I Find Myself Unable to Disagree...

How could anyone possibly disagree with this, from Paul Graham?

How to Disagree: The web is turning writing into a conversation.... Many who respond to something disagree with it.... Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there's less to say.... The result is there's a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word....

If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well... here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:

DH0. Name-calling.... DH1. Ad Hominem.... DH2. Responding to Tone.... DH3. Contradiction.... DH4. Counterargument.... DH5. Refutation.... DH6. Refuting the Central Point....

Truly refuting something requires one to refute its central point, or at least one of them. And that means one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is. So a truly effective refutation would look like:

The author's main point seems to be x. As he says:

quotation

But this is wrong for the following reasons...

The quotation you point out as mistaken need not be the actual statement of the author's main point. It's enough to refute something it depends upon.

What It Means

Now we have a way of classifying forms of disagreement... while DH levels don't set a lower bound on the convincingness of a reply, they do set an upper bound. A DH6 response might be unconvincing, but a DH2 or lower response is always unconvincing.

The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read. In particular, it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest arguments.... By giving names to the different forms of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for popping such balloons.

Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional....

But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have them happier. If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. You don't have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don't want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.

If moving up the disagreement hierarchy makes people less mean, that will make most of them happier. Most people don't really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can't help it.

Comments

[Steven Palmer Peterson]

Disagreeing is also more common because there's even an odd little point of internet etiquette that says you shouldn't chime in and waste space with a post if all you're doing is saying "me too" -- but, by and large agreeing just is "me too".

Anyway. Me too.

[trotsky]

What a moron this Paul Graham is.

[jerry]

Which is why I've been trying to convince people, in vain, to get rid of "troll" and "concern troll" which are simultaneously DH1, DH2, and DH3.

Moderation should get rid of spam, incitement to violence, libel, and not a whole lot more.

Better than moderation would be a logician who can detail the logical fallacies contained in various arguments.

Also to be included in "not an argument" is linking to slurs and smears as well as linking to bigots, racists, and sexists and saying "I didn't know". Brad.

I will note that "Appeals to the sin of tenure" remains a logical and valid argument.

[Joe S.]

I don't understand the difference between a counterargument and an unsuccessful refutation. But even if the distinctions between DH4 and DH6 are specious, the DH1-4 taxonomy is valuable.

(I think this post is a DH3. Is it valuable?)

[Roger Bigod]

Trolls are problematic. They often make semi-valid semi-off-topic points that require lengthy rebuttal. The rebuttal can suggest to the uninformed that the position is respectable, which is a victory for the trolls.

Graham is making the default assumption that people are writing in good faith, or that we should act as if they were for the sake of civil discourse. Lots to recommend it as a policy, but perhaps there's a place for the sharp, nasty flame.

[jerry]

More here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HaRFBSq9k

[jerry]

"Trolls are problematic. They often make semi-valid semi-off-topic points that require lengthy rebuttal. The rebuttal can suggest to the uninformed that the position is respectable, which is a victory for the trolls."

Actual trolls are problematic. Most trolls that are named are false positives. They are called trolls not because they are trolls but because they disagree with someone, and the name caller does not want to take the time to contradict, counter, or refute the argument.

What's worse is that the lazy namecaller is trying to shutdown a conversation and ruin the reputation of the person he is calling a troll.

"They often make semi-valid semi-off-topic points that require lengthy rebuttal."

The beauty of the web is that
a) nothing requires any sort of rebuttal
b) lengthy rebuttals can be captured into a FAQ
c) this cartoon
http://xkcd.com/386/

Labels like troll and concern troll are a cure much worse than the disease.

[Roger Bigod]

I've seen what look like organized groups of trolls on controversial issues. As an example, the runup to the Iraq invasion in 2003. They were people who had never appeared on the blogs I frequented, and they vanished after the issue was decided. They had similar talking points, tarted up by personal details that were just too perfectly ingratiating. I think there's excellent reason to suspect that they were part of an organized effort and that they were trying to interfere with open discussion, not promote it.

[Bruce Wilder]

"If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. You don't have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don't want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way."

I think I disagree. Sometimes, the passion, the anger is critical, and being mean is the point.

Righteous anger, and mean-spirited ridicule are often quite appropriate and effective. Empty name-calling and ad hominems are simply their pale shadows, bad arguments that assume a passionate form, without weight or accuracy of aim.

Besides, being mean can be delicious fun, while being all officious and superior about the logic of one's argument can be dreadfully dull. I am not altogether certain that logic is anything more than tangential to being persuasive, in any case; logic is certainly tangential to being right.

[Bruce Wilder]

I do think the conversation would improve, if people felt more of an obligation to simply restate the argument with which they feel the need to engage, without necessarily making an instant committment to definitively agree or disagree.

[jerry]

I don't think anyone is talking about "organized groups of trolls". That's called an attack. I am talking about the tactic on way too many boards (especially way too many progressive liberal boards) of people simply dissing anyone they disagree with as a troll or a concern troll. It's part of maintaining groupthink.

See Pandagon and many modern feminist websites for the canonical examples of the use of the label "troll" as a way to shut down dissent and establish the group norms. Also check out dKos, Free Republic, and even, sadly, Duncan Black's comments to see the label "troll" wielded as a bludgeon.

[tom f]

Bruce Wilder: "logic is certainly tangential to being right"

...but it is _not_ tangential to being reasonable. For me, logic solely encompasses the sphere of the debatable. It was not until Bush attempted a logical reason for invading Iraq that we could argue effectively against it. If he had said "It's God's will" to the media and Congress, there can't be any effective discourse, can there?

Anyhow, my heart genuinely warms at the prospect of a rhetorical renaissance. I would only like to add to the above that the co-equal of logic is empiricism.

[Poppolphil]

I take issue with most of what Paul Graham says in this article. Or I disagree with it anyway.

1. DH1 is probably the worst of his categories. He says that:

"Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders."

When what is clearly relevant is not whether good ideas come from outsiders, but rather what frequency of outside ideas are good. I can speak only for philosophy, the feild in which I am trained, but I have yet to encounter anyone, on the internet, without training in philosophy who has worthwhile ideas of their own about it. And there is no shortage of people willing to talk about free will, ethics, consciousness, logic, empiricism, etc. So I really don't see why, when I go to the Corner, I cannot point out that their 'climatological expert' has a PhD in Forestry or Philosophy as a reason to disregard what they are saying. The fact that I, not being trained in any of the related climate sciences, cannot pinpoint where the philosopher posing as climate scientist goes wrong does not mean that the 'expert' should be taken seriously. And it is worth pointing that out.

Something similar goes for pointing out that people have a money interest in the public believing X being offered as experts about X.

2. DH2 seems to go wrong in a similar way. He says:

"So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, say where."

But again imagine that you are in an audience that is not properly trained to evaluate what is being said. If you know that lots of people who are so trained take X seriously, and the speaker is being flippant in his dismissal of X, that is a reason not to take the speaker seriously. If the speaker was sufficiently involved in the actual research regarding X, he would know that it is something that the experts take seriously. And just the fact that experts take something similar is good reason to take it seriously yourself (though this is not an infallible guide of course).

3. What he calls contradiction is DH3 and is supposed to be better than DH1 or 2. But as far as I can tell DH3 is just saying you disagree. (The author says X, but I say not-X) It seems to me that we have been given better reason to disregard what the author is saying by citing his conflict of interest and lack of training than we are by finding out that someone disagrees.

4. DH4-DH6 is a pretty useless categorization as far as I can tell. It is useful to remember that sometimes you can be talking past each other. But he is here not talking about how to disagree but whether one is succesful in disagreeing.

In general I think the problem here is that the author has a far too simplistic conception of the epistemic issues we regularly face. We come to debates with differing levels of training, and having to rely on sources whose backgrounds we don't always know. We are typically debating about matters of political interest and so there is always risk of outright lies and manipulation. In such situations demanding that a person either show us where an author says something false or not talk is silly. That is just a way to get taken in.

I apologize for the length.

[John]

Perhaps a review of logical fallacies would help. See http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

In my experience, people naturally argue illogically when their emotions are engaged. Rational discourse isn't natural human behavior. It has to be learned, and constantly reinforced against much back-sliding.

[A-ro]

Responding to tone can be useful.

It can explain why an argument does not contribute to the debate despite its logical merits--after all, what good is being right if you alienate everyone who needs to hear your argument? It can explain why a reader doesn't like a post despite its logical merits--a useful sort of feedback for an author, no?

[tom f]

Poppolphil: "So I really don't see why, when I go to the Corner, I cannot point out that their 'climatological expert' has a PhD in Forestry or Philosophy as a reason to disregard what they are saying."

Only if he/she brags about being an expert climatologist is it relevant to point out that they are indeed a Forestry PhD. And, in any case, having a PhD in an environmental science is more credibility that being a philosopher. No. If they're wrong about their views on global warming, you can point out why they're wrong, either on their logic or thier evidence or both.

Re: DH2 Your argument doesn't adress the fact that the appearance of gravity can be just as concealing of intellectual vapidity as it can reveal its opposite. Either way, you'll have to go back to the substance of the argument.

[ViSon]

I've used DH2 in an unusual situation. I posted something that raised eyebrows. One of the responses was total horsepuckey, but the poster did sound like he knew something. So I mimicked that infuriating self-assured tone, planning to show him up as an emperor without clothes by posting sources in my next reply. The joke was on me as the admin banned me without an explanation. For the longest time afterwards I thought that admin was a hypocrite with double standards. Much later it occurred to me I might have come across as a troll. I had posted in good faith so the possibility was the furthest from my mind.

[Maurice Lanselle]

Is the blogmaster glad he elicited all these constructive comments? I, for one, have trouble distilling them.

[marc sobel]

You DFH, why don't you go back to Moscow where you and the other Islamo Fascist's live.

Other than that, I can't find anything to disagree with in this article. I assume that the DH scale is covered under a GPL and I can use it with appropriate attribution.

Brava. Now how about the contrapositive ?

The author's main point seems to be x. As he says:

quotation

I cannot show this is wrong for any of the following reasons...

[Darren]

Bruce Wilder: "Besides, being mean can be delicious fun, while being all officious and superior about the logic of one's argument can be dreadfully dull. "

Exactly. I find the respectfulness of my answer varies directly with how much respect I have for the original author and the perceived strength of the argument. If an argument is foolish, harmful, and obviously wrong, there's nothing wrong with being mean *in the course of* demolishing the argument. (This would involve several 'DH levels' similtaneously, which calls the whole concept into question). It's called "snark", I believe, and there's nothing like a nice hot cup of snark to put a smile on your face in the morning. The Calculated Risk blog is wonderful for that.

OTOH, a mean, snarky counterargument that turns out to be, umm, *wrong* is an intellectual faux pas of the first order in my system of values, and is to be avoided.