I was ‘debating’ a redneck friend of my brother’s on Facebook a while ago. I put it in quotes because about three replies in, he posted a big response that actually took effort to read because it was so poorly written. I’m not talking about the occasional “teh”. I’m talking about wrong conjugations, missing words, non sequiturs, and sentence fragments.
In my reply, I told him that it wasn’t worth arguing with him because we were talking about college-level topics and it was apparent that he’d barely graduated high school and had never left his backwater, 1000-resident Pennsylvanian town. He, of course, replied that I only picked on his spelling/grammar, and thus I “had nothing” to counter his “argument”.
My final reply was that he’d got the ‘order of precedence’ backwards. Step 1 is to make sure it’s literate. Step 2 is to make sure it’s a solid argument.
Do you agree? Should I have countered his idiotic points, or was I justified in making fun of his illiteracy?
Posters in the SDMB have at times discounted people’s well thought out, well presented points because there was a spelling error or two.
I think this is the height of stupidity and pretty much means you can’t argue your side appropriately.
Your story is a little different, but I still think you have to argue your side, and not use his grammar as a crutch. You can mention it and belittle your opponent because of it, but you can’t use it as a replacement not to defend your position.
Good points are more important, but most people who have massive spelling and grammar errors are not likely to make any good points. A spelling error or two is not a problem, nor is the occasional grammar errors, but if you don’t know the basics of how to write, you probably don’t know the basics of logic, either.
Normal, occasional misspellings are routinely ignored by me because they have nothing to do with the point. Harping on minor spelling or grammatical errors is a quick way to say “I’m a jackass with no valid counter-argument.” In your case, with the spelling being as egregiously bad as it was, I would have mocked his argument *and *his spelling.
Isn’t this kind of like asking, “Which is more important to a car: the engine or the wheels?”
There’s no point in communicating if you have nothing to communicate; but there’s also no point in communicating if I can’t understand what you’re intending to say.
The value of an argument is utterly independent of one’s ability to communicate. To argue against a point’s validity in such a way, not to mention the mocking of his education and life experience, is a text book example of an ad hominem attack. I think it’s utterly ridiculous when a point is discarded over reasonable mistakes, especially when it’s clear that the person understood it with little or no difficult. OTOH, as it seems to be the case here to some extent, communication is important and can lead to misunderstanding and frustration. If one’s ability to communicate is so poor that it’s frustrating to debate with him, then you shouldn’t.
So, to the OP, I voted for points and I think the situation was mishandled. Just tell him you’re having trouble understanding his points because and he needs to put in more effort to communicate effectively rather than relying on your ability to understand him. Just as you have a responsibility not to discount his points for mistakes, he has a responsibility to minimize spelling and grammar mistakes so that his point is effectively communicated. Communication is a two-way street. If he doesn’t make a concerted effort to do so, then you have reason to end the discussion because he’s then not participating in good faith.
In general, pointing out grammar mistakes during a debate is pretty douchey. But that’s assuming you actually understand what the person is trying to say. If the grammar is so awful you can’t get a coherent thought out of it, the literacy of the argument becomes as important as the argument itself. You can’t debate someone on something if you have no idea what point(s) they’re trying to make.
It’s also a way to acknowledge that I generally can’t be bothered to argue with anyone who isn’t bright enough to retain the information that there, their, and they’re all mean different things.
That said, if his points were idiotic, why not refute those as well?
Is it more important to hit the target or for the shell to explode?
Answer: you must do both to be effective. Strong arguments presented poorly are like big shells exploding off-target. The noise may make an impression, but ultimately the effect is less than that of a precisely-targeted attack.
Did his style start out OK and then suddenly degenerate? Because if a debater starts adding non sequiturs with a sudden loss of coherence, you have a case that he’s now running on emotion instead of logic.
If it was an argument I wanted to have, I’d address the non sequiturs and loss of coherence first. Then one or two points, if I could make them out. Whether I mentioned writing skill at all would depend on what I wanted out of the argument.
I might suggest a few deep breaths. Or ask if he was trying to modify the old saying: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit; into: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, confuse them with incoherence. Or I might drop out, with or without comment.
Does Facebook let you have enough space to have a big argument? I thought it cut posters off at about Twitter level.
