Fri, 21 Jul 2006
Unpersuaded
I've been on the Internet for a long time and have been in my fair share of arguments. For all I know some of the people I've criticized and insulted are reading this weblog. I've come to some conclusions in that time and one of them is this: I don't take your arguments seriously. That's not because I don't like you or I think you're stupid. I don't take anyone's arguments seriously, including my own.
Here's why. Most people use arguments to support a conclusion that they've already reached. In a way, such arguments are like computer programs, where you're trying to generate a desired conclusion. However, as any programmer can tell you, most programs are buggy. It's very rare to write a program and have it work the first time. The human mind is just not capable of a sustained thread of reasoning without making at least one mistake. Hence, there are bugs in computer programs and errors in arguments. You can debug programs, but it's pretty unusual for someone to go back over their argument and try to pick it apart. And programs are handed to someone other than their author to test, because the author typically won't test is thoroughly enough. So for all these reasons, no matter what your argument is, I think it's probably wrong.
