Talking to Walls

For some reason it took me this long to realize just how interesting the dynamics of arguments are.  Over the last few days I have found myself observing a few disagreements (political, personal philosophies, etc.) as well as over the course of my life.  Watching arguments from the third person is one of the most interesting things there is in life, because it can go on for hours without going anywhere.  Lets discuss...

First the methods of which people use to make others see their way in civil arguments are nothing short of hilarious.  My favorite of which is the method of raising your voice in order to intimidate(?) your opposition into adopting your mindset, this does nothing but anger and annoy them instead, although it does work when you are about 7 years old and you win the argument solely so you will shut up.  A close cousin of this strategy is the sarcastic agreement in which every response is a prompt "yup, yup, yup.  You are totally right!" before the person is capable of getting a quarter of their argument out.

Whatever! Just shut the fuck up now!

Another great method of argument is to go on the offensive, but rather than make any comments that are relevant to the topic at hand, you insult the other person.  This is a close second place because I don't understand how most people take this route despite how utterly irrelevant and ineffective it is.  Do you really ever expect that someone will agree with your logic that their viewpoint on fiscal policy (for example) is incorrect on account of their unattractive bodily features.  Most people are ugly and unfortunately for the people who adopt this style of debate, there has yet to be shown that there is a direct correlation between being ugly and being incorrect on every topic.

Sample Argument: Abe Lincoln's hat is stupid, ergo slavery isn't wrong...  See my point?

The last offensive strategy is to give precise logical arguments, possibly with evidence.  This would seem to any educated person to be the most effective of the three strategies I have mentioned, but those educated people would be severely mistaken.  This leads me to my title "Talking to Walls" because no matter which of these three methods you would choose to wield in your argument against the obviously incorrect opinion of your opponent, your opposition will maintain the same bullheadedness about their opinion that you hold for yours.

ACCEPT MY ARGUMENT NOW!

The result of this is things such as Carl Everett (I did love him on the Red Sox) denouncing the existence of dinosaurs on the grounds that there is no direct reference to their existence in the Bible.  His main argument against fossils are that they were created by scientists to confuse people, and I must agree seeing that creating rocks with intricate bone patterns that are the same across the world is a lot less trustworthy than a book which is taken to be true in some parts of the world to the same extent we find The Cat in the Hat to be true in America.  I'm not attacking the Bible or Christianity/Catholicism at all, I would probably be very comforted to find either to be true, but I just don't see why dinosaurs would be relevant in a story of guidance to humans who never simultaneously existed with humans.  I also could guarantee that the Bible makes no reference to the platypus, and I would like to hope that's not more smoke being blown up my ass either.

"The Flintstones wasn't real!"

Sorry about that rant, I found it a little funny.  It gave me a perfect example to show that both myself and Carl Everett would be mostly unmoved on this issue, and it shows the structure of a typical argument.  It also gives me an excuse to mention that according to Wikipedia he recently held a gun to his wife's head while she was wearing a Barney costume.  It also illustrates that arguing with people is fucking useless and I'm going to try to avoid doing it, it won't get anybody anywhere.

Lets hope Jurassic Carl doesn't wipe the smile off this young lad's face