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[Loud Whispers]

reductio ad hitlerum is an informal fallacy that basically means you can't reduce an argument to "lol ur worse than hitler"

That argument is worse than Hitler

[Darvi]

1) People are people. Avoiding impersonal arguments is impossible unless the person holds no opinions, beliefs or morality.

Unfortunately, I also prefer trolling and jokes over arguing on the internet.

Also Poe's law was the thing about satire. You're thinking Sturgeon.

[BFEL]

DAMN IT WHY ARE THERE SO MANY LAWS?!

[Angle]

Interestingly enough, I followed these for an argument, and I think I actually convinced someone of something? Or the other guy just got bored. You can see it here.

[Loud Whispers]

The real question is; whose standards did you follow?

[Angle]

The ones from palsch.

[Loud Whispers]

Those are good standards for Bay12. Mine are better

[Phmcw]

1. Arguments should be impersonal. This is about ideas, not people. This holds true no matter what your opponent is doing. Thus, personal attacks, insults, and especially ad hominems should be avoided with extreme prejudice. There are a few exceptions to this rule: If the opponent IS the subject of the argument- Say, if you're publicly arguing with the Nazi Party about whether people should support the Nazi Party, then arguments to attack the integrity and competence of the subject have some place. You should still be careful about it though.

I don't like that one, mostly because it take away a pretty interesting aspect of most discussions : in many arguments, "what do you do about it" or other personal arguments can be pretty interesting and cannot be avoided if you want to keep the discussion meaningfull. Likewise, in many technical discussions, "what is your level/what are your experiences/do you have any certification in the field/..." is seen as a personal attack instead of simply gauging the level of the other person. But I cannot know how technical I can be and how precise I must be. I won't talk to an experienced sysadmin like to an experienced programmer or to an hobbyist. Who you are does matter.

[Reelya]

1) People are people. Avoiding impersonal arguments is impossible unless the person holds no opinions, beliefs or morality.

Unfortunately, I also prefer trolling and jokes over arguing on the internet.

Also Poe's law was the thing about satire. You're thinking Sturgeon.

oh God,  you win this law thing.

[Muz]

I have the following set of regulations for internet arguments, taken from the philosopher Mortimer Adler:

Before you can disagree with someone, you must completely understand.

Without understanding, both of you are not talking about the same thing. I find this common in religious debates, where an atheist is attacking Christian beliefs, faced against a non-Christian theist. So someone might argue that God can't possibly be omnipotent, but their opponent might be Norse and doesn't even believe that his gods are omnipotent. The two end up beating up straw men.


When you disagree, do so with the purpose of learning more or correcting someone. Never do it to prove someone wrong. A guideline is that you should feel no pain in agreeing with the person.

If it hurts you to admit that the person is right, then walk away. The argument ends up personal.


All disagreements need a reason.

If you're going to disagree, it must meet one of the following criteria:
1. Show that the other person is uninformed - that they're lacking knowledge that you have. If someone writes a formula involving division by zero, you can point out that they can't divide by zero. But you shouldn't make an appeal to expertise and tell them that they can't use formulas until they have a PhD in mathematics.
2. Show that the other person is misinformed - that they made a false assumption somewhere. Don't assume that the act of assuming is bad, but rather prove that a specific assumption is false. Prove that the logic is not sound.
3. Show where the analysis is incomplete. A lot of old books, like Sun Tzu's Art of War is correct, but incomplete. For example, Sun Tzu talks about 'death ground' strengthening the resolve of soldiers, but the entrapment/'scorpion' strategy used by generals like Hannibal and Khalid made use of putting people on 'death ground' to panic. Sun Tzu was not wrong, but he did not bring up situations where death ground was a bad thing.

If you can't do one of these three, then you can't really disagree. You can say that you don't like the conclusion of the argument, but you can't quite say they were wrong.

[Loud Whispers]

When you disagree, do so with the purpose of learning more or correcting someone. Never do it to prove someone wrong.

-Correcting
-Proving someone wrong
The first necessitates the other.