On arguments and empathy

I was chatting with my buddy Karl earlier today... you know that when I say that I am "chatting" with someone more often than not I mean we are using a messaging service and typing at each other? Karl lives in Colorado, combine time zone differences and the fact that we both have jobs and voice chats would be almost impossible.This is the advantage of pervasive social media and communication services, I wouldn't be able to talk to my friends without them, and life would be a little bit darker.

That wasn't the point though, we were talking about arguing, well actually we were talking about an idiot who posted on one of Karl's statuses about the latest shooting and that guys ideas about arguing, which are pretty commonly used to shut down discussion about any topic that assholes don't want to seriously discuss.


"Empathy doesn't necessarily inform correct judgement, any more so than vengeance or fear."

So I think arguing goes through three stages, any of which can last your entire life. The first stage you learn when you are a toddler, it's the "I want this to be true and if I yell or cry loud enough it will be" school of thought. The Toddler in Chief uses this method primarily and he is in his seventies, so people often don't grow out of it. The second stage is thought to be more mature "emotions get in the way of your point, ignore them at all costs", this is the stage that gets us the most annoying atheists, bitcoin fanatics, and libertarians, among others of course.
This is the stage of argument used by men to justify not listening to their wives/significant others/anyone female identifying.  It's also incredibly disingenuous, see, logic based and emotionally informed are not actually opposing ideas, and the only arguments truly supported by divorcing them from emotion are pure hard science stuff, like straight up mathematical ideas or chemical formulas and shit like that. If you deal with people and aren't addressing emotion, then you aren't truly dealing with people at all.
That isn't the disingenuous part though, the thing is that these people claim to be wanting a "rational discussion", but they really don't, what they want is for their emotional response to be the only valid one.


It's a tactic, like Karl says, for people who want to win arguments rather than defend opinions, which seems accurate to me. But they are trying to have their cake and eat it too, because without acknowledging their own emotional basis for an opinion they are really just saying that everyone else is wrong to have feelings, that theirs are the only valid ones because they can say things without being concerned about things like "respect" or "Not getting shot in class".

An argument on the gun control issue, taken from a purely emotionless standpoint, might actually be that since there are so many people and gun deaths are a small percentage of deaths, there is no point in wasting resources to fight them, after all there are always more of us. Or perhaps the opposite, and it would make more sense to ban and destroy all guns so that their presence and use doesn't take up valuable resources or attention from other goals. I don't know, because I am not a purely rational robot and it isn't an issue that can be solved with pure rationality, anyone arguing against gun control and claiming that position are lying to you and their own reasons are generally one of the following:

Personal defense, someone saying they need guns for personal defense are starting from a position of fear, violent crime is on the decline and even at it's height the majority of the population was never at a significant risk of mugging. Of course it's hard to separate people who are concerned about their safety from those who simply want an excuse to murder a black person, so racism as always comes into play here. Either way though, the emotion is fear, if you assume fear is the cause, then their logic makes sense, but it doesn't make it valid.

Hunting, almost no one subsistence hunts in this country, this is generally a throwaway argument used to cover up some other reason, like racism, or paranoia about being able to survive once civilization collapses, either way, fear again, and illogical by their own arguments.

MAH FREEDOM, the 2ND Amendment is a plague on this nation and I wish it could be stripped from the Constitution, but here we are. Constitutional literalists exist I suppose, but the Constitution as a holy unchanging document is pretty fucking stupid and again, an argument not based in logic and rationality, the idea that the citizenry will need to take up arms against a corrupt government is at best an outdated one and at worst not the intention of the framers of the Amendment in the first place, the other possible interpretation, that all citizens should be ready to form a militia to repel invaders, is probably more likely in my opinion based on how we fought when the country was formed, but also not a realistic option in an era of modern war. So again we have fear and delusion.

So we have arguments from emotion on both sides, one side is arguing from fear but claiming to be rational, the other side is arguing from fear as well, don't get me wrong, but also empathy, we don't want to get shot yes, but we also don't want other people to be shot. This is emotional but also the correct opinion to have if you are a functional human being. But somehow the idea of empathy being a motivating force in argument is anathema to these people and to them, derails the entire discussion before it even begins.

And that is the problem, if people being killed is considered an emotional problem and not a rational one, and emotional issues aren't valid, then you don't have to do anything about it. That logic brings us all the way back down to personal relationship issues where men feel they don't have to listen to their partner's feelings because they aren't being rational, or at least not putting their arguments in terms that they feel are rational. So once again, they get to do what they want, since they are the ones thinking clearly. Regardless of if what they want to do is smart or even possible.

I mentioned that I thought there were three stages to the whole style of argument thing, the third you may have been able to guess, it is a combination of the first two, because yes logical arguments based on facts are needed, but you have to recognize not only your own emotional connection to the subject, but the person you are arguing against as well, in addition to the people who might be effected by the results of your argument, this isn't to say you have to agree with their emotions, but you have to recognize that they exist, and more importantly recognize that yours do to, you can't truly claim to have a good argument unless you know it's foundation within yourself and be confident in it.

I am confident that my emotional desire to both not be murdered on the street and not see children murdered in their school is a more valid basis for argument that the various fears and delusions of the other side.

But I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people.