You can make a joke, but can you take criticism?

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May 6

Things which, contrary to popular belief, do not magically validate your argument

  1. Calm. Congratulations, you’re relatively unemotional! While very nice for you, your emotions say literally nothing about the validity of your argument. Similarly, emotional outbursts do not invalidate arguments. Maybe your argument is just so infuriatingly wrong that your opponent can’t keep their emotions in check.

  2. Sources. You have sources? Neat! But not all sources are good, and they can be easily misinterpreted and misapplied.

  3. A consistent theoretical framework. What if your theoretical framework, you know, sucks? Or doesn’t work in this context? There are just so many ways for you to be wrong.

  4. Logical consistency. This is remedial logic and shouldn’t need to be said, but whatever: An argument is only valid if the premises are true and the reasoning is sound. “All unicorns are communists, you are a unicorn, therefore you are a communist” is invalid because unicorns are obviously anarchists.

  5. Jargon. Wow, you know words. Congratulations.

  6. A poor argument from your opponent(s). Okay, so maybe they tried to argue that misandry don’t real because their spellcheck doesn’t recognize it as a word. That’s a bad argument, but it doesn’t make “misandry is real because child support!” any better. You both suck.

  7. Getting the last word. So what if your opponent chooses to disengage? There are any number of reasons for that—maybe they realized they were never going to get anywhere, maybe they got tired, maybe they fell asleep or died mid-sentence.

  8. Praise. Other people may dig your argument, but people are plagued by bias and bad opinions, and chances are high that you are too.