This is an absurd level of confidence coming from someone who doesn’t even seem to have a basic grasp of logic. I found this piece so problematic that I felt motivated to methodically dissect it....
Exemplary
I don’t think I’m overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average uneducated person. Like I mean that on most topics, I could demolish their position and make them look like an idiot. Reduce them to some form of “Look, everything you say fits together and I can’t explain why you’re wrong, I just know you are!” Or, more plausibly, “Shut up I don’t want to talk about this!”
This is an absurd level of confidence coming from someone who doesn’t even seem to have a basic grasp of logic. I found this piece so problematic that I felt motivated to methodically dissect it.
I'll preface by saying that if you found this piece off-putting, but did not feel equipped to rationally pick it apart, I recommend starting with Reason and Argument. I linked to Amazon only because of convenience—you can probably find it at your local library or used book store as it’s a commonly used textbook for undergraduate philosophy courses.
Terminology of Logical Argumentation
Let’s begin with a primer on logical argumentation terminology because the author of this post doesn’t understand the terms they are bandying around, and they are essential to providing clarity on the matters that are discussed:
Premise: A statement or proposition that is used in an argument to justify a conclusion. Premises have a truth value: true or false.
Conclusion: The part of an argument that is intended to be proven by the argument’s premises. A conclusion also has a truth value: true or false.
Argument: A series of premises and a conclusion. The premises are understood to be intended to justify the conclusion.
Validity: An argument is valid if, and only if, it is impossible for the argument’s premises to all be true, but the conclusion be false. That is, the conclusion in a valid argument is entailed by its premises.
Soundness: An argument is sound if, and only if, it is valid, and all its premises are true.
Belief
A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid argument for something, then you should accept the conclusion. Even if the conclusion is unpopular, or inconvenient, or you don’t like it. He envisioned an art of rationality that would make people believe something after it had been proven to them.
We have an issue with terminology here: an argument is not the type of thing that one might believe or disbelieve. Let's introduce some more terminology:
Belief: The attitude of regarding something to be true.
Disbelief: The attitude of regarding something to be false.
As such, belief and disbelief are really epistemic relationships between individuals and propositions. As we've previously established, arguments are not the types of things that are true or false, thus, they also are not the types of things that we can believe or disbelieve. I think the author may be confusing argument with conclusion here. In any case, they are confused.
Logical Possibilities
Equipped with these definitions, let's consider some possibilities:
Sound
Premises:
1. All dogs are animals
2. Fido is a dog
Conclusion:
Fido is an animal
This argument is valid because if both premises are true, then it logically follows that the conclusion must be true. And, importantly, it is also sound, because this argument is valid, and it so happens that its premises are also both true.
Valid but Unsound
Premises:
1. All dogs are robots
2. Fido is a dog
Conclusion:
Fido is a robot
This argument is valid because if both premises are true, then it follows that the conclusion must be true. But, importantly, it is not sound, because the first premise is not true. As such, note that validity is a logical property of an argument, and it is independent of the truth/falsity of the premises or conclusion of the argument.
Invalid and Unsound
Premises:
1. All dogs are animals
2. Fido is a dog
Conclusion:
Fido is a robot
This argument is invalid because even if both premises are true, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. It is important to note that just because a given argument is invalid, that does not mean that the conclusion is false. The validity of an argument has no bearing on the truth of particular propositions. It may very well be that Fido is a robot is a true statement about the world. It's just that this argument is not a valid way to arrive at that conclusion. In fact, it may even be true that the premises are all true as well. This is an important point to take home and is highly relevant to the fundamental issues with the article.
So, what kinds of conclusions should we believe? Well, our belief with respect to the conclusion of an argument depends precisely on the argument's soundness:
Valid
Sound
Should we believe the conclusion?
True
True
Yes
True
False
No
False
False
No
False
True*
N/A
* Note that this is an impossible situation because a sound argument is necessarily valid.
So, in the case of a sound argument, we should believe it, i.e., we should be convinced by it. If we are being rational, and are not convinced, then, the argument must not be sound. In case of a valid, but unsound argument, we should not be convinced by it. In this scenario we find no logical flaw with the argument, we merely do not believe all the premises to be true. In the case of an invalid, unsound argument, we should not be convinced for multiple reasons: the premises do not lead the conclusion, and moreover, we believe at least one of the premises is false. And the last combination of validity and soundness is impossible, so we cannot encounter an argument that is both sound but invalid.
So, we've introduced a rational framework under which our belief of the conclusions of arguments is not subjective—it is objective. Regardless of who is making the argument, if we determine it is sound, it is irrational to consider its conclusion false. And, unintuitively, if we do not know of a sound argument to justify a given conclusion, we may still decide to believe it is true. But, if we later encounter a sound argument that conflicts with our unjustified belief, the rational thing to do is to change our belief. This is what I think the author's friend was aiming at in saying "many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments". If someone fails to adjust their beliefs based on sound arguments, then they are irrational. And, yes, it's no stretch of the imagination to entertain the idea that many people act irrationally.
What can be True or False?
Without delving into formal logic, let’s tackle the fundamental issue with the article.
(This is the correct Bayesian action: if I know that a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument, argument convincingness provides no evidence either way. I should ignore it and stick with my prior.)
Arguments are, as we've established, a series of premises and a conclusion and are not the type of thing that can be true or false. I think the author intended to use the term valid here instead of true. Or, maybe, they intended to say conclusion instead of argument? Assuming either interpretation, there is still a fundamental issue, though. And that is some notion of an argument having a property of convincingness that is not defined. You will not find the term convincing in any textbook on logic because it is not a term of art. The quality of an argument being convincing is outside the realm of formal logic. In formal logic, arguments are either valid or invalid, sound or unsound. As such, convincingness is only meaningful with respect to soundness and validity. Whatever other connotations that come along with the term convincing, they do not relate to logical reasoning.
So, there can be no such situation where "a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument". It's impossible. When the author says that "I should ignore it and stick with my prior.", well, that is an option, but it is not rational—it's not logically justifiable.
So far, we've operated under a framework where we've considered premises and conclusions either true or false. This is sometimes called the "law of the excluded middle", i.e., propositions are considered as Boolean variables. We might introduce another possibility, where we consider that we may not be able to determine a truth value for some premises or conclusions. That, however, does not change the properties of soundness nor validity. As such, if we cannot determine if an argument is valid (because we cannot discern if its conclusion logically follows from its premises), then we must withhold our belief about its conclusion. Similarly, even if we find an argument to be valid, but we do not have a way to determine the truth of its premises, we cannot rationally believe its conclusion because we cannot determine if it's sound.
Taking Ideas Seriously
Even the smartest people I know have a commendable tendency not to take certain ideas seriously. Bostrom’s simulation argument, the anthropic doomsday argument, Pascal’s Mugging – I’ve never heard anyone give a coherent argument against any of these, but I’ve also never met anyone who fully accepts them and lives life according to their implications.
There is a rationally defensible position here, but the author mischaracterizes it. Considering an argument based on its validity, as I've explained, is separable from considering soundness. As such, one can believe that an argument is valid, but be unsure whether its conclusion is true or not (that is, be unconvinced about the argument's soundness). This is the position that is promoted by the adage "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."1
I consider myself lucky in that my epistemic learned helplessness is circumscribed; there are still cases where I’ll trust the evidence of my own reason. In fact, I trust it in most cases other than infamously deceptive arguments in fields I know little about. But I think the average uneducated person doesn’t and shouldn’t. Anyone anywhere – politicians, scammy businessmen, smooth-talking romantic partners – would be able to argue them into anything. And so they take the obvious and correct defensive maneuver – they will never let anyone convince them of any belief that sounds “weird”.
This gets into the realm of skepticism. A skeptic will err on the side of not believing a proposition without evidence. This is fine. But, the author is waffling here, indicating that they are a part-time skeptic. Inconsistency here is not inherently problematic, but now we've admitted a new term in our lexicon: weird. Again, I don't know what the author intended with this term, but I'm going to guess they meant something like an argument that has a surprising conclusion, despite being sound. A rational skeptic should accept a "weird" conclusion of a sound argument.
Knowing
This is starting to resemble ideas like compartmentalization and taking ideas seriously. The only difference between their presentation and mine is that I’m saying that for 99% of people, 99% of the time, taking ideas seriously is the wrong strategy. Or, at the very least, it should be the last skill you learn, after you’ve learned every other skill that allows you to know which ideas are or are not correct.
Now we get into real epistemology. What is knowing? Well, that's really tough. Serious philosophers will admit that we haven't arrived at a universally serviceable definition of knowledge. Some will offer something like knowledge is "justified, true belief". But the "justified true belief" account of knowledge has faced criticism. So, what are these precious skills that our dear author references that allow one to "know which ideas are not correct"? Well, we clearly must be part of the 99% for not being able to intuit such lofty philosophical trappings.
The people I know who are best at taking ideas seriously are those who are smartest and most rational. I think people are working off a model where these co-occur because you need to be very clever to resist your natural and detrimental tendency not to take ideas seriously. But I think they might instead co-occur because you have to be really smart in order for taking ideas seriously not to be immediately disastrous. You have to be really smart not to have been talked into enough terrible arguments to develop epistemic learned helplessness.
I'm not sure that being "smart" (i.e., intelligence) has anything to do with being rational. If you are being rational, you won't be 'talked into' any position. You may entertain various positions, but in the framework I've provided, you will adjust your beliefs based only on sound arguments. Thus, these notions of seriousness, smartness, or the central notion, epistemic learned helplessness, shouldn't affect your rationale. The author's apparent self-sense of superior rationality seems to be coming from the position that they irrationally reject arguments based on subjective qualities of the arguments, or their prior beliefs.
This is a crock of shit. They're essentially saying "I'm very rational because I'm irrational."
"Good" Arguments
But to these I’d add that a sufficiently smart engineer has never been burned by arguments above his skill level before, has never had any reason to develop epistemic learned helplessness. If Osama comes up to him with a really good argument for terrorism, he thinks “Oh, there’s a good argument for terrorism. I guess I should become a terrorist,” as opposed to “Arguments? You can prove anything with arguments. I’ll just stay right here and not blow myself up.”
Here we have the introduction of another subjective quality of arguments: "goodness". What is a "good" argument? Well, my position is quite clear by now—we rationally evaluate arguments based on soundness. Any other subjective notion of goodness is irrelevant when it comes time for rational evaluation. So, could there be such a "really good" argument for terrorism? Possibly, but, in the abstract, we cannot know what it is, and as such must give the benefit of the doubt to our supposedly "sufficiently smart engineer" and posit that she will accept this argument based on its soundness, and as such must remain comfortable with accepting the truly rational response. That addresses the reaction of "Oh, there’s a good argument for terrorism."
However, we are beginning to reach beyond mere epistemology here and into the realm of ethics—how we should act, given our beliefs—when our engineer then concludes "I guess I should become a terrorist". That is beyond the scope of what I am prepared to critique, suffice to say, I do not sanction terrorism.
Conclusion
The author of this piece is very confused. My understanding of the introduced idea of "epistemic learned helplessness" is basically that if you are willing to be rational part-time, unsound arguments won't persuade you. I would make the counterpoint that if you merely adopt a rational framework for evaluating arguments, you will find yourself in the same position. So, why not simply adopt the rational framework full-time?
So what, the author should have discussed whether "conclusions were sound" instead of whether "arguments were true"? I feel like in all your time spent nitpicking the author's vocabulary, you're...
Exemplary
So what, the author should have discussed whether "conclusions were sound" instead of whether "arguments were true"?
I'm not sure that being "smart" (i.e., intelligence) has anything to do with being rational. If you are being rational, you won't be 'talked into' any position. You may entertain various positions, but in the framework I've provided, you will adjust your beliefs based only on sound arguments.
I feel like in all your time spent nitpicking the author's vocabulary, you're missing the author's big point that it's often hard to tell whether an argument is sound. No one is perfectly rational and always capable of judging the soundness of arguments perfectly. I've had experiences like the author's here:
And there are people who can argue circles around me. Maybe not on every topic, but on topics where they are experts and have spent their whole lives honing their arguments. When I was young I used to read pseudohistory books; Immanuel Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos is a good example of the best this genre has to offer. I read it and it seemed so obviously correct, so perfect, that I could barely bring myself to bother to search out rebuttals. And then I read the rebuttals, and they were so obviously correct, so devastating, that I couldn’t believe I had ever been so dumb as to believe Velikovsky. And then I read the rebuttals to the rebuttals, and they were so obviously correct that I felt silly for ever doubting.
Defaulting to skepticism and delaying fully-accepting ideas that I thought were sound at the time has saved me from making a fool of myself now and then.
In subjects that are more important to me and that I have more experience and confidence with, I try to work through ideas further and I try to take my conclusions more seriously faster. But for most other subjects that I have less expertise and confidence in, taking changes in my beliefs slowly seems like the smarter choice. The article is mainly the author making that point.
So, there can be no such situation where "a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument". It's impossible. When the author says that "I should ignore it and stick with my prior.", well, that is an option, but it is not rational—it's not logically justifiable.
Of course there's such a thing as a false argument that sounds convincing to someone, assuming the perfectly realistic situation where the person has biases and doesn't have complete knowledge. If you were a perfect reasoner, then this extra skepticism would be unnecessary, but as long as that isn't true, it would not be more rational to pretend you were.
You will not find the term convincing in any textbook on logic because it is not a term of art. The quality of an argument being convincing is outside the realm of formal logic. In formal logic, arguments are either valid or invalid, sound or unsound.
The author isn't talking about this in the context of formal logic. In regular life, arguments don't come with a label that tells you whether it's valid or sound. People who hear an argument try to label the argument and get it wrong sometimes.
Yes! (Well more precisely if arguments are sound.) You can scoff and call me a pedant if you like, but it’s an important distinction. I addressed this, but I’ll reiterate. If you can’t determine...
So what, the author should have discussed whether "conclusions were sound" instead of whether "arguments were true"?
Yes! (Well more precisely if arguments are sound.) You can scoff and call me a pedant if you like, but it’s an important distinction.
I feel like in all your time spent nitpicking the author's vocabulary, you're missing the author's big point that it's often hard to tell whether an argument is sound. No one is perfectly rational and always capable of judging the soundness of arguments perfectly.
I addressed this, but I’ll reiterate. If you can’t determine if an argument is sound, it’s not rational to believe its conclusion based merely on that argument in a vacuum. You may still believe or disbelieve the conclusion based on other arguments, though. I don’t think this is as profound as the author makes it out to be. This is very basically rational skepticism, and they could have coherently advocated this position if they had bothered not to bloviate and use logical terminology correctly.
In regular life, arguments don't come with a label that tells you whether it's valid or sound.
That’s the whole point of reasoning about arguments! To try to determine their validity and soundness! If you don’t agree with someone’s conclusion, the rational response is to determine (for yourself if no one else), what the flaw in their argument is. If it’s not an important issue, maybe you will just ignore it. That’s fine! As long as you’re aware that you’re you’re ignoring an argument, there’s no problem. However, if it’s an important argument to you, the rational response is to identify either a logical error (point out the argument as invalid), or identify the premises you don’t believe.
This is actually related to a strategy that bad-faith actors will try to employ: they will offer many, many unsound arguments for a position and then claim ‘victory’ if you don’t point out the flaws in all their logic or premises. This is a sort of ‘denial of service’ attack on the rational mind. The thing to keep in mind is that it is not rational to accept an argument on its face. As you said it may not always be clear if an argument is sound. The simple response is to not accept every argument you come across on its face.
If that was the author’s point (I interpreted a slightly more subtle one about subjective qualities of arguments that make them appealing), it’s pretty obvious to most people. There’s also a distinction between arguments and mere propositions. You also shouldn’t accept non-obvious propositions on their face without supporting evidence. This is the common sense notion of “don’t believe everything you hear”. This is also related to rational skepticism. Since the author explicitly introduced the term ‘argument’, which has a specific meaning, I interpreted them as not intending to make that much more trivial point.
The bit you quote at the beginning, is interesting because I think it misunderstands how typical internet-comment arguments work. People mostly aren't interested in a kind of competitive debate...
The bit you quote at the beginning,
I don’t think I’m overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average uneducated person. Like I mean that on most topics, I could demolish their position and make them look like an idiot. Reduce them to some form of “Look, everything you say fits together and I can’t explain why you’re wrong, I just know you are!” Or, more plausibly, “Shut up I don’t want to talk about this!”
is interesting because I think it misunderstands how typical internet-comment arguments work. People mostly aren't interested in a kind of competitive debate where they address each other's points in good faith until one person has arguments that can't be countered and they win, with the other person conceding defeat and admitting their opponent was right. Instead people will argue like advocates for what they already believe in and the only way they'll agree with you and think you're right is if you say something they already agree with. No one will say or even think "Look, everything you say fits together and I can’t explain why you’re wrong, I just know you are!" because they probably won't agree that an argument with a conclusion they disagree with has any merit. Even against the most sound argument people will argue against some misunderstand or mischaracterization of it, or they'll just ignore the whole thing and start rehashing points that were already (to the opinion of their interlocutor) shot down.
I think that's part of the reason behind the Someone is wrong on the Internet! feeling and why some discussions can get so heated. If you're arguing against an "idiot" I think it's pretty natural to want to "win" the argument and have them admit your brilliance. I don't think it's even so much about being right as it's the feeling that the idiot thinks you're the idiot and you definitely can't let them have the last word when the "last word" is them gloating about how they totally destroyed your stupid argument. There's a bit of a feeling that, "we don't have to agree, but please at least agree that my argument is better than yours, kthx."
That feeling, I think, is what's behind the imagined response in the quote from the OP article. It's a way to keep your own pride (and sanity) in online discussions to think that "idiots" you strongly disagree with who don't agree with you despite your brilliance are actually admitting to your brilliance in some way, that their frustration or disengagement is actually them admitting how flawless your argument is.
On a personal note if I find myself annoyed or getting too emotionally invested in the "this idiot thinks I'm an idiot" problem I remind myself that that person would probably only think my argument was good if they already agreed with it, and why should I feel upset that I don't share the opinions of an idiot? (Cue Dwight) That doesn't cover every kind of frustration out there, and it's not like "idiots" (where, let's be honest, "idiot" = "person whose argument I strongly disagree with who won't back down" a lot of the time) are all that common anyway, but it's at least a start.
Yes, I think there is a metaphor of 'argument as contest' that many naively adopt that leads to this kind of unproductive exchange. I find productive argumentation enlightening because I assume...
Yes, I think there is a metaphor of 'argument as contest' that many naively adopt that leads to this kind of unproductive exchange. I find productive argumentation enlightening because I assume that I don’t know everything. If you come from a position where you don’t want to be enlightened, but rather remain entrenched in your current beliefs, arguing is probably exhausting.
I think related to this is the idea that no matter how open minded or self-critical one is, it's unlikely that one will substantially change their positions or worldview based on a single comment...
If you come from a position where you don’t want to be enlightened, but rather remain entrenched in your current beliefs, arguing is probably exhausting.
I think related to this is the idea that no matter how open minded or self-critical one is, it's unlikely that one will substantially change their positions or worldview based on a single comment or exchange online. Even if one is open to change it's probably more of a process than a single "you've convinced me and opened my eyes" kind of moment. Not that those can't happen, but it's probably less common to go that way for topics people already have entrenched opinions on.
This is an absurd level of confidence coming from someone who doesn’t even seem to have a basic grasp of logic. I found this piece so problematic that I felt motivated to methodically dissect it.
I'll preface by saying that if you found this piece off-putting, but did not feel equipped to rationally pick it apart, I recommend starting with Reason and Argument. I linked to Amazon only because of convenience—you can probably find it at your local library or used book store as it’s a commonly used textbook for undergraduate philosophy courses.
Terminology of Logical Argumentation
Let’s begin with a primer on logical argumentation terminology because the author of this post doesn’t understand the terms they are bandying around, and they are essential to providing clarity on the matters that are discussed:
Premise: A statement or proposition that is used in an argument to justify a conclusion. Premises have a truth value: true or false.
Conclusion: The part of an argument that is intended to be proven by the argument’s premises. A conclusion also has a truth value: true or false.
Argument: A series of premises and a conclusion. The premises are understood to be intended to justify the conclusion.
Validity: An argument is valid if, and only if, it is impossible for the argument’s premises to all be true, but the conclusion be false. That is, the conclusion in a valid argument is entailed by its premises.
Soundness: An argument is sound if, and only if, it is valid, and all its premises are true.
Belief
We have an issue with terminology here: an argument is not the type of thing that one might believe or disbelieve. Let's introduce some more terminology:
Belief: The attitude of regarding something to be true.
Disbelief: The attitude of regarding something to be false.
As such, belief and disbelief are really epistemic relationships between individuals and propositions. As we've previously established, arguments are not the types of things that are true or false, thus, they also are not the types of things that we can believe or disbelieve. I think the author may be confusing argument with conclusion here. In any case, they are confused.
Logical Possibilities
Equipped with these definitions, let's consider some possibilities:
Sound
This argument is valid because if both premises are true, then it logically follows that the conclusion must be true. And, importantly, it is also sound, because this argument is valid, and it so happens that its premises are also both true.
Valid but Unsound
This argument is valid because if both premises are true, then it follows that the conclusion must be true. But, importantly, it is not sound, because the first premise is not true. As such, note that validity is a logical property of an argument, and it is independent of the truth/falsity of the premises or conclusion of the argument.
Invalid and Unsound
This argument is invalid because even if both premises are true, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. It is important to note that just because a given argument is invalid, that does not mean that the conclusion is false. The validity of an argument has no bearing on the truth of particular propositions. It may very well be that
Fido is a robotis a true statement about the world. It's just that this argument is not a valid way to arrive at that conclusion. In fact, it may even be true that the premises are all true as well. This is an important point to take home and is highly relevant to the fundamental issues with the article.So, what kinds of conclusions should we believe? Well, our belief with respect to the conclusion of an argument depends precisely on the argument's soundness:
* Note that this is an impossible situation because a sound argument is necessarily valid.
So, in the case of a sound argument, we should believe it, i.e., we should be convinced by it. If we are being rational, and are not convinced, then, the argument must not be sound. In case of a valid, but unsound argument, we should not be convinced by it. In this scenario we find no logical flaw with the argument, we merely do not believe all the premises to be true. In the case of an invalid, unsound argument, we should not be convinced for multiple reasons: the premises do not lead the conclusion, and moreover, we believe at least one of the premises is false. And the last combination of validity and soundness is impossible, so we cannot encounter an argument that is both sound but invalid.
So, we've introduced a rational framework under which our belief of the conclusions of arguments is not subjective—it is objective. Regardless of who is making the argument, if we determine it is sound, it is irrational to consider its conclusion false. And, unintuitively, if we do not know of a sound argument to justify a given conclusion, we may still decide to believe it is true. But, if we later encounter a sound argument that conflicts with our unjustified belief, the rational thing to do is to change our belief. This is what I think the author's friend was aiming at in saying "many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments". If someone fails to adjust their beliefs based on sound arguments, then they are irrational. And, yes, it's no stretch of the imagination to entertain the idea that many people act irrationally.
What can be True or False?
Without delving into formal logic, let’s tackle the fundamental issue with the article.
Arguments are, as we've established, a series of premises and a conclusion and are not the type of thing that can be true or false. I think the author intended to use the term valid here instead of true. Or, maybe, they intended to say conclusion instead of argument? Assuming either interpretation, there is still a fundamental issue, though. And that is some notion of an argument having a property of convincingness that is not defined. You will not find the term convincing in any textbook on logic because it is not a term of art. The quality of an argument being convincing is outside the realm of formal logic. In formal logic, arguments are either valid or invalid, sound or unsound. As such, convincingness is only meaningful with respect to soundness and validity. Whatever other connotations that come along with the term convincing, they do not relate to logical reasoning.
So, there can be no such situation where "a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument". It's impossible. When the author says that "I should ignore it and stick with my prior.", well, that is an option, but it is not rational—it's not logically justifiable.
So far, we've operated under a framework where we've considered premises and conclusions either true or false. This is sometimes called the "law of the excluded middle", i.e., propositions are considered as Boolean variables. We might introduce another possibility, where we consider that we may not be able to determine a truth value for some premises or conclusions. That, however, does not change the properties of soundness nor validity. As such, if we cannot determine if an argument is valid (because we cannot discern if its conclusion logically follows from its premises), then we must withhold our belief about its conclusion. Similarly, even if we find an argument to be valid, but we do not have a way to determine the truth of its premises, we cannot rationally believe its conclusion because we cannot determine if it's sound.
Taking Ideas Seriously
There is a rationally defensible position here, but the author mischaracterizes it. Considering an argument based on its validity, as I've explained, is separable from considering soundness. As such, one can believe that an argument is valid, but be unsure whether its conclusion is true or not (that is, be unconvinced about the argument's soundness). This is the position that is promoted by the adage "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."1
Skepticism
This gets into the realm of skepticism. A skeptic will err on the side of not believing a proposition without evidence. This is fine. But, the author is waffling here, indicating that they are a part-time skeptic. Inconsistency here is not inherently problematic, but now we've admitted a new term in our lexicon: weird. Again, I don't know what the author intended with this term, but I'm going to guess they meant something like an argument that has a surprising conclusion, despite being sound. A rational skeptic should accept a "weird" conclusion of a sound argument.
Knowing
Now we get into real epistemology. What is knowing? Well, that's really tough. Serious philosophers will admit that we haven't arrived at a universally serviceable definition of knowledge. Some will offer something like knowledge is "justified, true belief". But the "justified true belief" account of knowledge has faced criticism. So, what are these precious skills that our dear author references that allow one to "know which ideas are not correct"? Well, we clearly must be part of the 99% for not being able to intuit such lofty philosophical trappings.
I'm not sure that being "smart" (i.e., intelligence) has anything to do with being rational. If you are being rational, you won't be 'talked into' any position. You may entertain various positions, but in the framework I've provided, you will adjust your beliefs based only on sound arguments. Thus, these notions of seriousness, smartness, or the central notion, epistemic learned helplessness, shouldn't affect your rationale. The author's apparent self-sense of superior rationality seems to be coming from the position that they irrationally reject arguments based on subjective qualities of the arguments, or their prior beliefs.
This is a crock of shit. They're essentially saying "I'm very rational because I'm irrational."
"Good" Arguments
Here we have the introduction of another subjective quality of arguments: "goodness". What is a "good" argument? Well, my position is quite clear by now—we rationally evaluate arguments based on soundness. Any other subjective notion of goodness is irrelevant when it comes time for rational evaluation. So, could there be such a "really good" argument for terrorism? Possibly, but, in the abstract, we cannot know what it is, and as such must give the benefit of the doubt to our supposedly "sufficiently smart engineer" and posit that she will accept this argument based on its soundness, and as such must remain comfortable with accepting the truly rational response. That addresses the reaction of "Oh, there’s a good argument for terrorism."
However, we are beginning to reach beyond mere epistemology here and into the realm of ethics—how we should act, given our beliefs—when our engineer then concludes "I guess I should become a terrorist". That is beyond the scope of what I am prepared to critique, suffice to say, I do not sanction terrorism.
Conclusion
The author of this piece is very confused. My understanding of the introduced idea of "epistemic learned helplessness" is basically that if you are willing to be rational part-time, unsound arguments won't persuade you. I would make the counterpoint that if you merely adopt a rational framework for evaluating arguments, you will find yourself in the same position. So, why not simply adopt the rational framework full-time?
So what, the author should have discussed whether "conclusions were sound" instead of whether "arguments were true"?
I feel like in all your time spent nitpicking the author's vocabulary, you're missing the author's big point that it's often hard to tell whether an argument is sound. No one is perfectly rational and always capable of judging the soundness of arguments perfectly. I've had experiences like the author's here:
Defaulting to skepticism and delaying fully-accepting ideas that I thought were sound at the time has saved me from making a fool of myself now and then.
In subjects that are more important to me and that I have more experience and confidence with, I try to work through ideas further and I try to take my conclusions more seriously faster. But for most other subjects that I have less expertise and confidence in, taking changes in my beliefs slowly seems like the smarter choice. The article is mainly the author making that point.
Of course there's such a thing as a false argument that sounds convincing to someone, assuming the perfectly realistic situation where the person has biases and doesn't have complete knowledge. If you were a perfect reasoner, then this extra skepticism would be unnecessary, but as long as that isn't true, it would not be more rational to pretend you were.
The author isn't talking about this in the context of formal logic. In regular life, arguments don't come with a label that tells you whether it's valid or sound. People who hear an argument try to label the argument and get it wrong sometimes.
Yes! (Well more precisely if arguments are sound.) You can scoff and call me a pedant if you like, but it’s an important distinction.
I addressed this, but I’ll reiterate. If you can’t determine if an argument is sound, it’s not rational to believe its conclusion based merely on that argument in a vacuum. You may still believe or disbelieve the conclusion based on other arguments, though. I don’t think this is as profound as the author makes it out to be. This is very basically rational skepticism, and they could have coherently advocated this position if they had bothered not to bloviate and use logical terminology correctly.
That’s the whole point of reasoning about arguments! To try to determine their validity and soundness! If you don’t agree with someone’s conclusion, the rational response is to determine (for yourself if no one else), what the flaw in their argument is. If it’s not an important issue, maybe you will just ignore it. That’s fine! As long as you’re aware that you’re you’re ignoring an argument, there’s no problem. However, if it’s an important argument to you, the rational response is to identify either a logical error (point out the argument as invalid), or identify the premises you don’t believe.
This is actually related to a strategy that bad-faith actors will try to employ: they will offer many, many unsound arguments for a position and then claim ‘victory’ if you don’t point out the flaws in all their logic or premises. This is a sort of ‘denial of service’ attack on the rational mind. The thing to keep in mind is that it is not rational to accept an argument on its face. As you said it may not always be clear if an argument is sound. The simple response is to not accept every argument you come across on its face.
If that was the author’s point (I interpreted a slightly more subtle one about subjective qualities of arguments that make them appealing), it’s pretty obvious to most people. There’s also a distinction between arguments and mere propositions. You also shouldn’t accept non-obvious propositions on their face without supporting evidence. This is the common sense notion of “don’t believe everything you hear”. This is also related to rational skepticism. Since the author explicitly introduced the term ‘argument’, which has a specific meaning, I interpreted them as not intending to make that much more trivial point.
The bit you quote at the beginning,
is interesting because I think it misunderstands how typical internet-comment arguments work. People mostly aren't interested in a kind of competitive debate where they address each other's points in good faith until one person has arguments that can't be countered and they win, with the other person conceding defeat and admitting their opponent was right. Instead people will argue like advocates for what they already believe in and the only way they'll agree with you and think you're right is if you say something they already agree with. No one will say or even think "Look, everything you say fits together and I can’t explain why you’re wrong, I just know you are!" because they probably won't agree that an argument with a conclusion they disagree with has any merit. Even against the most sound argument people will argue against some misunderstand or mischaracterization of it, or they'll just ignore the whole thing and start rehashing points that were already (to the opinion of their interlocutor) shot down.
I think that's part of the reason behind the Someone is wrong on the Internet! feeling and why some discussions can get so heated. If you're arguing against an "idiot" I think it's pretty natural to want to "win" the argument and have them admit your brilliance. I don't think it's even so much about being right as it's the feeling that the idiot thinks you're the idiot and you definitely can't let them have the last word when the "last word" is them gloating about how they totally destroyed your stupid argument. There's a bit of a feeling that, "we don't have to agree, but please at least agree that my argument is better than yours, kthx."
That feeling, I think, is what's behind the imagined response in the quote from the OP article. It's a way to keep your own pride (and sanity) in online discussions to think that "idiots" you strongly disagree with who don't agree with you despite your brilliance are actually admitting to your brilliance in some way, that their frustration or disengagement is actually them admitting how flawless your argument is.
On a personal note if I find myself annoyed or getting too emotionally invested in the "this idiot thinks I'm an idiot" problem I remind myself that that person would probably only think my argument was good if they already agreed with it, and why should I feel upset that I don't share the opinions of an idiot? (Cue Dwight) That doesn't cover every kind of frustration out there, and it's not like "idiots" (where, let's be honest, "idiot" = "person whose argument I strongly disagree with who won't back down" a lot of the time) are all that common anyway, but it's at least a start.
Yes, I think there is a metaphor of 'argument as contest' that many naively adopt that leads to this kind of unproductive exchange. I find productive argumentation enlightening because I assume that I don’t know everything. If you come from a position where you don’t want to be enlightened, but rather remain entrenched in your current beliefs, arguing is probably exhausting.
I think related to this is the idea that no matter how open minded or self-critical one is, it's unlikely that one will substantially change their positions or worldview based on a single comment or exchange online. Even if one is open to change it's probably more of a process than a single "you've convinced me and opened my eyes" kind of moment. Not that those can't happen, but it's probably less common to go that way for topics people already have entrenched opinions on.
This was an interesting read. Thank you for sharing.
Oh weird, I definitely only clicked post "once." Not sure what happened.
Also, not my blog. :P