As the title says, how often do you admit you’re wrong? Is it different when it’s a factual dispute versus something more subjective?
I make an effort to concede early if I’m in error. I think because my mother almost never admits fault. She’ll fall back to “that’s not what I meant” or similar deflections first, and that’s really annoying.
The last big factual error I made was about the distance of walking, and that’s where I learned about Taxicab Geometry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry ).
I think some people believe admitting fault is a sign of weakness, but I find it’s more of a power move. It takes strength to do it, and people can tell when you’re sweating and desperate. Usually it leads to resolving the conflict faster and cheaper, too.
(I expect some people will feel the urge to reply they’re never wrong. I’ll file that under never admits fault.)
Every time someone is able to convince me I’m wrong, which is not hard to do, I tend to consider things logically, so empirical evidence that I’m wrong will make me flip immediately. Unfortunately most people use very flawed arguments like trying to appeal to emotions or strawmaning my point (or one of the many fallacious things we all have to deal online). And that will not convince me, in fact it only proves you have absolutely no argument. Which is very unfortunate because I’m wrong quite often, and it only takes one person pointing at actual evidence that I’m wrong to make me realize that, yet the majority of my disagreements online end up at an impasse with the person refusing to find common ground to build the debate up.
One thing I struggle to remember sometimes is someone can make a bad argument, but what they’re arguing for can still be true.
I used to work with a guy that would argue with me, and sometimes at the end he’d be like “I actually agree with your point, but I wanted you to be right for solid reasons”
Of course, it’s also very common for people to be making bad arguments because they’re just feeling stuff, and they’re pulling together whatever words come close to capturing that right now.
Yes, bad arguments can be made about true statements, but people need to understand that you won’t convince anyone with bad arguments, and that discrediting an argument is not the same as discrediting the statement or attacking the person who made it.
For example, just the other day there was a thread about how pitbulls are supposedly more aggressive than other breeds, but the argument they used was “they’re a minority of the population, yet cause the majority of fatalities, therefore they’re aggressive”, which is a TERRIBLE argument that discards all other possible explanations for the observed statistics. It may be true that pitbulls are more aggressive than other dogs, but that argument will never convince me as it’s just plain wrong. And pointing out just how absurd the argument is brought up a bunch of angry people asserting pitbulls are aggressive and attacking me personally for discrediting the logic.
Yeah, I do that as well, I call it playing devil’s advocate, it’s helpful to be sure the decisions you’re reaching are actually the best ones.
What about for more squishy arguments that are entirely about emotions and feelings etc? I remember getting tilted by reading “my culture is not a costume” on a zine, and the emotional appeal is what got me to change my tune
An argument about emotions can be good or bad like any other, a simple “just because it offends me” is a bad argument because I can be offended by censorship and find your attempt to censor offensive. However a “Currently that word has been embraced by people with a certain mindset, thus by using it you’re giving those people more validation on their beliefs as they think you’re one of them” is a very clear argument as to why certain words can be hurtful socially.
My culture is not a costume to me is sorta a weak argument, think about what people dress as for custome parties: Pirates, Ninjas, Vikings, Nuns, Nurses, etc… Most costumes are either of something that doesn’t exist or a culture (and sometimes both). However diminishing someone’s culture to just the clothes is offensive regardless of culture, and exalting a problem in that culture as part of your costume is also offensive. For example, as someone born in Argentina I wouldn’t be offended by someone dressing as a Gaucho, if a friend of mine wanted to dress like that for a costume party I would even lend him my mate. But I can see people getting offended by someone dressed as a soccer player with white powder under their nose (although me personally would just laugh it off, I can see that as being something someone takes offense with).