How do you tell if someone is worth talking with and arguing with?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Whether online or IRL, how do you go about telling whether or not it’s worth talking to someone, including arguing with someone?

When I say “arguing”, I do not mean in a confrontational way but rather the presentation of arguments. Some of discussions I can learn the most from is when the other person and I start from different conclusions but, through arguments, the other person shows me I was wrong about particular elements or my whole opinion.

How do you tell if someone is able to have a non-confrontational, honest argument where either party can learn from the other? There is always the option of just going ahead and having an argument with them and seeing if they offer rational, calm arguments but this risks an outburst and spoiled relations as a result. In some situations, that’s ok because you can just walk away from the person but in others, it can be useful to know that someone can’t argue rationally and calmly before you argue with them.
I realize that sometimes, my failure to convince someone is because of me. But it’s also sometimes the other’s person failure. If the other person just wants to vent or has an axe to grind or didn’t adopt the position because of rational elements but emotional elements, then I am very unlikely to convince that person even if I’m right. How do you tell when failure to convince someone is your failure or theirs?
To summarize, how do you tell:

  1. If someone is worth talking to
  2. If someone is worth arguing with
  3. When your failure to convince someone is because of you or the other person?
2

I don’t argue online at all, I don’t think, and whether I continue to talk to someone, for example on a board like this, depends entirely on their response to my first posting to them.

Life is too short, and stressful, to argue with strangers.

3

Make the attempt and judge from the response. That’s about it.

4

What Chimera says…

Someone is “worth talking to” if they actually respond to what you said. If they don’t seem to be listening, then they won’t be any fun to talk to. If they fail to show comprehension – i.e., if they echo back what you said in a distorted fashion – then they probably are too consumed by their own agendas. Ordinary comprehension is the first big key.

Disagreement is fine! I want to chat with people with different beliefs and values. But I want to debate with someone who is debating me and my positions, not some convenient straw-man caricature. Respect is the second big key.

And, to my mind, the third big key is the willingness to change the subject when the old topic becomes uncomfortable. If we can’t agree on when life begins, well, let’s talk about tort reform, or the Roman Empire, or the weather…

A sense of humor is also a big plus!

5

I think the word you are looking for is debate.

6

Everything Trinopus said. I would emphasize the following:

  1. If someone is worth talking to… they are relatively intelligent, reasonably sane, and not overly emotional. A sense of humor is important.

  2. If someone is worth arguing with… all of the above. Also, they don’t take themselves too seriously, don’t take disagreement as a personal attack, and are willing to actually listen to opinions contrary to their own.

  3. When your failure to convince someone is because of you or the other person?
    **If **they fall back on any of the following retorts:
    Well, you’re just an idiot(or ignorant or stupid, etc)
    Curse you and/or your ancestry
    God said it, I believe it, that settles it
    Then it ain’t about you.

7

Your comment provides a really good gauge, at least superficially (and very deeply, too, in a more subtly valid and important sense). That latter more valid, deep, encompassing, certain sense is interesting. In terms of genuine, earnest human discourse I do believe that you have hit upon the primary key, really. Within that same certain sense that you clearly intend, though, how could someone who validly disagrees with you ever hope to respond otherwise than in a contrary sense that would to you seem mangled and abused? Therefore you would have to dismiss almost all valid discourse, except if you could understand it.

When Galileo said “hey, just have a look”, the great sin of the Spanish Inquisition (I tickle you not) was NOT that they said to Galileo: “we find your conclusions to be unacceptable” (hell, that was no big thing at all, really, even today) but rather it was “we refuse to look through your infernal telescope, for it will corrupt us just as it has corrupted you”…exactly the same as nowadays.

In every sense that these Inquisition guys could fathom, Galileo failed your test. He didn’t listen. He declined their whole paradigm. What he DID do, was to pass back to them a response that “failed to show comprehension”. In stating his heresy he was “consumed with his own agenda”. “Ordinary comprehension”, as you say, was something that he utterly lacked, thank goodness. I think this is quite a fair statement of the facts. If not, please argue specifically.

So, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you come at me with a common-sense, consensual, obviously-we-can-take-that-for-granted flat-earth argument and then I go all Christopher Columbus on your ass.

If I decide to bother with that, and tried to make a cogent response, I would fial by all of your standards. I think I would be in clear violation of everything you have put forward as a measure of “comprehension”. I would be “pursuing my own agenda”. I would be perverting the sense in which you meant to have argument. I would be your Godel sentence, and you would be angry and dismissive of me in the manner that you have, I think, so clearly delineated.

Don’t take this the wrong way. You have expressed, beautifully, a fundamental problem.

Now, unless I’m blowing pure hot air, I have just committed myself to an agenda of tremendous latitude, empathy and openendedness with respect to whom I will debate, what I will debate, and to what end. Press me now. Put me to the test.

8

A good argument is one in which both parties can agree that the other side has a point. If they can’t agree on SOMETHING, then it won’t take long for the argument to deteriorate into a fight.

Like, if I’m debating with someone about, say, whether or not evolution is real and they won’t even admit that the fossil record is compelling, then I know we aren’t going to get very far and it’s not worth going any further with them.

9

**Finis ReflectatOpus:**You make a good argument, but I think your reasoning is slightly flawed.

As you said:

[quote=“FinisReflectatOpus, post:7, topic:616158”]

…
When Galileo said “hey, just have a look”, the great sin of the Spanish Inquisition (I tickle you not) was NOT that they said to Galileo: “we find your conclusions to be unacceptable” (hell, that was no big thing at all, really, even today) but rather it was “we refuse to look through your infernal telescope, for it will corrupt us just as it has corrupted you”…exactly the same as nowadays…
QUOTE]

Galileo had considered their point of view his whole life. Now he was seeing another point of view and saw a contradiction. His attitude was “Let us compare these ways of looking at things.” The authorities, however, were not willing to do that. They refused to even consider looking at the facts as he presented them. So, Galileo did not fail “the test.” They did.

10

monstro said “Like, if I’m debating with someone about, say, whether or not evolution is real and they won’t even admit that the fossil record is compelling, then I know we aren’t going to get very far and it’s not worth going any further with them.”

Precisely.

11

Not at all. The problem I’m identifying is that of people who respond to what I didn’t actually say. I have no problem at all with them disagreeing with me. I just want to be sure they know what I said.

Well, yes and no. It depends on whether you think that the scripted role of “Simplicio” in the Dialogue was a fair representation of what the Church believed, or was, instead, a tawdry caricature.

It is entirely possible for someone to understand a viewpoint, to comprehend it, to grok it, and still disagree with it. That’s entirely fair.

But when someone comes back and says, “Yeah, well, you don’t really believe in empowerment for blacks, you really want to keep them poor and subservient so they’ll vote your way,” which is about as far from what I actually believe as the Andromeda Galaxy is from my left shoelace, then I know they aren’t interested in debating with me, but only with their absurd straw man.

Was Simplicio’s script a “straw man?” To be honest, I don’t know.

I disagree. So long as you begin honestly, I’m okay with this. If you say, “Okay, let me get this straight, you hold that the world is flat, right?” then I can say, “Yes, that’s what I believe.” You can then go on and say, “Well, I don’t think so, and here are my reasons…” That’s great! That’s what we’re here for!

If, instead, you come out and say, “So, you don’t believe in the Moon, I guess,” then I’m going to be disappointed and hold you to be less than worthy as a debate partner.

(The use of “You” phrases, versus the use of “I” phrases, is often an indication of unnecessary aggression, although, of course, not always.)

Exactly so, although, in this specific case, there is some wiggle room, depending on how you interpret Simplicio. (I mean, even the name is just a bit aggressive!)

But there can be no question at all: Galileo understood the conventional Ptolemaic world-view, and would have been capable of representing it correctly and fairly in a debate. In a “moot court” debate scenario, he could have reversed chairs with the other guy, and argued, skillfully, for the old views.

12

“But there can be no question at all: Galileo understood the conventional Ptolemaic world-view, and would have been capable of representing it correctly and fairly in a debate. In a “moot court” debate scenario, he could have reversed chairs with the other guy, and argued, skillfully, for the old views.”

That is exactly the point I was trying to make, but Trinopus expressed it better than I did. From now on, I’d like Trinopus to do my arguing for me.

13

Even though I’m a Flat-Earther? :wink:

14

With your powers of persuasion, you could probably engage me in a debate about the shape of the earth for an hour or so. :stuck_out_tongue:

15

If the other person goes red in the face, starts foaming at the mouth and screaming their head off during any conversation.

They’re not worth talking to.

(and yes, I did know someone like that)

16

Sadly, I’ve known a lot of people like that.

17

At the risk of derailing the thread, I would like to point out that neither of these accounts bear any resemblance to what actually went down between Galileo and the (Italian, not Spanish) Inquisition (and other Catholic Church authorities). In fact each side understood the other’s arguments quite well, and gave them due and (mostly) respectful consideration. If he had not understood the arguments for geocentrism, both those based on religious considerations and those based on physical ones, Galileo could not have produced the detailed refutations of them that constitute some of his most important work. Likewise, the Church’s official astronomers did look through Galileo’s telescope, and they agreed that what he reported seeing there was real. What they did not accept, however, was that this evidence (and various other arguments made by Galileo), constituted compelling evidence for a heliocentric system. They were quite right about that. Although Galileo did a lot to weaken the arguments in favor of geocentrism, the decisive evidence for heliocentrism came not from Galileo’s discoveries and theoretical innovations, but from Johannes Kepler’s detailed mathematical analysis of the huge mass of astronomical data collected by Tycho Brahe. Neither Galileo nor his opponents (very likely no-one apart from Kepler himself) appreciated the significance of this evidence at the time of Galileo’s trial.

Having had a (mostly) mutually respectful dialog with the Church supported geocentrists over a period of about 20 years, Galileo was eventually put on trial and condemned not because the Catholic Church was implacably opposed to heliocentrism (some elements in the Church were, but not most the people in power, not the leaders of the Inquisition, and certainly not the Pope himself), but either because he accidentally personally offended the Pope in some way, or (more likely, in my opinion) because of some behind-the-scenes political intrigue, the details of which will now almost certainly never come to light (although we can say that the political situation in the Church at the time was very ripe for such things). His teachings on heliocentrism were almost certainly merely a pretext for his public humiliation and punishment, rather than the real reason.

Also, as had been discussed on other recent threads, nobody ever tried to tell Columbus that the world was flat.