On Arguments

My friend Far McKon recently posted a bit on living in a connected world and the responsibilities of having an online persona. Check out his post, "Have Big mouth, will travel." I was originally writing this as a comment on his post, but it got to be quite long and I thought it would better serve as a post on my own blog.

I try to use the type of situation that Far refers to as learning experiences (always after the fact, "the bridges I burn light the path before me") to see where I can improve my debating skills. These days, I try to only talking to people who don't agree with me; it forces me to be honest as well as humble. I could have avoided a lot of arguments in the past by being more cognizant of my audience, specifically who that audience might fully entail. It can be a slap in the face to realize that a lot more people heard what you said or read what you wrote than originally you intended.

The key is to recognize the difference between content, delivery, and desired outcome. There is more than one way to express any opinion, and even very contentious opinions can be expressed politely without resorting to patronizing political correctness. Without practice, your delivery is reflexive, and without control over your delivery, you won't get your desired outcome. Tailor your delivery for the outcome. People don't wan't to have their opinions challenged by a stranger. You often have to "lose" the early battles to get to a position where you can win the war.

It can make you a better writer in the process. When you're more aware of what you want to say and the emotions you want to evoke, you can cut out the extraneous bits that are primarily repetitions of your thesis through the various lenses of your own full range of emotional responses.

But there is also a certain level of responsibility that needs to be shouldered by the other party. If we take on all of the responsibility for poorly ran arguments, then really we're admitting that the other person is perfect. Also, irrational people exist*, and there is just no accounting for them.

So, what does it all mean? Should we have more anonymous systems to allow us to express our opinions to the fullest? Or should we censor ourselves to be more palatable to the masses? I think the answer is, "Yes". Since the advent of the Internet, we live in a world where people get to tailor-make their social circles. Before the year 2000 (the distant future), if I wanted to talk to someone on a Saturday, it had to be my next-door neighbor. We didn't get along on most things, but we had an amiable relationship because we had to have one. Now, I can piss off my neighbors all I want and it doesn't matter, I can find validation online in my custom community.

In the long run, I think it's healthier for each of us to learn how to argue our points in the complete open. But sometimes, you just gotta say, "FUCK 'EM ALL TO BURNING HELL AND BACK AGAIN, RARRRRRRR!" Venting can be healthy, too, and we need new places to vent. For us 'Netizens that have been around the block a few times, maybe that just means being faster than Teh Nooblets on reinventing our online personas. It certainly means ignoring Facebook Connect and Google Sign-In and OpenID. God, whatever happened to having to remember a dozen passwords for all of the sites we interacted with?

* There is a whole post on whether or not arguments are based in lack of rationality in one or more parties in the conversation, or a lack of shared facts. Keeping it short, I now recognize that no amount of facts can save certain people. But for the most part, it's the lack of shared facts.