Re:How to Disagree
by brlewis on Friday March 28, 2008 @10:28PM
(#149090)
This is a nice catalog of some common forms of disagreement, but I'm not convinced that this set of six is exhaustive, nor am I convinced that if other forms are added that the set will remain well-ordered.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I agree that it's nowhere near exhaustive, most obviously because it doesn't address the ways that writers try to directly deceive the audience (appeals to flattery, conservatism, etc).
I remember being part of an Academic Games league in high school. One of my favorite games was simply called "Propaganda." Everyone sat in a big room, listened to arguments, and identified the type of rhetorical technique being used. It may sound lame, but it was actually pretty fun and cultivated some useful skills.
Anyway, here's the technique list they used: http://mlagonline.org/Prop_ABCE.pdf [pdf]
and a more detailed but somewhat different list of logical fallacies: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
They should teach these skills at school, no later than right after kindergarten and with no less stress than any other subject. I'm convinced that's amongst the most important things that could be done to make the world a better place.
The Nizkor list _is_ pretty good, but some of their definitions, and even examples used to discuss them, are not very convincing. Please see the separate reply where I gave three other lists of definitions.
Actually, one of my long time favorite such sites is:
How do you directly deceive the audience via appeal to conservatism?
In that case it wouldn't be deceit as much as it is manipulation. To avoid any political insinuations, I could recast this as appeal to status quo. It's common to argue against new ideas in this way.
How can you question using conservative arguments? They have been used for centuries, and they've served us pretty well. :)
Each level (DH0,1,2,etc.) could include a variety of forms of disagreement, instead of just one. The resulting chart would become a rough guide to their relative strengths: move "up" the chart for better forms, and "down" for the bad ones (eliminate the one-to-one relationship between "DH-level" and "Form of Disagreement").
It would become more comprehensive, but also harder to present in a simple, compelling, immediately understandable way. Not sure if it'd be worth it.