The Proliferation of Disingenuous Arguments - Do people really believe the shit they’re saying?

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

There is an argument technique in which a person argues for something they don’t really believe in, because they think it’s more likely to win them common ground. For example:

• Pro-choice people will not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus and deny the term “baby”
• Pro-migrant people will deny that immigration has any impact on housing price, despite common sense and significant published scientific material saying otherwise
• Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths
• Pro-porn people will proclaim that pornography is free speech, and that banning porn is the thin edge of the free speech wedge.

These are just rough examples but the main point is that as I see it, fundamentally these points aren’t integral to the belief but, crucially, are important in gaining broad public support for your position. For gun guys, they’d typically opposite it even it it worked. The argument that it doesn’t work is just a convenient one for them, because it obviates the difficult task of balancing liberty and freedom with the wanton slaughter of children. Similar observations can be made of the other examples and many disagreements regarding public policy.

I guess what I wonder is - are people actually doing this? Are they doing it intentionally, unintentionally, etc.? Are people actually being disingenuous or is this just the natural logic path of consensus that naturally rises in an argument between parties with different fundamental beliefs?

 

[umseriously]

Idk, but you have to remember people won't always see eye to eye with you. Most people are just mentally ill, including even the posters here and elsewhere who you may agree with. They just happen to make arguments that you agree with.

 

[Calvin Gabriel]

I was wondering about this recently. I think it has more to do with group dynamics, herd thinking and the supporters' desire to out-compete each other with displays of ideological purity and consistency.

When I think back to my embarassing ancapistani episode during my teenage years, I can actually remember how in the begginings it felt a little awkward. Like having to trick myself into believing and supporting obviously wrong positions for the sake of ideological consistency. But since I wanted the whole thing to work and, more importantly, I surrounded myself with people who all enthusiastically believed and constantly debated the ideology, I just kinda pushed any reservations I had away to some deep corner of my mind, where they could be more easily dismissed.

I don't think generally reasonable individual people would come up with positions as retarded as "unborn children are parasites" or "the second amendment means I should be able to own nuclear weapons". These are invariably results of group dynamics.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I guess what I wonder is - are people actually doing this? Are they doing it intentionally, unintentionally, etc.? Are people actually being disingenuous or is this just the natural logic path of consensus that naturally rises in an argument between parties with different fundamental beliefs?

A lot of people you'll argue with fundamentally do not understand their own arguments, so they just don't see the inconsistencies. So for gun guys the thought process goes like this.

They like guns -> They don't want people to take their guns (understandable) -> They will use arguments they see other people making to defend their beliefs -> They never fully understand these arguments and just make them because they can't think of a proper rebuttal to "less guns = less gun crime" which there are decent rebuttals for but there's a good chance they don't know them.

Most people's ideologies aren't thought out they just choose the one that fits them the best and argue the points they're told to even if they don't make sense. If you're ever in a discussion with some of these people though just ask them "how does that work?" or something similar. So if you're arguing with someone about immigration increasing house prices ask them something like "Bringing more people into a country increases the demand for housing as population increases. Unless the immigrant population has the same proportion of construction workers the supply of housing will decrease relative to the new demand. How does immigration not increase housing prices?"

Some people are making these disingenuous arguments out of ignorance, some are doing it knowingly. You just have to pry a little to figure it out.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

a person argues for something they don’t really believe in

In my opinion, the decisive issue is whether people's arguments and logic have grounding in reality. Most people unfortunately don't prioritize truth, so rationalizations come natural to them, including cherrypicking evidence, ignoring contradictions, and emotionally defending conclusions that feel comfortable. Whether they consciously and earnestly believe what they're saying is secondary, for self-delusion is easier than openly lying.
As for when I want to check whether someone is in line with truth or just defending an untenable position, I think two moves are sufficient. The first one is to demand justification and substantiation, to check if there is a clear line of reasoning or evidence that holds up to scrutiny. The second one is to follow the person's own logic or framing to its necessary conclusion, especially when it sounds appalling at first sight. If the person refuses to stand by this necessary consequence, then it's clear as day that the opinion is not held due to conviction, but opportunism.

And I think it's this phenomenon of dishonesty and lack of epistemic rigor that you're seeing. Not limited to policy debates, but the unavoidable consequence of people prioritizing defending their own beliefs over defending the truth when the two are divergent.

 

[roniko]

They don't support issue A because of arguments 1, 2, and 3. They support it because of some other childish reason they don't want to admit or aren't consciously aware of.
Also, most people treat political debates as a contest instead of an exchange of ideas. They're trying to win, not understand your viewpoint. Being aware of your own biases and really trying to understand others viewpoints are rare and important skills.

 

[Account]

In the examples that you came up with, the people making those arguments generally believe those positions. Those arguments might be unreasonable, but I don't think they are cynically taking those positions to appeal to the public.

For example 2 and 3, specifically: With public policy / economics research there are a billion different ways to analyze and even collect data that you can cherry pick any combination to support your own positions. There's a famous quote that applies here: "Ask five economics a question and you'll get five different answers -- six if one went to Harvard." It's very difficult to be objective unless you a) know enough about some field of study to know the benefits and drawbacks of research methods and b) dispassionate enough to not be swayed by your own preconceptions. This combination is very rare.

I know this isn't the main point of your argument, but I think "pornography is free speech" and "fetuses aren't human" are usually integral to their respective belief systems. It would be different if the pro-porn person denied the societal effects of porn or said that porn is actually good for you (real arguments I have seen before), but defending pornography as an act of expression is the core of their belief. Same with abortion. Abortion is OK (to a pro-choice person) and murdering an infant is not because fetuses before X number of weeks are not humans (to them). If you believe aborting a zygote and murdering a 3 day old toddler are morally equivalent then you will generally not be swayed by correlating abortion with reduction in violent crime or whatever.

 

[No-Eyed Square Guy]

Nobody has ever been rationally persuaded of anything.

I don't remember it but linguists have a special goofy term for speech whose purpose is only to make somebody thoughtlessly react, like yelling BOO! to startle somebody or a cop shouting FREEZE!

(It's something like Althusser's idea of "interpellation," the hey you of the system that makes you assume an identity it can use, but it's not that complicated.)

BOO! and FREEZE! are the kind of speech/writing that political arguments are. A speaker with a "position" on an "issue" is a drunkenly screaming wife, not Socrates.

Stop looking for him.

 

[Soggy paper straw]

• Pro-choice people will not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus and deny the term “baby”
• Pro-migrant people will deny that immigration has any impact on housing price, despite common sense and significant published scientific material saying otherwise
• Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths
• Pro-porn people will proclaim that pornography is free speech, and that banning porn is the thin edge of the free speech wedge.

I think the majority of people simply has not thought through their opinions.
It goes back to "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one". Realistically you cannot be very informed on every opinion you hold, and you will have to rely on shortcuts to decide what to think about certain things.

Social media and woke culture has massively contributed to making people think they need an opinion about everything.
It's a bipartisan problem, although one side is more open to use violence to enforce their groupthink opinions.
It is also not fully about IQ. The difference is that smart people will have more opinions that are based on reality (at least in their fields of expertise), whilst dumb people don't. A stark example is how many smart people support the idea that a man can become a woman - the majority are experts in fields that have nothing to do with anything medical or classic philosophy (/logic).

You are severely overestimating how much research people do.

• Pro-migrant people will deny that immigration has any impact on housing price, despite common sense and significant published scientific material saying otherwise

How many people have read any scientific publication on the impact of immigration? I would guess it is about 0.1% of the people who vehemently argue about it, on both sides.

I think arguing "common sense" is disingenuous, especially when paired with "peer reviewed articles". You could argue that immigration would increase labor supply, thus decreasing cost of building a house. Or making some areas less desirable, thus lowering prices. Any analysis on prices would be complex, to account for other things that happened across the years, therefore it is entirely possible that "common sense" would lead you to the wrong conclusion.
Also, one may argue that immigration may not increase housing prices if there are enough new houses being built and if you also have a decreasing native population (which would accelerate housing supply).
I agree that immigration has contributed to housing costs, in some places it had more of a role than in others. However, just because in this case the common sense explanation is supported by research, it does not mean that it is good evidence when trying to explain some complex phenomenon

• Pro-choice people will not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus and deny the term “baby” -- pro lifers will not acknowledge the impact of giving birth to the body of a girl/woman. Both side don't go into the details of what it means to take a pill the day after vs induced birth - and many more technical details.
• Pro-migrant people will deny that immigration has any impact on housing price, despite common sense and significant published scientific material saying otherwise -- I did this one above.
• Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths -- anti-gun will deny the culture of the US and how many guns there are, especially illegally owned ones by gangs, which is not comparable to what happened in other countries that banned guns (e.g. higher trust society in Australia - also an island, not bordering a country where organized crime is rife, like Mexico).
• Pro-porn people will proclaim that pornography is free speech, and that banning porn is the thin edge of the free speech wedge. -- anti-porn people will ignore that banning porn would require a series of draconian laws to enforce it. Only a fascist government, spying every second on its citizens could come even close to banning porn. Porn has also been used to enact spying/anti-privacy laws like the Online Safety Act in the UK.

I want to sperg about left-leaning parties losing voters a bit. It will make sense, I swear.

Hopefully, I brought up valid counter-arguments and examples of how both sides have arguments that are weak. Where does that leave us? How do we then decide what our opinion is?
We have to agree that it is okay to have nuance, admit you don't know everything, and that discussing detailed policies is better than discussing headline statements (e.g., do you agree with this law to prevent minors from accessing porn? If no, what would you change?). Also, we have to accept that morality may be based on religion, and that's that for some people.
Realistically, the majority of people don't have time to argue the details in a policy and are simply not interested in politics that much, which is fine at it is also not their job to discuss the details of policies.

This brings me to my claim about left-leaning parties. A lot has been said about how these politicians (in the US, UK, France, and the many countries where the centre-left / left has lost) are unable to inspire people. They don't have the slogan that fits on a hat ("I am with her", or somehow worse, in 2024: "Together, We Will Defeat Trump Again", "Finish the Job", "Let's Go Joe").

The final nail in the coffing is that they cannot even discuss the policies in detail. They have tied themselves to big statements that are not supported by evidence at all: cultural topics (e.g., puberty blockers are safe and reversible; diversity is our strenght), crime (defund police; abolish prisons), and economy (just tax the rich more; increase the minimum wage).

This is why they are perceived as souless. They have no fucking clue about what they are saying. The big claims are not appealing to most people, but they cannot even explain how they would implement these things (where will rapists go, if not in prisons?) to try to win people over. They don't know what the details of the policies would be and you cannot actually argue for something like "abolish prisons" for more than 5 minutes without relying on arguments that are fully based on ideology. Even politicians with zero charisma would have more favorable ratings than what they have now.

The support for trans ideology is what it is because it is the most obvious example. Every argument made to support anything trans is based on a disingenous claim. Everything reverts to it in our current climate. Conservatives will use it as a out-of-jail card (well, you believe men can give birth), and liberals will keep losing elections because the majority of the public does see how batshit insane it is.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

There definitely exist psychopaths that only care on being right than rationality, but with most of the cases, people are either too dumb to think of consequences, gaslight themselves about double think or rationalize it away.

For example:

example:

• Pro-choice people will not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus and deny the term “baby”
• Pro-migrant people will deny that immigration has any impact on housing price, despite common sense and significant published scientific material saying otherwise
• Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths
• Pro-porn people will proclaim that pornography is free speech, and that banning porn is the thin edge of the free speech wedge.

* "Until x months it does not have heart/brain, therefore it is not alive".
* "The economic good of migrants and their labour makes up for any economic harm they inadvertently do".
* "Countries with weapon ban still suffer violent mass casualty events using either illegal weaponary or substitute ".
* "Multiple famous works contain content that can be deened pornographic. The definition of pornography itself can be easily expanded as time goes on".

 

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments everybody. I guess there are a lot of factors which probably play in to different degrees for different people. I’m still formulating my thoughts on it but I guess that the fact that it forms a “lowest common denominator” which maximises the number of people who support a political action is probably a major factor (maybe that’s an obvious thing to say).

I want to sperg about left-leaning parties losing voters a bit. It will make sense, I swear.

Hopefully, I brought up valid counter-arguments and examples of how both sides have arguments that are weak. Where does that leave us? How do we then decide what our opinion is?

Just to clarify those were examples that I came up with off the top of my head. I wasn’t trying to say one side of any particular argument is right. Probably it would have been more clear if I used arguments from both sides on each topics, but I just used the ones which have stood out the most to me personally.

To clarify on the topic of housing, what I meant by “common sense” was rather “first principles”. In the sense that you might make an argument using logic rather than appealing to an authority. In that example, I was recalling a person with whom I disagreed who initially disagreed on first principles (i.e. increasing the demand of housing with increase house price and rental price), they basically said no that’s not what science says but then when I looked into it and found many examples of researchers claimed that migration increases housing prices, they didn’t have any rebuttal nor did they seem to either change their mind or cede the point. It made me think “this person is saying stuff but does it mean anything?” Probably more of an example of an unproductive argument between two people not willing to change their minds than the specific phenomenon I was trying to get at though (i.e. people using argumentative “shields” or borders).

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events o

I don't deny this, I just don't care. In many cases, it does work... just as forced starvation is a weight loss strategy. In our case, I suspect that it's impossible. Most other countries were starting from near zero but we're starting from 400 millionish; let's just pretend you can magically wish all those guns away. I still don't care. I'm happy if your children get shot dead if this preserves the most extreme interpretation of the second amendment. Even if my own children... better they retain their rights to be armed than to grow up in quasi-slavery.

I guess what I wonder is - are people actually doing this? Are they doing it intentionally, unintentionally, etc.?

Yes, of course they're doing it. No it's not "intentional", people are extraordinarily self-deceptive. Dishonesty is uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as losing, but they can avoid both kinds of discomfort if they can believe their own dumb horseshit. And the one thing that bald monkeys can do well is believe dumb horseshit... our sense/sentiment of belief doesn't require proof or even evidence. It's just a switch that can be flipped.

 

[Smoltine Kiminal]

Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths

anti gun people will frame gun violence as the problem, even tho violent crime in general is the problem
anti gun people will ignore that switzerland has lots of guns in private hands, but nearly no violent crime
anti gun people will ignore that the united kingdom has extremely strong gun control to the point where even cops rarely have guns, yet extremely high rates of violent crime

Pro-porn people will proclaim that pornography is free speech, and that banning porn is the thin edge of the free speech wedge.

this is not a dishonest argument, you either have free speech or you have censorship, cant have both at the same time
this is fact. no opinon.
first porn will be locked behind digital id
then more and more things will be locked behind digital id
whats next? computer games?
of course all and every kind of messenger, tHiNkOfThEcHiLdReNtHeGrOoMeRsArEeVeRyWhErE
what then? scientific material? you can do lots of bad stuff with scientific material
easy to find manuals for how to manufacture drugs!
government always operates like that, learn to notice the pattern
porn is a low hanging fruit to get a foot in the door

are people actually doing this?

aside from some of your examples being shit, the news and politicians are trained to do that, they dont give a shit about kids, and they are terrorizing everyone all the time, yet you need your digital id, tHiNk OfThEcHiLdReN
due to massive media spam everywhere, normies grow up in this kinda enviroment and just copy it
then truth itself is not valued in mainstream society, some women have penises chud!
the normie is trained not to believe his own instincts, his own eyes
everything is subjective "my truth" "your truth", all nonsense, truth is objective
all this is deliberate, including normies copying it
2+2=5

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths

It's more of a correlation-causation argument. New Hampshire has similar levels of gun ownership as Texas and Pennsylvania, but much less gun deaths per capita. Gun deaths are not necessarily caused by gun ownership. There are cultural and even racial reasons for it. More over, even states with lack gun control, like Tennessee, do put limits on who can own guns or where you can carry them. It's just a question of federalism, and needing to understand that laws are context specific.

Pro-choice

A lot of pro-choice thinking was influenced by eugenics. The founder of Planned Parenthood was one. A lot of their arguments just sound like eugenics, but they don't want to be honest about it.

 

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

A lot of pro-choice thinking was influenced by eugenics. The founder of Planned Parenthood was one. A lot of their arguments just sound like eugenics, but they don't want to be honest about it.

I particularly dislike the crime argument. A tenuous claim mainly popularised by the fact a famous author made it.

 

[Niggs Monaghan]

I think seeing constant disingenuous and evil stuff from the left on twitter has been actually rotting my brain from just so much annoyance and disgust on the regular.
So maybe that's why they do it, to heighten your opponents cortisol levels and make them physically sick.
I really need to stay off of twitter. Exposure to leftists and libs is harmful.

 

[ChefBourgeoisie]

anti gun people will frame gun violence as the problem, even tho violent crime in general is the problem
anti gun people will ignore that switzerland has lots of guns in private hands, but nearly no violent crime
anti gun people will ignore that the united kingdom has extremely strong gun control to the point where even cops rarely have guns, yet extremely high rates of violent crime

This isn't disingenuous. They just don't care. They want X to happen, and if X causes you the loss of important rights, or even death when you can't defend yourself... they just expect you to take one for the team. This is so obvious to them that they don't seem to understand that they might need to explain it to you (not that they would if they did understand they needed to explain it, because they also don't care to explain it to you, you're more like a movie prop or livestock as far as they're concerned). I can be accused of straw-manning, I suppose, but that's not my intent. I'm trying to clue you in.

They do not have any values in common with you. They don't even use the same sort of logic. The assumption that there must be some sort of overlap is what confuses you.

 

[estacks]

I think seeing constant disingenuous and evil stuff from the left on twitter has been actually rotting my brain from just so much annoyance and disgust on the regular.
So maybe that's why they do it, to heighten your opponents cortisol levels and make them physically sick.
I really need to stay off of twitter. Exposure to leftists and libs is harmful.

Preddit, Xitter, and Faceberg flat-out use fMRI scans in their A/B testing to study what content is most physically addictive. Outrage and disgust are just as addictive as gooner content, the level of addiction is more powerful than heroin, and this toxic content outcompetes all organic content. Social media scientifically locks people into dopamine and cortisol traps until they're completely polarized addicts to the platforms, cordyceps-zombies endlessly scrolling ads in isolation. The companies don't care, poisoning the minds of humanity brings them trillions of dollars through addiction engagement. Governments don't care, rat trapping people in skinner boxes until they automatically pull the red or blue lever lets them win elections while passing vampiric policies completely contrary to the will and civic health of the people.

Just consuming their content does make you sick no matter how hard you reject it. It doesn't matter if you already disagree with it and know you're dealing with mentally ill retards and a pandemic of psy ops, we're built to automatically contemplate and mirror the language we perceive and the sickness WILL infect you. I would say that it's mentally analogous to prions. Just touching the rot physically fucks your brain up and unless you practice active attention, distancing, and mental hygiene to repair the damage it will turn you into a literal zombie, either in lockstep with the propaganda of the day or as the controlled opposition to it.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Pro-gun people will deny that gun control is effective in reducing mass shooting events or associated gun deaths

Because it's not true. More lives are saved every year than taken with guns, and much of gun crime occurs due to illegally obtained weapons. America isn't a Japan, for many reasons gun control more or less works there (still debatable whether it should exist or not though), but it cannot and will not here.

 

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

Because it's not true. More lives are saved every year than taken with guns, and much of gun crime occurs due to illegally obtained weapons. America isn't a Japan, for many reasons gun control more or less works there (still debatable whether it should exist or not though), but it cannot and will not here.

This thread isn’t about that discussion. It’s about taking a step back and asking why you feel so strongly about this technical question of fact, when it’s clear that your true belief is ideological (i.e. a universal second amendment). Take a moment to consider how rabid you are acting in arguing against something raised as an example, and correspondingly how you are proving my primary observation. You have been brainwashed.