[FRIAM] Climate Science Denial: A rational activity built on incoherence and conspiracy theories | HotWhopper

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No, I disagree again. You're relying on the ambiguity in the word "agree". One of the methods people like deniers and conspiracy nuts rely on is their perfectly valid ability to *change* what anything means on the fly. Indeed, if we *disallowed* them that ability, then we lose anyone's ability to change their mind.

Consistency hobgoblins want to write everything in stone, mainly so they can WIN the argument, which simply means demonstrate their brilliance and dominate the world. Agreement, in your sense, is the fixing-in-stone of some part of the algebra, the language, so that the wiggle (slop and flex) we *need* in order to change minds is eliminated. Such pre-fruitful-agreement locks the discussants into a zero sum game they'll have to fight to win or otherwise be humiliated.

We can argue over and over again without fixing the rules in stone. I'd argue we must argue over and over again without fixing such rules. And those who insist on fixing the rules should be left out of the dialogue.

On 11/25/20 12:03 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> To your first point, I never stipulated any particular logic.  Perhaps I should just put it this way: before we can argue fruitfully, we have to agree on a mode of argument, and failure to follow a set of rules does not make on a bad person, it just means that until we agree on a new set of rules, we can't argue any more. 
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