Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ludston 1412 days ago
I disagree. It's easy to choose this as a position if you intend to argue disingenuously, and therefore you always ensure that your argument positions are logically sound, and complex and abstract enough so as to exclude most others from being able to argue back. On the other hand, if you are steel manning the other person's argument, instead of playing a complex word definition game that invalidates what they've said on account that they haven't explicitly defined for you all of the axioms of their position, (and if they did you can attack their argument with a different set of nit picking fallacies such as "too long didn't read"), you would probably find their argument compelling, or at the very least you would be forced to reveal the true reason you disagree with them. It's much easier to attack somebody else's argument for using the wrong language than it is to present your own position.