Comment

Comment by ahelwer

At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. It also isn't how people have ever been able to access any sort of truth. Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes.

It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. All we have are beliefs, and our brains retroactively make up stories about why we think they are true. In this framework it is actually very useful to illustrate how your ideological opponent came to their beliefs. Then people can determine whether they find that story relatable.

parent ahelwer 5 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton