Is this the right room for an argument?
This is a trope that we here at Argument Clinic have noticed with a thrill of apprehension.
Most recently was on Daily Kos, where someone in a comment thread challenged another comment, in effect: “please cite studies that show your point is correct.”
As you probably have guessed, we don’t recommend that strategy, because it’s a fairly weak move. It’s not a dreadfully weak move, but your opponent may negate it and hammer on you to some effect, so why leave yourself open?
If someone plays this maneuver against you, what is the best response? As always at Argument Clinic, we are going to recommend you go “meta” – instead of responding to the maneuver, respond about the maneuver. Note: this is not a dishonest technique; you are simply explaining why it’s not worth responding to the comment.
Consider:
Person 1: It seems to me that the republicans are going to get less popular if they keep doing that.
Person 2: Please cite any reference materials or studies you may have that support what you just said.
That’s the set-up for a “land war in Asia” scenario. Even if you follow suit and respond with links to studies, they are just going to say “does not apply” or dismiss the studies for bad methodology, or whatever. Think about it: you’re trying to rely on a study to convince them of something that they are already unconvinced about – only a person with high intellectual honesty is going to actually read and think about whatever study you provide. They’ll look for a way to blow it off. So, blow them off first.
Here’s a possible parry:
Person 1: Did you notice that this is the comment section on a blog, not an academic conference? Asking for citations is absurd. I was expressing my beliefs, which are informed by my interpretation of events and facts – you can disagree with those events and facts, but I don’t have to substantiate them. You’ll just have to do your own research.
If you really want to hammer on that point, you can come at it from an angle:
Person 1: Well, you’re implying that you don’t agree with my interpretation of events and facts, which is well enough, but when you ask for me to substantiate them, it seems to me as if you need to study the topic more and not ask me to educate you. Besides, you’re asking me to provide you with a bunch of information that you’re probably going to reject, anyway. Why not cut to the chase and do your own research then come back and present me studies and references to research that show I’m wrong?
Midjourney AI and mjr: “argument clinic” (the AI appears to have decided independently that the arguers are Socrates and Freud. Interesting)
Unfortunately, this “please cite your references” trope appears to be an outgrowth of the early oughties skeptical movement, in which asking for citations was a normal maneuver. In the case where you are arguing about social science research, or medical research, citations may be helpful, but it has been our feeling that asking an opponent for citations in any situation but an academic forum is a fairly pointless move. As we’ve seen, people are perfectly happy to search up sketchy citations (e.g: “ivermectin may work against COVID” papers) and you wind up in muddy trench warfare slinging accusations of dishonesty or pushing dishonest references.
If you are actually concerned with honesty, rather than merely winning an argument, I suggest a maneuver like this:
Person 1: You are asking me to document how I formed my opinion. That’s fair enough. So, my opinion was largely formed by reading an introductory text in the topic of ${whatever} and I also follow articles related to ${whatever} on this website or that website, and I keep up with publications on the topic. I don’t have academic credentials in the topic, but I think I’m pretty knowledgeable. What about you? Our disagreement is probably a consequence of imperfect understanding of the topic between us.
The best argument-killer response I ever saw was on a forum where someone was describing a not-very-good way of wiring a circuit panel. The other person responded:
Person 2: My title at my day job is “Master Electrician.”
If you go back to the old USENET days, one of the best exchanges on the “what is your basis for knowledge?” axis was between a young programmer in comp.lang.c and one [email protected]. There was discussion about the origin of some features of the C programming language, and [email protected] asserted that this feature and that feature were derived from BCPL (basic common programming language) and found their way into C because they were useful. The young programmer fired back with:
“What do you know about the origin of the C programming language?”
at which point everyone on the thread pointed out to the poor fellow that [email protected] was Dennis Ritchie, the programmer who had developed the C programming language.
To avoid having that trap grab your leg, always consider asking “what is your basis for knowledge?” It’s not a dishonest maneuver – it could be that the person you are talking to is a board-certified master of the topic, and you’re mistaken. Asking for citations, though, does not help clear that up. Although, in the case of the [email protected] incident, I suppose Ritchie could have replied, “I wrote a book on the topic called ‘The C Programming Language’ I’m Dennis Ritchie.” Plunk.
… the AI appears to have decided independently that the arguers are Socrates and Freud.
And that both have six fingers (assuming unseen thumbs), with another set emerging from a wrist.
I s’poze you can’t interrogate the AI about those toys on the table, or what the green sign on the bulletin board says. (Can you?)
When people argue on the internet, they often act like there is infinite time for our ideas to duke it out until one emerges winner. But fundamentally, arguing takes time. One of the most time-consuming ways to argue is bringing in academic references. And it takes time on both sides, the person offering up the citation, and the person on the other side who has to vet its relevance and validity.
If a rando on the internet asks me to cite references, unless I already have the references on hand, or wanted to do the research anyway, that’s just asking too much. To convince some rando? Who almost certainly wouldn’t put in the necessary work themselves? I don’t want it badly enough.
Siggy@#2:
When people argue on the internet, they often act like there is infinite time for our ideas to duke it out until one emerges winner.
Agreed. I consider the failure to argue well to be one of the unfortunate side-effects of the internet skeptical movement – including, of course, stuff like “street epistemology” and christians’ “gotcha questions atheists can’t answer” etc. There’s a lot of dishonest/lazy tactics in argumentation out there.
I prefer discussion to argument. There are subjects where you could legitimately hold opposing views, but I rather hate the people who constantly contradict everybody because they enjoy intellectual pissing contests.
On a completely different subject, I am a bit miffed that Mr Marcus Ranum drove almost all the way to my buried in snow city and I did not know until you were on your way home again.
Harumph!
Also, it can be surprisingly difficult to come up with good citations for simple and uncontroversial statements, such as “the sky is blue” or “1 + 1 = 2”.
Heh, about half the time I think I should make a comment to advance/counter an argument I get three-quarters into what I’m writing then decide that I really don’t know enough to make an informed comment. So it’s discarded.
Then at least another quarter of the time I write a wall-o-text (or several) then realize that a 15,000 word diatribe is probably not going to be read by anyone. I generally don’t put in citations, but I do like to explain my reasoning, which leads me down various paths. So then I don’t end up posting it.
If I pass those two hurdles, I then refresh to see if anyone has made the same point I was going to make in 15,000 words, but manage to do so in three. At which point I discard my comment.
If no one has made the same point I have just written, I then spend time trimming an pruning until it’s just a single wall-o-text, and usually add a TL/DR section.
I’m trying to learn to be flippant, but it’s tough going.
@4, Tethys. I know! Marcus probably passed within 60 miles of me, and he didn’t even stop in for a whiskey! It’s like we’re just some random people commenting on his blog on the internet.
I didn’t do social, because I was on a pretty tightly timed mission. I was barely able to meet up with PZ and Mary, and wouldn’t have been able if they hadn’t adjusted their schedule.
Traveling used to be a weekly affair for me, but now it’s rare. I got pretty anti-social during the pandemic and have more or less stayed that way. I probably will be out again someday …
flex @6:
Well, I don’t credit myself with being anything other than a random person commenting on his blog. 8-)
As for “doing your own research,” when I read some comment like that, it almost always seems to come from somebody who really means “I found someone on the Internet who agrees with me.”
Dumb question tangentially related, and directed to no one in particular: Brian Kernighan has said that the C programming language is entirely Dennis Ritchie’s work. So why is the foundational text ,”The C Programming Language”, credited to Kernighan and Ritchie, in that order, and generically referred to as “K&R”? I still have my ancient copy of K&R, and remember programming using its conventions (prior to the numerous improvements supplied via ANSI C). Looking at old “K&R” style code these days kind of gives me the creeps. And no, I am not and never was a fan of C++ (other than the pun of its name). I liked C for what it was: efficient, “close to the metal” as we engineers say, and at times, brutal. Never thought it was a good first language for anyone to learn, though. Kind of like handing the keys to a Ferrari to a 16 year old with a learner’s permit. When I was teaching it, I was going to have a T-shirt made that said “Never dereference a null pointer”. Never got around to it.
Kernighan was the first serious user of C, and worked closely with Ritchie to flesh out the language and its functionality. I recall Ritchie said something once about “many long conversations with Kernighan about how pointers and pointer math should work.”
The compiler was always implemented as a one-pass compile, assemble, link – which I think did no favors because it made features like type linking impossible – i.e: if I wrote a routine foo(char *) and foo(int) why not have the linker pass resolve the function based on the parameters. If they had that, C++ would never have happened and ANSI C prototypes would have been unnecessary.
There was a lot of mockery for C++ in the UNIX room when I was visiting there – the general sense was that C++ was a bucket of stupid features and a few good ones. I am inclined to agree. Function overloading is a bodge and cin/cout is just stupid, especially since it just compiled to calls to stdio. Add mechanism, add complexity.
There were a lot of other early users for C but Kernighan was a collaborator. Ritchie wrote the compiler, though. I recall someone saying that when there were big changes to the compiler, whole chunks of the kernel got rewritten. Apparently Kernighan could exude great code effortlessly at a phenomenal rate.
jimf @9: I, too, learned C from the first edition of K&R. I think Kernighan is listed first because he’s the principal author of the book, not the inventor of the language.
I like C++ and serve on the ISO committee that actually writes the standard (and so maybe I’m biased). I agree that the language has a pretty steep learning curve and can be dangerous in the hands of novice programmers; but once you figure out what’s going on, coding in C++ can go very quickly and be just as safe as anything else as long as you avoid known anti-patterns (and, yes, don’t dereference garbage pointers (or past-the-end iterators)).
This is known as an Annie Hall moment, after the scene in said movie involving Marshall MacLuhan.
clip
I have had something similar happen once or twice to me on teh Interwebs, but it is complicated by my preference to remain pseudonymous. There are a few fields of knowledge in which I am reasonably proficient, but you can’t simultaneously be anonymous and a known authority.
@8: I know what you mean about the current ironic meaning of “doing your own research.” We have some anti-5G types on the local neighborhood group.
@8 @10 I have been following the increasing popularity of Rust as a C/C++ replacement. It seems to have some interesting advantages, but I do not have enough experience in the relevant languages to make personal pronouncements on it.
@1: I just looked up the fact that Freud was right-handed, which puts the lie to the depiction of Freud above (as suggested by placement of papers, pencil in hand, and space near right hand too cramped for writing).
@5 Dunc: Also, it can be surprisingly difficult to come up with good citations for simple and uncontroversial statements, such as … “1 + 1 = 2”.
“From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1 + 1 = 2.” – Volume I, 1st edition, p. 379 — Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russel
@11:
Ah, so whenever I get stuck in the middle of an application of templates, something that *obviously* ought to work and would be an obvious and fantastic use of templates saving much typing and overhead, and end up tracking the problem down to specific language in the standard where it says “all permutations of type are allowed here, except for *this one* which must be specifically noticed by the compiler and generate an error if attempted”, that’s *your* fault then is it?
xohjoh2n@16: 8-)
Actually, templates have been around ever since C++98 which is way before my time. (I was on the C committee then, but didn’t join the C++ committee until much later.)
The one (count it, one) feature of C++11 that you can blame on me is Non-static data member initializers. (The section called “The proposal” is by Michael Spertus who had the original idea; the rest, including the actual standardese, is my work.)
I got pretty anti-social during the pandemic and have more or less stayed that way. I probably will be out again someday …
Same, though I’m rather solitary by nature even without the pandemic. It would have been a nice change from 4 days of shoveling and you passed 1.8 miles from me. I’m not a whiskey fan, but I do know where to go for the best Indian/Pho/Mexican/Ethiopian food in town.
@Tethys – I’m on the hook to do the driving on the return move back to Pennsylvania, whenever that is. Hopefully it will be at least 6 months out, maybe longer.
There is some great thai/pho in MSP for sure.
@1: don’t miss whatever that thing on the end of «Socrates»’ right arm is, and the «glasses» that «Freud» is wearing. I feel like this picture could work as some almost-normal-but-subtly-wrong cthulhu piece.
One of the things I struggled with when writing this piece is the “do your own research” angle. I can’t figure any way around it – maybe different phraseology would help. The problem is, when the interlocutor asks for references they are implying, at least, that they don’t believe you; they are challenging your facts not your interpretation. Well, if they don’t believe you, they’re hardly going to believe a selected reference you provide them. So, something better than of “here’s a set of references” is required.
I recently had a conversation with a neighbor, who asked my opinion about the 2000 Mules movie. I did not feel it was honest to regurgitate what other people had said about it, because it was specifically my opinion that was requested. So, I bought the damn thing and watched it, obtaining a used copy on Ebay so that the producers of the movie wouldn’t make any money off me. Basically, they had asked me “do my own research” and I did. Since I didn’t believe the movie, I had to do more research in order to assemble a defensible view why the movie was garbage. Fortunately for me, I have done some work with election system security, back in the past, and did not have to invest a lot of effort.
Another conversation I had, this approach worked quite well. The other person asserted “there’s no way that 9/11 wasn’t an explosive implosion of the building.” I replied, “Well, sometime later I’d appreciate it if you’d do some google image searches for pictures of what a building looks like when it’s rigged to blow. There are pictures online, I know, because I’ve seen them. Or you can look at some documentaries about Loizeaux Freres in Towson, MD, who pioneered the technique. Do your own research, but I expect that what you’ll find is that it takes a long time to rig a building and there are shaped charges tied against beams, with holes hammered in drywall, and det cord strung everywhere. Ask yourself why the office workers on 9/11 didn’t notice that.” A few days later we talked again and he admitted that he had modified his views somewhat, but felt that it was still the sort of thing the US government would do.
Another computing example is when Microsoft announced at Usenix they were adding Korn shell support to NT. Someone from the audience pointed out how the Korn shell they licensed from MKS wasn’t compatible with real Korn shell releases. The Microsoft rep insisted it was compatible, then someone else spoke up to inform him he was speaking to Korn. https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt98/ntnix.html and https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells-all .
I think I’ve found your dmr source, at https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/GUA7AtDPy84/m/pMK1vyghgRoJ in the thread “Endian wars” where Robert Firth corrects dmr’s description that C’s character arrays were “inherited from BCPL and B.” If so, dmr replied “Robert Firth justifiably corrects my misstatement about BCPL strings; they were indeed counted” at https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/GUA7AtDPy84/m/69RwNEZl1OAJ . And, wow, esr’s comment in that thread reminds me that I don’t like him.
@17 billseymour mentioned
>Non-static data member initializers
Perhaps my gripe with initializers hadn’t thought of static data members. I wanted the equivalent of a global int xyz = 6; but with object scope rather than global scope.
@9 jimf
Same here, I only ever use it as C-with-classes, and ignore all the other garbage that only exists to obfuscate code and make debugging harder.
@5 Dunc
That depends entirely on what exactly you mean by ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘+’.
— 1st semester Algebra
There’s also the aspect that asking for citations excludes knowledge from people who are excluded from formal structures.
If i’m talking about transphobia and you ask for citations? My citation is that i’m a trans woman and have dealt with this fucking garbage for my entire life. But that doesn’t get me into PNAS.
Even if you intend it in good faith it makes you come across as dismissive of a lot of marginalised people’s lives.
Building on what you wrote — Let’s pretend, for a moment, that it was in fact a controlled explosive implosion. Why do you need the airplanes? All you need is a narrative where Muslim terrorists bought critical floors of the respective buildings, and got fake renovation work orders, which they abused to in fact rig the buildings to implode. You could even have a narrative similar to the hijack scenario about the terrorists: only one on each team actually knew that it was a suicide mission, and all the others believed that they would be out of the building when it went down.
Also, why the attack on the Pentagon? If the deep state was trying to build a casus belli, they could do it without endangering the military that was going to be gearing up for the war they wanted. Why wasn’t the attack on the Twin Towers sufficient for their purpose?
Also, why have Saudi terrorists, if you want to attack Afghanistan and/or Iraq? If you can control the narrative to that degree, have your terrorists be of those specific nationalities.
Why? For money? For power? The government already has money and power. They could engineer an act of war without quite so much of a convoluted plot. The only reason to cause to much death and destruction of their own citizens and their own citizen’s property, when they already have money and power, is sheer bloodthirstiness — and there’s always the risk that someone disgusted by the bloodthirst, or who wants their own shot at more money and power, will blow the whistle. Why have there been zero 9/11 whistleblowers? There have been whistleblowers for other abuses of power, but in twenty+ years, why none for 9/11?
[Sorry, I think too much]
Are you quite sure that’s Socrates? I think Socrates is more traditionally portrayed with less hair on the top of his head, and the remaining hair is long but straight, and a more squashed-in nose.
I am not sure which classical scholar Freud would be arguing with. Maybe Augustine of Hippo? Repression of sexuality is Good, because it leads to Godliness, vs Repression is Bad, because it leads to Neuroses?