I do like to use Legal Latin sometimes, and it is shorter than saying “for argument’s sake,” but I doubt it makes things clearer than using that English equivalent.
I will say that I’ve noticed that people on the internet (and maybe generally) tend to not get that rhetorical tactic so much. I sometimes use it because I think there is a good point to be made when, even granting a party their premises, their argument still fails. It shows that they are wrong on multiple levels. Or, they can’t win, even by their own logic. It doesn’t mean that I am, in fact, taking their premises as true, or even saying that it’s not also worth taking down the factual basis for their argument.
# Here’s what happened when NBC News tried to report on the alleged Hunter Biden emails
Analysis: Trump complains the media isn’t reporting on Hunter Biden’s emails. But NBC News met obstacles, including Rudy Giuliani, when it tried…But the Wall Street Journal and Fox News — among the only news organizations that have been given access to key documents — found that the emails and other records don’t make that case. Leaving aside the many questions about their provenance, the materials offered no evidence that Joe Biden played any role in his son’s dealings in China, let alone profited from them, both news organizations concluded.
I wonder, though, whether – on SDMB – the use of ‘arguendo’ could be encouraged … maybe even democratized.
I haven’t been exorcised … at all … by the position that QuickSilver has taken on this issue. I saw clearly what his position was, and interpreted the rest as " … but just for the sake of argument …"
I definitely understand the thrust of the Samantha Bee clip that I posted above: that discussing anything that’s been contrived and designed to cause harm can lend it some legitimacy, but … isn’t the exchange – particularly around here, and particularly with clear disclaimers – worth that risk ?
I’m reminded of a great scene from “West Wing” that I think bears on this issue:
Guys, when the hypothesis is ‘Remember when the President was impeached trying to pressure Ukraine to come up with something, anything to use against Joe Biden? Well, he came up with something. Now, let’s assume that the obviously fake bullshit he ginned up is true…’, that’s not really a hypothesis worth debating.
To insist upon doing so, even as a ‘hypothetical’, is effectively insisting on debating the relative merits of a disinformation op. And, for a Board dedicated to various forms of truthiness, debating the validity of disinformation, even as a hypothetical, cuts against the grain.
You know, for the sake of argument, this is officially one no longer worth having.
“The dog ate my homework.”
“Sophia, you have a cat.”
“Yes, professor. But for the sake of argument, assume I have a dog. And he ate my homework.”
“No. This conversation is not worth having. You get an ‘F’.”
“Can’t you even debate honestly?”
Lastly, it also may just be that after 2016 and the bullshit around ‘her emails’, maybe, just maybe, Americans as a whole are less willing to debate ‘hypotheticals’ put out by fascists and their supporters and enablers against the non-fascist candidate. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I hope that, in a parallel universe, on a SDMB whose denizens lean hard to the right, they are tolerant of the few (theoretically possible) participants who are asking the question,
“What if every single bit of this Hunter Biden nonsense is pure bullshit, cynically designed to do nothing more than help Trump get re-elected ?”
On this topic, when people have been permitted to engage the hypothetical, it seems to always lead to the same conclusion:
So what ?
Nothing illegal. Nothing unethical, at least on the part of Joe Biden (the only part that should matter), nothing out of the ordinary for business, and nothing compared to what we know takes place with the Trump family each and every day.
So what ??
I don’t tend to think that “fighting ignorance” means simply calling a position ignorant and then walking away in glorious victory.
I tend to think that this sort of discussion is how you do fight ignorance.
We’ve been down this road before. These claims are obviously false, what’s there to debate? They are false claims. It would be a false debate, ultimately worthless.
Not going to concern myself about the denizens of your hypothetical SDMB, just like I’m not going to concern myself about the impact of a ‘real’ Hunter Biden laptop with ‘real’ damaging information, just as my daughter’s professor (above) isn’t wasting his time with her hypothetical dog.
This was the other reason I didn’t pay any attention to the story,
I love leaked email’s. When political scandals break I read them all. They can be boring. It’s always pages and pages of the exact same email chain from different accounts. There is sometimes juicy stuff in there but it’s a lot to thumb through. But I do it, and sometimes I find things that are interesting that weren’t included in the reporting of the email leak.
There was no such release in this case - or if there was I couldn’t find it. All I saw was snippets from emails with the supposedly incriminating stuff - like the words “big guy” highlighted.
I did find the full published text of one long e-mail regarding Ukraine. The words “our guy” were highlighted and the insinuation was that it was a reference to Biden. But if you read the whole long email it became obvious that “our guy” was a Ukrainian national. Reporters that have access to the entire tranche have also said that the “big guy” references, in full context, point to a Chinese person.
And no one is forcing you to participate in a discussion that you do not think merits discussion.
It is sometimes worth taking something as true, even it is obviously false, just to see what the implications of it would be if it were true.
I understand that this particular subject is more than a bit touchy, and I understand why it may not be desired to even entertain the possibility, as the entire point of even considering this particular is entirely due to a political attempt at a smear, but that does not mean that it is automatically verboten to discuss.
I have no problem with, in responding to hypothetical arguments, first pointing out that you feel that the position has no merit, before responding to it as though it did. But just demanding that it not be discussed seems less about fighting ignorance, and more about simply preventing a debate about something that you don’t think should be debated.
For instance: “What would you do if aliens invaded your hometown?”
Responding with the declaration that there is no such thing as aliens is not productive.
Yes, but when the town crank gets arrested, but not convicted, in January for trying to pressure the town drunk into appearing in an alien costume this upcoming October… when the town drunk arrives in a shoddy alien costume on October 14th, why would any serious person want to debate ‘Well, what if the town drunk really is an alien?’
But in this case, the hypothetical situation has the potential to excaberate damage that is happening to a real person.
Suppose someone started a rumor that a local business owner, Mr. Jones held a female customer captive in his business and raped and tortured her for hours? Then inconsistencies come out and it turns out that the story was a fabrication, a Jacob Wohl level attempt at character assassination.
Why in the world would anyone honestly continue a discussion on the basis of — what an interesting hypothetical, what if Mr Jones really did rape and torture a woman?. Do you really think this would be a harmless discussion on the level of -what if Illinois was invaded by aliens?
And that goes double if this hypothetical conversation just happens to take place 4 days before an election where Mr. Jones father is running for public office.
So as a way to illustrate that a hypothetical should not be entertained is to develop a hypothetical that is even more implausible and then insist that nobody should entertain the first hypothetical because that opens the doors to much more absurd hypotheticals. WHICH NOBODY MADE.
This is more like having fabricated evidence that a female customer spent a few hours in his business, which the opposition insists means that Mr. Jones assaulted her.
If you say, “Even if it were true that she was in his business for a few hours, that doesn’t mean that any assault took place.” that is not something that would exacerbate the damage to Mr. Jones.
That’s kinda the whole point in this hypothetical, not whether or not something bad happened, but whether the “evidence” that is presented even makes a compelling argument that it did.
What percent of the people participating in this discussion seem open to the idea that the Hunter Biden stuff is true, and that – if it is true – it has grave legal, ethical, political, or moral implications for Joe Biden ?
And what percent are absolutely positive that it’s a political hit job, along the lines of the Birther bullshit, and that it means nothing ?
So … what’s the real risk in having an open discussion ?
I think at some point, when a discussion is had about a known falsehood that affects a real person, then it become slanderous. Maybe not legally, but morally.
