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Facts do not matter: The depressing science that explains vaccine trutherism
Our new research, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs. Of course, sometimes people just dispute the validity of specific facts. But we find that people sometimes go one step further and, as in the opening example, they reframe an issue in untestable ways. This makes potential important facts and science ultimately irrelevant to the issue.
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In a similar study using 117 religious participants, we had some read an article critical of religion. Believers who were especially high (but not low) in religiosity were more likely to turn to more untestable “blind faith” arguments as reasons for their beliefs, than arguments based in factual evidence, compared to those who read a neutral article.
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So after examining the power of untestable beliefs, what have we learned about dealing with human psychology? We’ve learned that bias is a disease and to fight it we need a healthy treatment of facts and education. We find that when facts are injected into the conversation, the symptoms of bias become less severe. But, unfortunately, we’ve also learned that facts can only do so much. To avoid coming to undesirable conclusions, people can fly from the facts and use other tools in their deep belief protecting toolbox.
Facts do not matter: The depressing science that explains vaccine trutherism
originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: Profusion
I believe arguing is negative and pointless .
oh no it isnt
Linguistic JuJitsu...WHY?
You take the time and energy to think through a post with detailed logical arguments and coherent ideas and experiences and you ask others for feedback.
Why do people reply with linguistic jujitsu? Linguistic jujitsu involves someone essentially bypassing your arguments and ideas and putting you on the defensive. Linguistic jujitsuists use the weight and strength you displayed, and turn it against you in short "replies" where they ask/make silly, irrelevant, unprovable questions/comments or they make long posts that go nowhere with pointless questions/comments at the end of the long posts. These questions/comments are so pointless that it seems to be their goal to keep others busy and distracted. They avoid sharing insight and experience, while draining yours.
For example, you post about how you're outraged that the movie "Not another teen movie" was shown on a "family cable channel" (this is something I read about recently).
Linguistic jujitsuists could reply like this:
"If you think the movie is subversive, why did you watch it?"
This person is making assumptions while bypassing the original argument AND putting the original poster on the defensive all in one short sentence.
Linguistic jujitsu is not part of a rational honest discussion so why use it?
I've come to the conclusion that there's two basic types of people who use linguistic jujitsu: shills and energy vampires.
A shill is anyone who actively pushes an agenda. I'm shilling for the concept of linguistic jujitsu in this post. I think we all shill for things but why can't we all do it rationally?
I think linguistic jujitsu is a short cut for shills because they don't even have to read your post to "win an argument/debate". In their minds putting you on the defensive is somehow "winning an argument/debate".
For example, if a shill wanted to "win an argument/debate" in this thread they'd simply ask me to prove that linguistic jujitsu is a real phenomenon. They would ignore the discussion in the original post and force me to defend myself. It's a childish waste of time. Where do people learn this behavior, shill school?
Another tactic shills use is to take one point out of your entire post, "prove it's wrong" and conclude that the whole post is "debunked" because of the one point they "proved is wrong". Usually the "proof" is questionable but the validity of their argument doesn't seem to concern them. Their entire strategy is designed to force you to be on the defensive. Again, they don't even need to read your post to succeed with these tactics.
Maybe the purpose of these tactics is to make the original poster/post look bad. By forcing people to defend themselves the posters and their posts will APPEAR WEAK to people who read the thread. Of course, this appearance of weakness has nothing to do with the actual merits of the posts/posters. I say just ignore linguistic jujitsuists. You can't win by playing their game.
Energy vampires use linguistic jujitsu to drain people of their energy. Linguistic jujitsu enables energy vampires to spin you around in circles in an unwinnable pointless "debate" while they get your energy.
originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: Profusion
He he! Off course not. Not only that but there is no point to arguing online, but there is no point to anything else people do as a well.
originally posted by: galadofwarthethird
a reply to: Pinke
Not only is there no point to arguing with people online other then its sort of fun sometimes, but communication with people online may be equally as pointless as were all just wondering strangers who will never ever likely meet in real life or likely in other threads besides the one were said people are arguing in.
. . . woo woo-types often . . . claim there is no such thing as truth/facts.