all the time. Most people on the internet have at least one public viewpoint that is perceived as wrong by someone else. Having your views challenged means you have to uncomfortably question yourself, and in most cases, people would rather defend their views even if they know that their opponent appears more well-informed, and maybe even more right.
You see this even more in person, when someone clearly lacks the information to back up their claims but defend them nonetheless. It is astounding how easily any of us can revert to the talking points that made us familiar with our viewpoint in the first place, instead of facing the facts that we are wrong and the other person - especially if we don't like them - is correct.
So in the end, the only real way to win an Internet argument is to have more people on your side than your opponent. Because at the end of the day, people are too set in their ways to let a username attached to a block of text change anything.
It could also be that people don't change their views instantly.
It has certainly been my experience that changing important views takes time. The idea(s) have to kind of coalesce in my mind before I accept them fully. Sort of a Kübler-Ross model of view change?
What this suggests is that people put too much self worth in to their opinions and that most people simply aren't suited the rigors of arguing because they're too emotional (I'm no exception).
Being persuasive online requires people take the utmost care to the emotional distancing the targeted individual will have to invoke as they change their opinion but preserve their self worth.
"The reason there's a convention of being ingratiating in print is that most essays are written to persuade. And as any politician could tell you, the way to persuade people is not just to baldly state the facts. You have to add a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down."
From what I've seen, if you add only sugar and no facts you'll be better at persuading people than if you mix the two, as long as you can hit their emotions correctly.
Is that really persuasion though? I mean, it's used as a form of persuasion, yes, but how often do you see guilt and shame successfully persuade someone to another side? I think the prevalence of those tactics is what feeds the attitude that any form of debate will do nothing but further entrench each side in the initial opinion.
I think a major reason that online arguments don't lead to persuasion much of the time is their format. In the Change My View sub-reddit and elsewhere, people tend to write in blocks of unstructured text--paragraphs--that allow them to express whatever they want to, which may not be coherent or actually respond directly to the assertions of the person they're replying to.
I'm now working full-time on what used to be a side project that tries to solve this problem: https://sequiturs.com.
Arguments on Sequiturs consist of a series of statements divided into premises and conclusions. This format creates in the reader an expectation of coherence, an expectation that there is a logical progression from some starting point to some conclusion. In my experience this format is extremely effective at causing the author of an argument to boil it down to the bare essentials. If someone else thinks the argument is flawed, he/she can point to a specific numbered step in the argument to identify very concretely what he/she disagrees with. Here's an example of what this looks like, with an example argument I wrote up about why backdoors around encryption are a bad idea: https://sequiturs.com/arguments/tech-companies-should-not-be...
I'm very hopeful about the prospects of this format for improving the quality of debates online, and, compared to the unstructured status quo, I think it's a lot more conducive to participants in an exchange understanding clearly where they disagree with others and why.
There are some great insights in this thread about the nature of arguing online, and I'd love to hear what you all think about the approach that Sequiturs takes.
This assumes that the sole goal of an online argument is to a) change the view of an individual and b) get them to publicly admit that that's happened. That's an unlikely outcome of an online argument, or indeed any argument. What you might more realistically achieve is getting third parties to see your position as the preferred one, or getting the individual to rethink their position in private, or at least be more reluctant to state it in public.
Online "arguments" only wear the guise of debate. In fact, their primary purpose is for the participants to signal membership and loyalty within their in-group
Well, getting them to change their views AND publicly admit them is certainly the greatest form of "winning" the argument, so maybe you could say it's the stretch goal of every argument.
It's not an assumption given that the study examines a corpus of posts from reddit's /r/changemyview which has the explicit stated purpose of both your points a and b.
What if your goal is not to change the mind of the person you're arguing with, but the minds of all the lurkers in the audience watching the exchange? Harder to measure, but it's possible a totally different set of tactics works best there.
This is indeed the goal of formal debates, which is why debaters are trained to argue both sides of an argument, and the winner is judged by who the audience found most convincing, rather than by drawing concession from one's opponent.
The goal of rhetoric is not to make your opponent admit defeat, which is why you don't see politicians try to actually engage with an opponent's argument.
Likewise, a lawyer arguing in court is not trying to convince the other lawyer.
This leads to great and interesting debates. An opponent well used is a tool to sharpen your own arguments and make your own point shine clearly in contrast to another positition. It's easier to show what a "white" horse is, if you have a "brown" horse to compare with.
When I read this thread the other day I was hoping you'd chime in. I don't know what you can talk about but I'm willing to bet you saw people manipulating discussions using sock puppets. I know using them to vote was a bannable offense but I don't know if I ever saw anything about manipulating consensus or building a straw man to be torn down by the main account.
At least during the time I was working there (2008-2011), it was actually pretty rare. The most common use of sockpuppets was simply to be able to do lots of fake AMAs. And every admin had at least one sockpuppet they would use to troll people or otherwise say things they couldn't say under their official account.
For some reason it seems even scummier than rigging votes so maybe that discouraged it. But it's no surprise that admins would have a "work" account and an "anonymous" account. You'd never be able to express a personal controversial opinion without it being jumped all over and attributed to the company.
Somewhat related: Did you have to comb through all of your past comments before the interview and/or announcement? It must have been weird interviewing at a place where you'd had a personal account prior to being interviewed. I would have been filled with anxiety wondering what weird stuff (oh golly, and porn...) I'd looked at while logged in.
There are lots of reasons to argue with people online. One is to run through the arguments yourself with informed people and see how they stand up.
But in terms of persuasion, you're not likely to convince partisans to recant their heresy, so much as to make a convincing case that the uncommitted can buy into. A surprisingly large number of intelligent people watch online debates on social media, and people who are observing but not participating are much more persuadable. To that end, you have to be a decent, sympathetic interlocutor, who is personally appealing and has a good command of the facts and arguments. That means being fair, civil, honest, and straightforward.
Arguments on the Internet are exceedingly rare. Rhetorical contests, on the other hand, are appallingly common.
If you come armed with facts, and your adversary comes armed with knowledge of human psychology and tactics proven to successfully manipulate it, you will lose almost every time.
The typical engineer has a characteristic personality type, which is rather uncommon in the general population. This type knows that technically correct is the best kind of correct, and that a proof based on verifiable facts is unassailable. If you limit the audience to only engineer-like personalities, rightness and wrongness depends entirely upon accuracy, precision, and careful calculations.
But the rest of humanity thrives on its emotional response to statements to help determine whether those statements may be believed. As such, knowledge of the common logical fallacies is useful, not to avoid them, but to employ them intentionally, to generate the appearance of correctness despite a dearth of supporting facts.
We figured out a long time ago that arguing on the Internet was subject to the Wargames conclusion. Maybe people should be forced to play tic tac toe about a thousand times before Reddit lets them post a comment.
I had to delete my Reddit account because I have a tendency to try to hard to correct or educate people, and after a while you learn that the orange mail icon is never someone saying "Thank you for correcting me", but usually someone flaming you, and it made me unnecessarily stressed. I try to stay off Facebook for the same reason, 50% of my feed is friends/friends-of-friends sharing ignorant or false posts. Only on HN and a few other small communities do I actually take the time to do write something, because more often than not I get pleasant responses, or at least an intelligent discourse in return.
This year, I've started something new though. Whenever I see something like this, I basically begin writing my own essay of a response, and then try to spot all the places trolls or other readers could tear it apart, point out bias, or points where my knowledge is lacking (if I can't elaborate on something further than the sentences few sentences in the essay, I probably don't understand it well enough to be speaking about it in the first place). And I either write a rebuttal, or rewrite it into the original essay, all while researching and providing sources along the way.
Then I save it to a folder on my computer, and don't post it anywhere, or sometimes just delete the whole thing. I learn a lot, improve my writing a little, and neither party can get angry.
A recent example, multiple friends of mine shared an image on Facebook, with text like "Isn't it bullsh^$t that you can be arrested and your only charge is resisting arrest?!". I knew this wasn't true, but didn't know the specifics as to why. I learned that Florida doesn't have a charge simply called resisting arrest, but instead "843.02 Resisting officer without violence to his or her person", which makes sense and sounds much more reasonable as a sole charge. Also, you don't have to be resisting your own arrest, so you could be guilty of only a "resisting arrest"-like charge if you resist someone else's arrest :P
If you look at the internet as an opportunity to clearly express yourself on a matter you find interesting or ask clarifying questions, then there is never a problem.
In other words, when you don't feel a need to change anyone's opinion about anything (I imagine mostly because you've tried one too many times and learned your lesson), then you are ready to have an interesting conversation :)
Everything else is just born out of emotions - boredom, being angry/sad/etc. As you get older, you learn to recognize when people are coming from an emotional place and you let them be. You reach out with minimal effort and if they don't come to their senses, you move on. No problem.
I've noticed an interesting corollary to these lessons; if someone argues their viewpoint in a way that is highly vitriolic, I am more likely to view myself as their "opponent", even if I share their perspective.
I'm not going to list any specific examples, but I've found that the more "emotional" someone's argument is, the more likely I am to become disgusted with them (personally), and unfortunately that sense of disgust translates into disdain for their argument as well.
Articles and blog posts that contain a high number of swear words, exclamation points, or ad hominem attacks (attacking a person's character rather than their argument) frustrate me very quickly, and I'm not really sure why.
What's interesting is that I have friends who I disagree with on certain issues, but despite that, we're able to carry on a friendly debate about the subject. Neither person feels offended at the end of the conversation. On the other hand, I also know people who share my own viewpoint, but when they start debating with someone else, I find myself becoming irritated with the manner in which they argue, and I'll join the opposing side just to play devil's advocate.
It's peculiar that what someone argues about frustrates me much less than how they argue.
I dream of some sort of set of rules, possibly enforced by a machine or a collective intelligence, that people would agree upon before starting to debate. Imagine how democracy would be if our political leaders were to conform to such a system when confronting their points of view. This would help us identifying rhetoric or logic flaws, and what pertains to ideology or moral rather than logic or facts. Most of the time all this is mixed up and debates go nowhere.
> Last but not least, try to base your arguments around points that your opponent didn't initially address
I may be misunderstanding this but the longer description didn't settle much in my mind. This is one of the worst things about online battles.
"A: GMOs are BAD!"
"B: GMOs aren't bad. They are very helpful and most crops grown today are GMO in one way or another."
"A: Nuh uh Monsanto blah"
I would call that an argument lost for A. The idiot just proved they have no supporting evidence for their initial statement except a different subject.
I don't see any voting buttons on this particular story. What gives ? I like using them as a surrogate for bookmarking comments. In fact that's one reason I miss upvoting old comments.
It's not about the win. Other people, willing to demonstrate acceptance online, is a rare thing. Almost doesn't happen.
BTW, if you want it to happen more, be sure and model this in whatever peer group you are participating in. If others see you reach and acknowledge acceptance, they are far more willing to do so themselves, and your overall standing, credence, etc... within that community will very significantly improve.
A while back, I did an experiment on this in a small, consistent community I participate in. The control is a fair number of regulars, who have met in person. I listed each strategy used to avoid acceptance on a point fairly taken, and regularly published it. With each one, I put names on it, including my own, and soon, we were watching for this and identifying how people avoid acceptance.
That list grew to something like 20 items. Even though most of us were aware of the dynamics, we STILL DID IT, only to be called out by someone not invested in the argument.
BTW: Mere silence or choosing to make a lot of noise are by far the number one strategies. Say a point is taken, and we've lost. Just wrong, or not very defensible, whatever. If acceptance is recognized, that argument isn't useful anymore. Now, one would and should recognize that it's not useful in the rational sense anyway, but the key outcome of that experiment wasn't about the rational.
It's all about advocacy.
Debate would see that point rendered moot, and the discussion moving on. As it should too.
But, people want what they want. They will justify it however they think they can, and that's the core difference between advocacy and debate!
Silence works by letting the record of the loss or invalidation fade over time. A few months later, the same shit can be put out again, resulting in the same dialog again, and it's going to resonate with the same people again.
So, it's not always about progress as much as it is mindshare and status quo. Very enlightening. (to me, at least)
One other thing...
If I were to put those items in very general terms, they are:
silence
distraction (like mention abortion to derail the dialog)
the bible (discussion moves to competing bible verses)
character (you are an idiot, discussion moves to that)
qualification (I'm in a club, you are not in, so you lose)
noise (just be a big mess, people tire and leave)
Those are the heavy hitters online, IMHO.
There is this too:
Acceptance comes at a cost. If you reach it, and you make that public within your peer group, you also then have some ownership of it. No excuses.
People want what they want and they want to do and say what they do and say. Recognition of acceptance is also being bound by that same acceptance, and that's a very powerful motivator for avoiding recognition of it. That's not discussed much, and it should be.
Additionally, people may put off acceptance because they want to try again too, or the matter is a value judgement. This is fair.
Model this by stating those things, and it has the same positive impact I mentioned above. "Good points, I want to revisit this."
An example on the other extreme might be a flat out rejection of the whole thing, and when it really is a value judgement, it works well! "I am OK with poor people paying hard for being poor."
Do that, and your credence with like minded people will go way up. Your haters will move to your character too.
Here is the interesting bit: so what? Everyone has haters, and a bold, honest value expression carries a ton if weight with onlookers, while frustrating the hell out of your opponents, who will often self marginalize out of anger, rather than accept the value differences.
Acceptance is not always the goal. Remember that.
Advocacy is nearly always the goal, and you can get away with murder doing advocacy, and that being confused with debate, and the pretense of rationality allows it to happen.
I'll end with the idea that raising awareness of advocacy vs debate can raise the level of dialog, but the cost is demonstrating acceptance when warranted.
Most people love the game and the release of online dialog a lot more than they value improving somehow.
I should add, Aaron Schwartz really understood these things.
He would identify rational people, have the talk, and then ask them a question, rather than force acceptance. The outcome is they, themselves come to acceptance, and when they do, Aaron was there to join in common, worthy cause.
By doing this, and avoiding noise and irrationality as well as core value differences, he built mindshare and motivation to act, both far more potent than just being right is.
This is very interesting. There is a common belief that you cannot persuade anyone on the internet. This amazes me as the internet is the number one source of information for most people and information does change beliefs. Perhaps the reason for this is that we are arguing poorly, arguing at the wrong time and not recognizing when we have made an impact. This article gives some insight for how we can improve.
Argue when people are receptive to change. The first point was respond sooner, however, this misses the fact that these were requests posted to board dedicated to changing minds. When the poster submitted they were open to new ideas. This is the best time to provide alternative view points and it is very transient. The next question is how to identify this.
People don't like being the odd one out. When someone is open to changing their mind it means they doubt their position. This doubt is amplified by the more people that have an alternative view point. In practical application it means that it is useless to go into a group of like minded people and attack their core beliefs as is so often seen when people "raid" a sub-cultures message board.
There are diminishing returns for each exchange and after a tipping point it has a negative effect. Those long back and forth yelling matches are just as useless as they appear. Respond a few times and then disengage. Any points you have made are already done and continuing will undo that work.
Supportive evidence helps. I think this is part of the group persuasion point. It shows that their is a large group supporting the idea. However, I've had very poor results when linking to external evidence so this one is the most interesting to me as it contradicts my views.
Quoting to person you are arguing with is aggressive. This shows you are attacking them and their words directly and immediately puts them on the defensive. You have now forced the person to admit what they said was wrong if they change their mind. This is a much harder battle.
This theme continues in the "don't act too intense" point. Defensive people are not open to change.
If you want to change someone's mind put effort into your response. A longer more thoughtful response will have more effect than a pithy comment.
The last point was the most useful: provide new information. So often we attack where the person is strongest. They have the information and have made their interpretation of it. You can either say the information is wrong or their interpretation is wrong. Both of these will make them defensive. However, by providing additional information you give them an out. They can now change their mind without ever being wrong, they were just not aware of all the facts.
Core to all of this is having a definition of success. Too often arguments, especially on the internet, have the goal of the person admitting they were wrong. This leads to the poor arguments we see littering comment sections. However, if the goal is to persuade a person to take a different action then this article suggests a course of action.
Identify the action they are currently going to take: Voting for Trump.
Dig into why they are going to take that action: because he will help the economy.
Present additional information with supporting sources: Trumps stance on Muslims.
Disengage, further discourse is unlikely to be helpful.
I think you sound like you have a chip on your shoulder and you feel that armed with facts, your arguments should be persuasive but they're not. I don't have the ability to downvote, but perhaps that's why other people are doing so.
Probably your comment was downvoted because it went for drama over substance.
On HN, please don't complain about getting downvoted or about what you think the downvotes demonstrate. This just adds noise, which is why HN has two rules about it:
Convincing your adversary is possible, but not necessary, to carry an argument to conclusion. The people likely to want to spend time defending their stance are also likely to be a bit stubborn about it. However, quiet people by the sidelines, reading without posting, hold their opinions much less fervently.
Even if you make a really convincing case, you may not get your opponent to concede, but you may sway many bystanders.
edit: I see that a lot of us agree on this. A bit redundant now.