Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

I read the interesting submitted article and its comments right after it was submitted here on Hacker News. The worst argument in the world (a general FORM of argument) is described this way in the submitted article:

"I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: 'X is in a category whose archetypal member has certain features. Therefore, we should judge X as if it also had those features, even though it doesn't.'"

This recalls many cases on Hacker News when someone has disagreed with someone else by saying, "Your argument is an example of [name of rhetorical or logical fallacy]." Perhaps it is carrying out the worst argument in the world to identify one part of someone's statement as a logical fallacy, if the fallacy doesn't vitiate the statement, and if sound evidence is still in view to support the statement. Sometimes facts of the world are as they are even if they are mentioned by people who argue inaptly, so it would indeed be a bad argument to ignore the message because of infelicities of expression by the messenger. If we look at pg's essay "How to Disagree,"

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

we see advice that a better way to disagree is

"Refuting the Central Point.

"The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point."

So I guess my central point here [smile] is that while it may be interesting to identify a general form for many particularly bad arguments, it is even better to be specific in grappling with the evidence for the core factual assertions of the person with whom you disagree. That takes abundant knowledge of the world, and a willingness to look up facts. I always appreciate people on Hacker News who can point to carefully gathered facts, analyzed by people with appropriate domain-related knowledge, as we discuss issues here.

I think pointing out a logical fallacy is not a refutation. Rather than saying "your argument is wrong", it says "your argument is not well-formed". This is much like the difference between a program that has a bug and a program that has a parse error.

To take the most glaring example: "my point is true because my point is true". Obviously, nobody actually says this seriously. But some arguments are isomorphic to this. And any argument like that is not wrong per se--it is literally meaningless.

Other fallacies are more subtle and complicated, but the idea remains the same: using a fallacy does not invalidate your point but merely renders your argument meaningless. I can say that "the sky is blue because everybody says so" and I would not be wrong--given the sky is actually blue, of course--but the argument would still be a fallacy. I think to point this out is valuable even (perhaps especially) if you do not disagree with the point in question.

As humans, we can do better than a compiler that gives up at the first missing semicolon. We can keep reading and respond to the rest of the comment with more than a link to the wikipedia article on ad hominem.

That's certainly reasonable. But this does not mean you should ignore fallacies either. Usually when I see people talk about fallacies it's part of a point-by-point rebuttal against some post--you refute some of the points in order, perhaps agree with others and also point out any points that are actually fallacies. I think this is perfectly reasonable, but I can also see how solely pointing out a fallacy would usually not be terribly useful.

Also, ad hominem is a special case: not only is it a complete fallacy but it is also often quite rude. Minimizing personal attacks is important in keeping discussion pleasant and civil even ignoring their logical implications.

If I could only have one rule for some discussion forum, that would probably be it: no personal attacks.

Sure, if there is a 'rest of the comment'. Usually, there isn't anything else to go by. There's just the fallacious argument. It doesn't matter whether you can think of all kinds of ways to support the point of view the other espouses: you're not in his head and you can't know whether he thought all the things you can think of in favour of his position. There's only the fallacious argument and that needs to be struck down. If someone else wants to support the position, he'll come along.

I have to take issue with this. I think it's an important and useful rhetorical tool that, while sometimes can be used in a petty way to score points, can elevate the debate. If half of your counter-argument is "compiler warnings" for your competitor's argument, I think that's valuable.

I, for one, would wildly prefer a world where every debater was a nit-picking SOB when it comes to logical fallacies and the average debate "compiled cleanly without warnings". It would be like heaven compared to where we are today.

If we're talking about the formal fallacies, I agree, but my experience with people name-dropping compiler errors for informal fallacies is that they're often not very useful or accurate diagnoses. Ad hominem is one that is often useful, mostly as a sort of meta-rule about debate etiquette. But things like "slippery slope" are used to characterize a wide range of arguments of which only a subset are strictly fallacious. And some informal fallacies are only fallacies in the specific context of purported logical proofs, but not necessarily in other kinds of arguments. For example, it's true that an "appeal to authority" in an argument means it's not a valid logical argument that proves its conclusions from its premises. But people sometimes raise that objection in contexts where the authority is being invoked as an epistemic authority that raises the likelihood of its conclusion being true (because we have reason to believe that the authority's judgments have non-zero epistemic value), not as part of a logical proof. For example, while it's true that "the consensus of physicists is that X" doesn't prove anything about X, if I'm not a physicist and have a background belief that the consensus of physicists is generally a good guide on what is likely to be true about physics, it's a good inference that I should at least provisionally believe X.

In fact, even computers can often do better these days. Classical logic as implemented by theorem-provers is not anywhere near the state of the art in AI argumentation systems.

As long as you say that this what you are doing, I agree. Too often, however, people content themselves with just pointing out the flaw or fallacy. This gives the impression that they mean to argue with the central point.

Fallacious arguments (of which circular arguments are a subset) aren't literally meaningless. "My point is true because my point is true" is perfectly comprehensible, it just fails to establish the fact that "my point is true". You can disagree with it reasonably by pointing out the fallacy, so it has linguistic substance, and it is not meaningless.

It is very different from, say, "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" which is literally meaningless.

A logical fallacy does imply that an argument is wrong. It doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong, but it means the argument is wrong. If an argument rests on a logical fallacy, then it does not provide evidence for its conclusion.

I find the most enjoyable form of argument is to listen to what your opponent is saying. Instead of poking holes in bad word choices or minor factual inaccuracies, reconstruct in your head the person's argument to be as strong and clear-headed as possible. Then refute that argument, which is probably closer anyways to what the person was thinking than what they actually wrote.

Going all out against someone's point of view does have its uses, of course. But it's never good for genuine intellectual exploration (which is, honestly, often not our real goal in confronting someone).

There is really no point in this unless you are arguing with someone who is trying to be honest to begin with. In that situation you don't need so much artifice anyway.

Well, I'd say there's a continuum of honesty. And intellectual generosity tends to beget intellectual generosity in the other person--and, for thoughtful undecided onlookers, makes them more amendable toward considering your side.

For instance, speaking from both sides of the experience, someone who is engaged but being sniping or nasty in a political debate might well see that you're giving their point an honest go of it and in response clean up their act.

And even if they're lost beyond all hope, there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking holes in the small without really addressing their motivating concern.

note: I'm not refuting your central point, I agree with it, but this line made me smile...

   there's only a limited amount of fun to be had in poking 
   holes in the small without really addressing their 
   motivating concern

The internet and tv news would disagree with you that the fun is limited. It appears definitely unlimited.

This idea pretends that all arguments turn on factual assertions - never framing or non sequiturs - and don't have any meaningful social context.

For example, in a public argument, if you get too far drawn into proof that you don't STILL beat your wife, you will inadvertently establish in the minds of the audience that you used to do so; moreover, your excess of protest may actually be taken as evidence that you do beat your wife.

If someone poses such framing you are really remiss not to address the framing or refuse to dignify such a malicious and dishonest line of argument with response.

Yup, this is also known as the argument from fallacy or the fallacy fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Which is the false notion that when you refute a single false point, the opponent's whole argument is false.

If one part of your argument is refuted, but the others stand, you should simply acknowledge your mistake and point out the remainder of it is still valid.

Pointing out flaws in your argument is not "the worst argument in the world". It's logically valid, whereas the worst argument in the world is not.

> The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point.

Which is denied you when the person's argument is so ill-formed that it does not have a central point. At that point, you either point out the flaws or you walk away, apparently conceding the point to the pointless one.

(Also: I love the word point, apparently.)

That's a good, uhhhh, point. There are many people who form their arguments so poorly that it can be hard to refute them because they'll just move the goal posts or completely change the playing field.

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