Being on the losing side in a dispute

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15 May 2011, 11:51 pm

swbluto wrote:

Have you ever been a dispute with someone that aroused the passion of your peers (In real life), and then the person started dishing out the assault one sentence right after another (As if attacking you with a verbal firehose) and not giving you enough time to think and respond, and then other peers in the crowd immaturely said "Right on!" and "Pwned" and all that bull crap, and then you realized your problem wasn't that your position was "wrong", but rather you weren't as quick/articulate as the other person and thus your losing was more due to your verbal abilities than the inherent correctness of your position, and you thought everybody's judgment was based on 'stupid' qualities (Like articulateness / 'quick thinking' and/or loudness and/or lots of talking) and you thought the crowd wasn't worth it anyways, so you automatically considered everyone else stupid and they also thought you were "stupid", but you didn't care because they were stupid and superficial for judging 'correctness' on meaningless irrelevant qualities?

It reminds me of a particular category of debate when your whole objective is to simply "flood the opponent" with objections and appeal to pathos (Feeling / empathy) until the time runs out rather than argue on the basis of logic and reason. I seriously thought how on earth could such a debate style be officially sanctioned? That is STUPID.

That's happened to me. It's annoying. It's because the person doing the blabbing feels threatened so he doesn't let you have a word edgewise and his sidekicks want to give you a lesson so they start agreeing with him just because they all think you need to be put in your place. I look at it as a testimony to my ability. Since so many are needed to defeat me I must be pretty potent. One on one they don't stand a chance so they got to get a bunch of bozos to go along with them so that I am outnumbered which is hardly a fair fight.

Just challenge him to a game of chess where the audience isn't allowed to make noise.

jojobean
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16 May 2011, 1:15 am

When ppl do that to me...I just go into myself and block them out...when they are done I come out like a cat backed into the corner.

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matt
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16 May 2011, 1:18 am

If I argue with someone and there are others around the others seem to take the other person's side regardless of whether the other person's argument even makes sense.

Whichever person I'm arguing with often become abusive. I stop arguing and stop interacting with them.

It's not that I'm wrong; it's that I don't have the ability to argue like that.

Verdandi
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16 May 2011, 1:19 am

swbluto wrote:

It really does seem most normal people are driven more by entertainment and emotion than correctness, so the 'wittier'/'funnier'/'more entertaining' person usually 'wins' in a normal social setting. It seems that most of the time it's more of a popularity contest than anything (The person who is the most likable and has the most likable replies / opinions is apparently the winner. :roll:

Yeah. In real life I remember trying to hold a conversation with housemates and having it devolve into nonsense like one of the peripheral participants announcing that one of the other people had "won" because she had made a clever remark, and yet the whole thing seemed so irrelevant to what we were trying to talk about.

I agree it is often a popularity contest.

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16 May 2011, 10:07 am

I rarely have arguments these days with people other than my family and friends. I think I've given up completely the idea. My verbal difficulties (stutter, not being able to reach to the right expressions/words in time) in top of my rather slow and stumbling thinking with a lot of corrective loopbacks in its own, plus my general lack of social skills make it almost impossible to me. Not to mention anxiety.

I listen, try to relate to the subject, but eventually, I don't care. I try to keep the conversation going if necessary, that's all. It's better avoiding tension.

In written form, on forums, I had bad experiences when I tried to underpin my statements and opinions by factual information. I experienced such an ignorance as Verdandi wrote. This was about 8 years ago. Since then I'm not doing it when high tide can be expected, only when there are such people like here, being more on the logical side, more understanding, more tolerant in general.

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