http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=264257
Finally, slightly frustrated, I told him:
"I suggest you abstain from holding strong opinions about things you don't understand. Makes you look kinda dumb. I also recommend a nice dictionary. Oh look, here's one."
Read my Nolan Chart column "Me & My Big Mouth"
You gave up the high road on that one, bud. Sarcasm, condescension, and use of generalities - "about things" - when it called for specifics. These all undermine persuasion and progress instead of foster it. I makes people more defensive and turns polite debates into shouting matches. You will never convince someone whom you've made dislike you. I dismissed talk of gold standards and anti-IP and questions as to the trustworthiness of the stock market when my lefty friends brought it up. It was not until I read them here that I was receptive.
I'm sure there's an argument in there in that he apparently sees imposition as undesireable. The imposition doesn't come into play until he has committed to imposing/encroaching. Does he suppose that it is imposing upon him to say he may not murder people? Or perhaps his point is academic and you're asigning the non-neutral connotation to "imposition".
Sometimes I just don't have time to deal with stupid people. Clearly, he was only there to badger me. So, I badgered back. It's just a dumb internet forum.
Saiphes is right, of course!
Disciplined hygiene on the internet is certainly the winning way of Austrian Economics and the liberty message as a whole. Any dog can win a barking contest. The strength of what we belive in is that it is actually true. It only takes a moment of calm contemplation to be realized by everyone.
But how to act out the agressions provoced by "there's someone on the internet who's wrong!", without insulting them?
Well, I'd suggest by keeping it clean online, but instead occasionally really brusing a statist in real life...
It's not fascism when the government does it.
“We must spend now as an investment for the future.” - President Obama
you come off as an idiot assuming you are the anti-federalist over there. Coming here to lick your wounds and try to rally moral support is a waste of time. You will never convince anyone with the attitude you currently have.
Civility buys more interest and understanding. Perhaps you might have lost it, but it's not clear to me that you were exceedingly impolite, just typically impolite.
It does take a lot of mental effort to put up with those that refuse to see the logical argument, but, how do you logically argue with someone who philosophically agrees with the premises of dialectical materialism? If you were really making an attempt to convince either of the actors in the forum thread, I think you failed, but were doomed to fail based on mutually exclusive presuppositions. Making the natural law case accessable to them would be a good excercize, but I think they'd dissemble it out of hand.
Note that they are veteran forum posters there, and probably have social credit and contacts which they'd use to mock and bait you into coming off as a troll. Dangerous Waters :).
He as badgering me.
And what is demonstrated there isn't the attitude I "currently have". It's how I respond to badgering. That guy only showed up on that thread to badger. If you read the entire thread as it stands now, you can see him changing his argument. It started out "Rothbard was an authoritarian". When that didn't stick (because it is utterlay absurd) he jumped to "Rothbard was active in politics so THERE!"
The guy was just there to pester. And he was treated like a pest.
Oh, and by the way, I have convinced many, many people to look more closely at liberty. It happens so commonly, I couldn't even begin to guess at how many.
you have to approach your interaction with people more holistically than looking at whether or not your arguments were logical or not. humans are stupid animals.
Look at how you started the thread "looking for allies". You have already created an adversarial situation without even realizing it.
"You have already created an adversarial situation without even realizing it."
I realized it. The guy was there to pester. He was treated like a pest.
And I am no longer a member of that forum. 1) not a lot of allies there and 2) the rules are far too strict for my tastes.
"you have to approach your interaction with people more holistically than looking at whether or not your arguments were logical or not."
I know that. I have run for political office before.
Saiphes:You gave up the high road on that one, bud. Sarcasm, condescension, and use of generalities - "about things" - when it called for specifics. These all undermine persuasion and progress instead of foster it.
Seriously: if all you have to complain about is the style--don't complain. Style over substance makes you look like you haven't a clue.
You should have been a bit more courteous. His arguments were easy to address without having to belittle him.
It wasn't a debate thread, first of all. He could have started a separate threat for that. He wasn't there to debate. He was there to pester. He wasn't being courteous, as he admits in his last post directed to me, he thinks "right-libertarians" are easy targets. He was just there to pester. Why is that so difficult to grasp? I figured it out with his first post. He posted on the thread without voting in the poll. He wasn't sympathetic to our view at all. He was just there to pester.
Moreover, for post after post I tried to calmly explain to him why he was wrong. Dead wrong. I gave him resources, referring him to Rothbard's book. He claimed to have read Rothbard, and continued to pester.
Finally, it's just a dumb internet forum, where mostly leftists hang out and slap each other on the back. I actually had an account there under a different name years ago (like 10 years or more ago) and back then it was very, very friendly to "our kind". I left the forum shortly after the 2000 election, because the partisan democrats had taken the joint over. They were absoluely intolerant of any view other than the Clintonian democrat party line. I came back because managment had changed. In fact, I know the current owner.
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