Great read. I just ran in to this phenomenon last week. I was having a conversation with an old classmate on Facebook. He had posted this article about how vaccinations cause autism and I challenged his opinion. His last correspondence to me was basically, "whatever, I have the right to protect my kids." which of course had nothing to do with what I was saying. It's hard for me to even make mention of how baseless his retorts were without getting annoyed so I will not get in to them. When you challenge someones opinion, it can really rock their boat. A quick shout-out to kleinbl00 for helping me during the debate. Much of the debate revolved around Andrew Wakefield, I reached out to kb for some source material and he provided me with this: http://darryl-cunningham.blogspot.com/2010/05/facts-in-case-...
Ahhh, but see? You're doing it. You're framing that as if his "opinion" was that vaccines cause autism. That's not an opinion - that's a belief. An erroneous one, but still a belief. It's important to see these arguments for what they are, and how they play out. Otherwise, you lose - yeah, you may have scored all the points, but you didn't convince your friend to vaccinate your kids. We'll use two people in this argument: TNG and AVF (anti-vax friend). AVF: Here's a link that vaccines cause autism. TNG: Yeah, but here's a dozen that prove it doesn't, and two more to disprove the notion that your article has any basis in fact. AVF: Yeah, but that's just, like, your opinion, man. TNG: Actually it's not. It's a scientific discussion based on evidence, research and general consensus. AVF: Whatever, I have the right to protect my kids. Here's what it ACTUALLY looks like: AVF: Appeal to Logos. TNG: Counterargument to Logos - your argument is invalid. AVF: Appeal to Ethos (you do not have the standing to counter-argue - note that this is a red herring that debate teams will tell you to ignore, which you did, but anyone working the art of persuasion would have had you jump on it) TNG: Counterargument via Logos (I'm not counter-arguing, the universe is - note that you are correct but also losing... how maddening!) AVF: Appeal to pathos (who will think of the children?) TNG: Counterargument via Logos (the WHO, the FDA, the AMA, UNICEF and others, jackass) ...and OUT. The tricky thing about persuading, rather than debating, is you aren't playing for an audience. You're playing solo in a room and the instrument is also the target. The rules of engagement are entirely different. In debate, discrediting your opponent makes the audience stop listening to them. In persuasion, discrediting your opponent makes the audience (of one) stop listening TO YOU. And I can think of no faster way to do that than to say "you are not entitled to your opinion." The response to "that's just, like, your opinion, man" is "I really don't have an opinion on this. They're your kids. They aren't in my school. Do what you want. I just wanted to point out that if you're going to entrust the health of your children to stuff you read on the internet, you owe it to yourself to read the hell out of stuff on the internet. From what I've been able to see, the guys in favor of vaccines tend to use a lot more facts while the guys against them tend to use alarmist language. Granted, the guys with the facts also tend to be dicks about it because they don't really understand how much confusion and fear plays into this whole discussion. What have you seen? What led you to believe that vaccines cause autism?" Now we're friends again. The ethos of the opponent has been met and defused ("you are not of standing to make moral choices for my kids" - "I'm not trying to be, I'm upstanding enough to empower you to make those choices and helpful enough to help you work through it"). It's the difference between telling someone they're wrong and rubbing their nose in it and asking someone how firmly they believe they're right and then walking them back through the stuff that got them there. If you let someone realize on their own that they've made an error, they get to be the smart one. If you hit them over the head with it you're only making them feel stupid.
You're absolutely right, I didn't challenge an opinion, I challenged a belief. It is important to acknowledge the difference. The discipline to not "pounce" and to let your opponent seemingly lead themselves to your conclusion is a hard earned one, which takes practice. In a professional setting I'm quite good at this, but I do fail to bring it to bat irl situations. Thanks for the instructive dialog, that was helpful.
A bit off topic, but whatever: I'd love to read more about methods of persuasion; I've done debate, but as you touch on, debate is a great way to have both sides become more entrenched in their beliefs. Any suggestions for reading material that expands on what you're talking about here?
Oh hell yeah. Jay Heinrichs has it going on. I wholeheartedly recommend his book Thank You For Arguing. Beyond that, I think anyone who ever has to convince someone else of something needs to have a pretty good handle on Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational and Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide. Yes, that Jonah Lehrer. It can't all be fake. If you find something else, let me know.
Well, he made up a bunch of quotes. There's a really cool bit in "How we decide" about a Scud missile and a british missile cruiser that I've been unable to find reference to anywhere else. I REALLY want it to be true because it's cool but I'm not sure it is.
I found it odd that a university professor himself seems to not get the distinction between belief and opinion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, because an opinion can't be right or wrong by definition. The only beliefs to which one is entitled are those which can't, in principle, be shown to be true or false.
I think the choice of title for this article is largely rhetorical. Stoke's purpose was simply to underscore the point that opinions in his class are worth nothing unless you can defend them. It's worth mentioning, also, that the editors of The Conversation tend to decide what title the article will receive, rather than the author.
Stoke's purpose was simply to underscore the point that opinions in his class are worth nothing unless you can defend them.
that was my take as well.
> When you challenge someones opinion, it can really rock their boat. Coincidentally, a friend just received a 12 hour ban on Facebook after someone complained about a comment he posted - on his own feed - that criticised a local supermarket chain for funneling money into a chaplaincy programme for schools. No recourse. No appeal.
Facebook is horrible. I post photos of my child there for my family to see, because we live in another state. I rarely engage in any sort of debate or conversation there. I couldn't resist though. That sounds like an interesting story though, about the supermarket.
I expect you'd be interested to read that researchers agree with you.
Interesting article. I agree that phrase is sometimes used almost as 'I want to willingly remain close minded/ignorant' or if they can't back up their opinion. In a materialistic culture it seems vital to have an opinion on everything and if you don't you're deemed out of the loop. As a result, views are often made on glimpses of the full picture or second hand information and to challenge them is sometimes treated as a personal attack. As if you're questioning their validity or importance as part of society.