AngelRho wrote:
This reminds me of all the stories I've heard about competitions and arguments have been made to the effect that certain teams or a certain player shouldn't be allowed in the competition because they are "too good." I recently heard about this high school girl's basketball game in which the winning team scored well over 100 points and the losing team scored 3. Some people involved (probably parents with the losing team, I dunno) accused the winning team of poor sportsmanship, even though it was a perfectly fair game. They argued maybe the better-skilled team could at least have run the clock more to keep the game from being an total slaughter-fest. But even had they done that someone else might have said running the clock would have been unsportsmanlike and demoralizing to the other team.
So what, really, is the solution? Evaluate your weaknesses, adjust, and keep practicing.
My "evaluation" of AG is that he is knowledgeable and very good at what he does, likely having had a lot more practice defending his position and attacking others than a lot of us here. I think perhaps AG could be a little bit less obnoxious about it. But that doesn't mean that people who are shaky in their thinking shouldn't see the presence of AG and certain others here as a challenge to step it up. One of my own flaws is in logic. For someone like me, it is easy to stick with certain arguments (basically quoting from the Bible in order to hold a position) and bury a person with them. That kind of tactic doesn't require that much critical thinking, but rather disarming opposing views with facts. I find that easy to do, but I also recognize that I have not been critical enough with opposing assertions and flawed logic--which honestly if that had been something I'd concerned myself with earlier I might not have spent quite so much time and effort on certain posts.
By taking cues from AG, I've tried to recognize the flaws--the most obvious, I think, is the ad hominem. I also noticed there is a lot of subtle "begging the question" and "straw men" (which I've been unknowingly guilty of myself). I've even caught on to the occasional misplaced "burden of proof" arguments, which was one of the first things that really stood out. I'm still not all that good. But I will say that if you are honest with yourself and admit where your thinking is flawed, you end up stronger for the experience. It doesn't necessarily mean you HAVE to change your position necessarily, though there may be some positions worth giving up. It's just a call to find the strongest means of justifying your beliefs.
I don't plan on exploring this in depth, but I've seen statements AG has made that I wasn't entirely sure were exactly proper statements. Sometimes I wonder if AG hasn't deliberately committed logical sins because he knows a lot of us aren't quite so good at thinking ahead or thinking critically and that we'll likely miss whatever the mistake was or get all emotional about something that we focus on supporting what we want to say rather than calling AG on a logical error. I'll leave that for someone else to look into, but I'm genuinely curious if such ever happens.
But attack on character? I doubt there really are any good reasons for it. Obnoxious, yes. Dishonest, no. I think someone is just a sore loser. Rather than attack AG for that, they should step up their own game.
I agree but I don't find the dude obnoxious at all. Long winded yes but not obnoxious. But anyways that's just a matter of style not a defect. I prefer conciseness that's all.
@ Vigilans: True, it's not worth trying to convince those who are set in their ways.
@ AngelRho: Yeah they don't have to, but PPR is bound to get heated so we'll have to accept that it can happen and deal with it accordingly.
07 Feb 2011, 8:50 am
