Questions Regarding Partial Responses In This Forum

The BBQ Pit
1

This is a general observation concerning posts in this forum. There are plenty of threads around which illustrate my point so I do not give any cites at this stage.

Here are a couple of examples which underline my queries.

  1. Poster A submits his/her OP. Poster B responds with a partial dissection of the OP including quotes from same but he/she does not cover all the issues raised by Poster A.

Does the failure by Poster B to respond to all the points raised in the OP imply tacit agreement with those points he/she does not cover?
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2) Poster C submits his/her OP. Poster D provides his/her response to every issue raised in that OP. Poster C then comes back and addresses one or two points raised by Poster D in his/her response but fails to mention the rest of Poster D’s reply.

Same question. Does the failure by Poster C to give a full response to Poster D imply tacit acceptance of those points he/she fails to mention?

Of course, this kind of exchange can equally apply where two responders are exchanging views, but the same principle applies.

Dialogue such as that described above is especially noticeable when, using example 2, Poster D completely dissects Poster C’s OP using, say, seven or eight quotes and comments on each of them. If Poster C chooses to reply to just one of those points it seems somehow unsatisfactory. If Poster C does agree with the rest of Poster D’s it may be more useful to the exchange if he/she came out and said so. (Somehow I do not think this is going to happen very often.)

My view is that tacit agreement is by no means a given in such circumstances. There exists the possibility that some responders fail to offer a complete reply to a post because they cannot offer a convincing rebuttal to the points they fail to discuss. This modus operandi, if employed, does not make for a complete discussion.

Of course, I am aware that if every poster responded to every other poster in full a) the thread would be active for aeons and b) bandwith problems may well ensue.

A further point to be made is that, especially further down the thread when it appears to be running out of steam, some posters may well be interested only in having the last word. Hence they select one point for reply (which is very often derogatory to them) and respond in a like manner.

I am fully aware this OP could just as well apply to other forums, especially Great Debates.

Any thoughts?

(Any full dissection of this OP is actively discouraged.)

2

I agree with you that the questions you raise are valid. I’m not sure you can proscribe motives to other posters in these cases and expect to be accurate, though.

I personally get frustrated when I see both of these cases, as they often feel like the poster following up (particularly in case #1) is more looking for small points to argue and be defensive about, while not really addressing the point of the post.

3

No.

But seriously, if Poster A starts with a flawed premise and draws 15 conclusions from it, Poster B can challenge the premise and doesn’t need to individually refute all of the conclusions. Also, a great many posts in, say, GD slide into digressions where the poster keeps invoking his or her favourite tangent. Ignoring these as being off-topic is just fine. Making a point of quoting and analyzing everything a previous poster has said slows the thread to a crawl and, I think, makes it unreadable to everyone but those two posters. In a debate, you’re extremely unlikely to change your opponent’s mind, anyway. Your best bet is to convince a third person reading both sides that your has more merit, and you can best do this by being succinct and direct, i.e. more readable than someone trying to chase down and counter every pissant point.

4

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5

I agree with the content of all posts thus far submitted to this thread.

Especially the last one.

6

I’d say all it implies is that B is uninterested in debating the other points. There can be many reasons for this, from agreement to apathy. I often do this when a singular point strikes me in a certain way. I comment on that point, and have no interest in the other points, especially when those points are being debated by others.

Again, the implication is one of disinterest. However, since that indicates disinterest in defending one’s own point, that tells you more than in the first case.

7

You also have to keep in mind time-constraints. Any number of times I have read a thread between classes and dashed off a quick reply to a point simply because I didn’t have time for a more detailed response. I addressed the most important point I saw** at that time.** If the respondent never elaborates, then you can make some (likely wrong) assumptions. But they may have just been pressed for time.

8

Or the original post may have been written by a word hound who makes a few points worth discussing, and fills the remainder of their post with bullshit in order to make the whole thing look more impressive. If the premise is bad, there’s no cause to address arguments arising from it.

9

:smiley:

I share the OP’s frustration to some extent. Sometimes it’s simply not worth addressing every point someone makes, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve posted something relatively long and thoughtful and had someone - obviously completely unable to deal with an actual discussion - seized upon some throwaway comment at the end of the post or avoided some particularly damning point over and over. I wish people like that would have the honesty to just leave the discussion. Particularly since it’s such an obvious tactic anyway.

10

I have to admit, I lost patience recently in a thread where an opponent said repeatedly my logic was “incoherent” when it boiled down to:

Me: Not-A implies B.
Him: That’s incoherent. It suggests Not-C implies B.
Me: That’s not what I said. I said Not-A implies B.
Him: That’s incoherent. If Not-A, why not Not-C?
Me: A and C aren’t identical. To reiterate, Not-A implies B.
Him: That’s incoherent. Why are you anti-C?
Me: I’m not anti-C. I know I’m pro-A and you’re anti-A, but face it, being anti-A implies B.
Him: That’s incoherent and irrelevant.

I finally lost patience. It’s fine if he doesn’t like my premise or agree with it, but saying it’s incoherent just suggests he isn’t willing to read it properly. In this case, he was harping on this one point and ignoring everything else.

11

I do that a lot, and it’s usually for one of three reasons:

  1. I don’t disagree with the point being argued.
  2. I disagree with it, but don’t care enough to debate it.
  3. I disagree with it, but for reasons I’ve already stated in a different section of the same post, and I don’t feel like repeating myself.
12

Or it could be soooo obvious that a given point is wrong, you can just leave it as an exercise for the readers.

13

This sums up why I do partial answers at times also. I would add a #4. I don’t have enough information to discuss the rest of the posting.

14

Me, too. With a dollop of irritation because sometimes I have a post that I hope will springboard into more discussion, and it gets roundly ignored. And sometimes I have a post which I expect to get roundly ignored and it springboards into discussion. Sometimes my one seemingly profound post (which someone else then attacks point by point) comes close to containing all my knowledge, and all my interest in a subject.

And sometimes it doesn’t.

15

Good one! :smiley:

For me, failure to comment on part of an OP, or a response, means I don’t have a comment for that part. Nothing more, nothing less.

16

OK I understand that, but the OP may consider that you have no rebuttal for for the point you don’t comment on. What would you do if he/she specifically raised that point again, pointing his finger in your direction, because he/she attached more importance to the matter than you did ?

Just curious.

17

Not everyone is that committed to arguing something either comprehensively or to its conclusion. It’s a message board, not debate class.

18

While all these reasons no doubt occur, I’ve often seen a poster make three very good points and one not so good one, and have all the responses be to the not so good one. While it would be nice for all arguments to be top-notch, would it take so much time to post “I agree” or “not enough time to respond” when this is true. There are plenty of posts with flawed premises, but no one shrinks from pointing this out, so these never bother me.

19

I am curious to know how this observation would go down in Great Debates.

This pretty much sums up my position, although:

This is a partial quote from the OP, the rest of which I totally agree with.

20

Yup, that would be my take on it as well.

In addition, I may only debate the points about which I actually know something and “leave the others” to those who probably have better points or expertise in those areas.