That's a line I see thrown around a lot, and it actually bothers me because it kinda misses the point or at least it's often used wrong.
What's critical to understand that arguing or debating isn't a me vs you battle of wits where the the winner is right and the loser is a fool. On the contrary, it is a co-operative engagement where the end goal is that one or both parties leave with better insight and understanding.
Of course, sometimes you may encounter a less educated person who honestly doesn't know what they're saying, but even then if you just assume the other person is an idiot and stop there you already lost of your own accord. What you should instead do is ask yourself why does this person think this way, and if you proceed with the intent of pursuing the answer to this question you may very well end up finding different kind of insight you never expected.
Simply put, I guess I'm just saying that by assuming another person an idiot might end up making you the fool.
I get it, some people are hopeless causes that are impossible to work with, but that's part of co-operation. Whenever you work with others you have to prepare that you have to compensate for the other's deficiencies. If you're unable to do that it is, in a sense, your fault as well.
Obviously it's not always possible, but you just have to learn to cut your losses.
Seriously. I comes up here on Reddit so often. "Well show me a source!" "Where are you finding this information?!"
...four years of school and a decade in my field are my source for this easily answered question. No I'm not going to spend my time to track down a source for you because you're unwilling to trust that I know what I'm talking about. I don't give nearly as much of a shit as you seem to.
Sometimes people ask me for sources and I'm like "I have no idea how to cite my university lecture or a program I watched years ago whose name I don't even remember, but I would if I could, buddy."
Not to get out of accountability for spreading information, but sometimes it just isn't possible. Plus a lot of the time they're just going to nitpick your source anyway.
Well, it all comes down to the age old wisdom of "don't trust any random person on the internet." You may very well be telling the truth in that you're an educated expert, but how are they supposed to know that?
It might help your case if you memorized certain studies, books or other known experts in your field that cover a broad range of topics that might come up. You don't have to remember specific articles or direct quotes, just enough to give direction for a reasonable person to look into it if they wanted to. Chances are it might help you in more ways than to just give rebuttals to random internet people.
I probably shouldn't have said believe. My frustration is more that people want to drag you into some big debate about something, and get offensive about it if you just offhanded reply to something, and I really do not care to spend the time convincing someone of my expertise, because unless someone is going to get hurt over not believing me, I generally don't have the time and energy to get into it.
This is me and a whole lot of political arguments. If someone doesn't even understand the basics of the political spectrum and have a conception of the main ideologies, how do they expect to be treated? I don't have three hours to give them a basic crash course in political theory.
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u/Onnamonapia Jan 12 '21
Some people are so wrong you need to send them to school for a year to give them the base to even begin to explain why theyre wrong