Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: Verbal jousting edition
December 7, 2016 2:35 PM   Subscribe

What is the argument style where Person A (PA) takes Person B’s (PB) constructed argument, and, in a matter of seconds, breaks down their logic into a single statement (or question) where 1.) PB’s entire argument is invalidated and 2.) The statement/question is one which takes PB’s logic out of context. Both of PA’s tactics have the (intended or unintended) effect of making PB look as if they are acting unreasonable or making an unreasonable demand.

Sometimes PA takes PB’s statement and exaggerates it to its extreme. It isn’t bullying, because PB is not threatened or in danger in any way. This is a game of intellectual chess. Great for debates, impossible for intimate/emotionally charged discussions. The collateral damage of this argument style is emotional intimacy, understanding and empathy. It's kind of like stonewalling, but with an added layer of semantics. What is this argument style called?

Does this sound familiar? Bonus points: How have you responded (or how would you respond) in this situation?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (19 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Taking someone's argument out of context or restating it incorrectly so as only to knock it down is called setting up a straw man.
posted by juliplease at 2:39 PM on December 7, 2016 [18 favorites]


Reductio ad absurdum?
posted by GuyZero at 2:40 PM on December 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


If you're exaggerating someone's argument, not as a serious attempt to refute it (which, as juliplease notes, would be a straw man), but instead for humorous effect, that's a form of hyperbole.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 2:58 PM on December 7, 2016


You're being reductive.
posted by JimN2TAW at 3:04 PM on December 7, 2016


What is this argument style called?

Well primarily being an asshole.

Logically it sounds like Fallacy of the single cause and in parts Reductive and Hyperbolic as mentioned above. But first and foremost it's bad faith arguing, a lack of listening and just shitty behavior outside of a high school debate.
posted by French Fry at 3:06 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


Came here to say it's a straw man, as best as I can tell from your description. Someone beat me to that.

And also, I think charitably is 1) very related, 2) very important in debate, philosophy, and rhetoric, if one's purpose is to seek truth, 3) possibly the most under-taught, under-rated concept in logic and philosophy, and 4) has way more meat and depth and interestingness to ponder on than the definition of straw man (which cannot really be stretched beyond a paragraph).
posted by teatime at 3:31 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


How have you responded (or how would you respond) in this situation?

Broadly, I would respond by DingTMFA if it were a romantic partner, and by limiting contact if any other kind of relationship. I don't think there's much you can do if someone feels it's appropriate to torch emotional intimacy, understanding and empathy so they can feel narrowly, pedantically correct. I would wonder if they were passively intent on burning the whole relationship down. (With no evidence to the contrary, I would assume that was happening. If there is evidence to the contrary, different decision...)

In the moment, if I really had to, I would call them on it. Preferred option (given the above understanding) would be to just end the conversation by any means possible. E.g. by changing topics to something banal, and staying on that level with that person, permanently. (I have a relative [who in my head, I call "Dog with Bone"] that I do this with.) It's not worth the stress, usually, if the other person's just decided they're going into it with bad faith, as French Fry said. Difficult if you do care, and are heavily invested. Best of luck.
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:34 PM on December 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


unwarranted extrapolation maybe?
posted by andrewcooke at 3:47 PM on December 7, 2016


I don't know what's it officially called but it sounds like the type of arguing done on 24-hour news channels. It goes nowhere and everybody (especially the audience) just ends up feeling exhausted and dumber.
posted by chartreuse at 3:58 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


(Why check out - because there is little room for discussion if there's no agreement on the frame and terms of the debate, in the first place, and no room if it's because one person has decided they're just going to establish those by fiat. Especially not when it's a "debate" about intimate or emotionally charged subjects. Those should not be addressed through debate at all. And if a person's gone ahead and done that, their motivations should be heavily suspect, as should the underlying power dynamic.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 4:03 PM on December 7, 2016


Sometimes PA takes PB’s statement and exaggerates it to its extreme.

This bit sounds a little like "slippery slope" (explained here, with examples of a few others)

Bonus points: How have you responded (or how would you respond) in this situation?

It helps to be able to name the beast, as you are attempting to here. It seems like there may be more than one common logical fallacy at play here, so it may make sense to take some time to get a feel for the most common ones. The logical fallacy referee is a little cheeky, but it amuses me, and depending on the the person you are conversing with, it might help get the point across.

This is a game of intellectual chess. Great for debates, impossible for intimate/emotionally charged discussions.

This line made me take a deep breath and back away from the keyboard before continuing. Because I haaaate this point of view. There's no reason why "intimate/emotionally charged discussions" can't be based in the real world and hopefully logically structured. If we assume that that both parties are speaking/arguing from positions of good faith, dismissing statements that are at least trying to ground the discussion in reality as "intellectual chess" or "debates" is a really, really shitty tactic, tantamount to gaslighting, IMHO.

BUT....many people who like to consider themselves to be "logically thinkers" are actually in denial about how much of what seems "logically obvious" or whatever to them is just their emotional responses blinding them from seeing other points of view. And feelings aren't logical, and cannot be made to be.

And that's where the key is -- the person in the argument who is willing to accept the reality that feelings aren't logical or avoidable, but logically things must go on is the person with superior information. If PB can look at an accusation of being "unreasonable," listen to why PA thinks that that is the case, identify what PA is fixating on, and restate the argument without it, PB can essentially juke around PA's tactics and get closer to what's important in the discussion.
posted by sparklemotion at 4:05 PM on December 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Stephen Colbert Report Rapport?
posted by calgirl at 5:08 PM on December 7, 2016


"Straw man" is the logical fallacy, in general, but an example might get us closer to a precise term.

That said, that's hardly the point (although I get that you'd feel better if you had a name for it so you can tell PB to stop doing it); what you're describing is "being an asshole" because PB is framing the situation as a contest at which he must beat PA, rather than an opportunity to resolve the underlying issue in a manner that satisfies both.

What you do is point it out, and dump them if they don't stop.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:08 PM on December 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Person A (PA) takes Person B’s (PB) constructed argument, and, in a matter of seconds, breaks down their logic into a single statement (or question) where 1.) PB’s entire argument is invalidated and 2.) The statement/question is one which takes PB’s logic out of context. Both of PA’s tactics have the (intended or unintended) effect of making PB look as if they are acting unreasonable or making an unreasonable demand.

So, to restate in the plainest language, PB has taken some time to explain why they feel X thing. PA has nuked this communicative attempt out of orbit with one sentence, and used their belief that X thing was poorly argued or expressed as a reason to dismiss PB's entire perspective and emotional reality.

(I think rhetorical analysis with a view to countering PA's position on PA's terms will be less helpful than looking at this through the lens of pragmatics. What is PA's intent? What is PB's?)
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:15 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Your question presupposes that PA is in the right and PB in the wrong, always. I submit that situations like the one you describe can be more complicated, and that sometimes person A can be in the wrong. I’ll give two examples:

1. Person B arguing in bad faith

I have just finished reading an article about housing benefits (not in the US). The article talks about the number of people engaged in the housing benefits sector (not just recipients, but also people employed in the sector), talks about the issues which see people relying on funding benefits (and how those are more often than not society-wide issues, rather than just personal stupidity or laziness), and analyses the funding cuts that have decimated the sector over the last 10 years or so. It also goes on to argue (with evidence and figures) that, on the whole, housing benefits don’t just benefit the immediate stakeholders (recipients or those working with them), but are of wider benefit in multiple ways (article goes into some detail, with citations).

So, if you (PA) gave a well fleshed-out summary of the article in a conversation, and PB would just reply with a one-liner like “So you just want to give hand-outs to losers”, I don’t necessarily know what I would call this (though check out the fallacy of oversimplification), but my reactions would be one of the following:

• If this is the first time the person has done that, I’d tell them something like “Please engage with what I am telling you and don’t just dismiss it with an invalidating, bad-faith, caricaturesque summary”.
• If this is not the first time that the person has done something like that (or if I know that they are suffering from preconceived ideas on the issue, which have been discussed before), I’d most likely tell them to fuck off, get up, and leave.

2. Person A is arguing in bad faith

I’ll use my dad as an example here. My father is quite wortgewandt, as it were, and frequently employs his considerable rhetorical prowess to trample over boundaries. So he is apt to deploy arguments to argue you into giving up your needs in favour of his whims.

His one obsession in life is managing and catering to my mum’s depression, her volatile moods, and her need for control. A possible argument with him (variations of which I have had many times in the past) will involve the following, amongst others:

• A (usually long-drawn-out and at the nth re-telling) story about why it is imperative to cater to my mum’s every whim;
• An enumeration of all the various ways one is not a good Christian if one does not sublimate their existence in favour of catering to my mum’s every whim (with no acknowledgement of the fact that one might, in fact, not be a Christian at all);
• An enumeration of all the ways in which science itself would uphold the need to cater to my mum’s every whim (this is a silent nod to the fact that the arguments from Christianity might not sit quite so well);
• One or several examples of how people did not cater to their respective mother’s every whim and how that ended in regret (frequently because the relevant mothers died at the end of the stories);
• A more general exhortation to consider the state of humanity if one does not cater to mothers’ every whim;
• Etc.

In such situations, especially since in this particular case this is well-trodden territory, I would stagger a frown throughout their ‘argument’ until my eyebrows meet just above my nostrils while arching one of them into my frontal lobe. I’d also give a bad-faith reply such as “So, to cut to the chase, you want me to give up on my needs and become a puppet”, or whatever else seems appropriate, since I know that they are arguing in bad faith themselves.

The trick, of course, is figuring out if it is person A or person B who is arguing in bad faith. If I identify with person A, I will assume of myself that I am arguing in good faith, aka not just to convince/ persuade/ lecture/ overwhelm. I’ll have SOME interest in B’s opinion, therefore I will make sure either that I build into my argument some points that are open to discussion or else that I will allow them to bring an opposing opinion to the table (for example, by allowing them to question some of my assumptions, or by bringing their own evidence to the argument etc.). If they insist on dismissing my argument in one sentence without engaging, I’ll talk about summary dismissal of my argument, ask them to quit bottom-lining my argument, or ask them why they can’t come up with anything but a bad-faith invalidating summary of my argument. I might also talk about oversimplification or jumping to conclusions.

If I identify with person B, I’ll entertain the argument by engaging with the premises, the evidence, conclusions etc. unless I am convinced that person A’s argument is in bad faith. Then, I’ll employ language like “cut to the chase”, “cut the crap”, or just walk away.

As an aside, this is one of the beauties of complex, multi-layered good-faith conversations which branch out and back in: they allow for many points that discussion can latch onto, meaning that there are many places where your (the argument-maker’s) understanding can be modified, grow, and be complexified. A good argument leaves many doors* for discussion (not debate, that is a different thing), so that it does not slide into preaching/ a persuasion exercise with persona A as the agent of the action and person B as the object of the action. Conversely, when you have person B engaging in good faith with an argument made in good faith by person A, they will take into account a good-effort number of the doors left open by person A.

In sum, the beauty of a conversation (rather than an argument in either the academic or the more colloquial sense) is that it allows for a many-faceted engagement with an issue so that both PA and PB are fully engaged while being awed (or re-awed) by the fullness of the topic under consideration/ life in general. Basically, a good conversation engaged in good faith by both parties has some commonalities with science as described by the philosophy of science (aka it needs to be open to verification/ contradiction to the point of actually courting it while refusing facile simplification conforming to prejudice and then torture reality into fitting the pre-judged stance, possibly eliminating the evidence).

*Where a door is anything from the final or provisional hypothesis/es, the evidence adduced, the examples given, the final or provisional conclusions, the ‘what-next’s imagined, etc.
posted by miorita at 6:00 PM on December 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


nthing Straw Man and Reductio ad Absurdam, but I agree with cotton dress sock that pragmatics is a good vantage to look at it. Specifically, it can be said to violate Grice's cooperative principle, especially his Maxim of Relation. PA takes a possible interpretations of PB's statements which considerations of relevance should rule out, and uses them anyway as the basis for his or her 'refutation'. Their doing this is what tells us we have left the realm of dialectic -- dialogue whose purpose is discovering the truth -- and entered the realm of sophistry -- where the purpose is to prevail, right or wrong.

It's a terrible tactic to use for personal communication and conversation, as you and others have noted. But it's really common in the public sphere of debate. Be warned!

It's also not out of place among people who are trying to develop strong, valid arguments and learn to defend them, even against bad faith attacks, where it's part of a kind of Devil's advocate stance.
posted by bertran at 9:01 PM on December 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


If what you're talking about is a incorrect paraphrase of the other person's statement, I'm not sure there's a precise name for it on any of those lists of argumentative fallacies. It's akin to reductio ad absurdum, but without seeing an example I don't think that's quite it. It's very common though, and-- again, if I am understanding you right-- often preceded by "So, what you're saying is..." or similar. Although it is perfectly possible for someone to do this sincerely-- really believing their summary-- the description you give suggests a scenario in which they are being disingenuous. (It is also perfectly possible for someone to use this form of argument and be right, but I don't think that's what you're describing here.)

For me, the price of admission to an argument is that each side assume the other is speaking sincerely and believes the statements they are putting forth. Some people like to argue recreationally and that's fine as long as both people are on board with it. I don't get the appeal of it and as soon as someone says something like, "Let's just play devil's advocate..."I'm on my way home. I'm not going to waste my time arguing over something the other party has announced in advance they can't be called on to defend.

I have actually dated someone who did this kind of thing all day long. He was a political science professor and we met while arguing on opposite sides at a debate society. It was fun until I realized he basically could not talk without doing it. I am pretty sure he did it without any malice; he just thought it was a good way to have a conversation, but it drove me nuts.
posted by BibiRose at 5:26 AM on December 8, 2016 [2 favorites]


One high-water-mark for mediating a family law matter was working with a former couple, one of whom was a debate-team coach. It came across as a default communication style that was hard on the family as it was likely their armor.
posted by childofTethys at 12:22 PM on December 8, 2016


Folks, several of you have said the answer could be Abductio ad Absurdum; while that concept is related enough to be relevant and likely informative to the poster, please note:

Reductio ad Absurdum is a valid form of argument, not a fallacy.

Similar to "begging the question", it doesn't mean what it sounds like it means.
posted by teatime at 9:33 AM on December 9, 2016 [2 favorites]


« Older Older article with theme of "reporting on USA as...   |   Prepping for software interviews that aren't... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.