Wednesday 30 November 2016

Should you share arguments you think are invalid

There is an idea. There are n arguments for it and n arguments against it. When discussing the idea with someone else, I previously argued that I should reveal all the arguments for both side as opposed to ignoring arguments for the other side in an effort to manipulate the other person into agreeing with me. What about cases where I genuinely believe that certain arguments are invalid?
My assessment of an arguments validity isn't binary. Arguments can be more or less true/good/valid. Complicating things further, an argument's sum value is not the only thing that matters in my assessment of it. My confidence in my own abilities of assessment (based on my level of skill, strength of biases etc..) also matters. Let's put the two together into a overall assessment of argumentative strength. Let's say that arguments scoring below a certain value are the ones I dislike enough to feel confident assuming are invalid garbage.

Should I exclude some arguments, not because I want to persuade, but because I want to be succinct? Yes, obviously. Otherwise I would list all the arguments imaginable for every position, making communication impossible. How do I ensure that my own biases don't cause me to unduly assign low value to arguments for the side I disagree with? I don't know. The best solution I can think of is to generally be very wary of deciding arguments are low-value, and to share most of them regardless.

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