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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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I don't think it is, nor should be, against the rules to merely argue in favor of an opinion one does not sincerely hold. If the poster breaks the rules in other ways, that's a different story, but I think it's fine and even valuable for people to be allowed to play devil's advocate.

If he wants to play devil's advocate, he could say he's playing devil's advocate, not pretend he actually believes what he's saying.

What difference does it make? We should be evaluating the argument, not the person making it. The sincerity of the person making the argument doesn't change the validity of the argument.

First of all, this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false. Second, this is only true if you're an ideal perfect arguer who notices BS 100% of the time and can never be fooled by it. If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments, because you might fail to notice some of them because you're an actual human.

this is only true if the argument includes no personal observations or other claims that might be false.

A person arguing for a claim they genuinely believe in is at least equally capable of (if not more capable of) making up false anecdotes, or exaggerating true ones. In general, personal anecdotes should get very little weight as evidence of anything.

If you're an actual human, you don't want to bother with someone who's likely to make a lot of invalid arguments

A person arguing for a position they truly believe is at least equally (if not more) likely to make invalid arguments, due to blind spots or confirmation bias or a simple desire to win the argument.

My experience is that humans don't behave that way.

Humans don't behave what way? They don't make false statements and/or invalid arguments in support of positions they sincerely hold?

They do those things, but they don't do them in the proportions that you imply. Someone insincerely arguing for a position is much more likely to be telling you BS, even if every human will probably be telling you some BS.

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