All Arguments are Strawmen(draft)
This post can serve as an introduction to my page. All of my ideas are fundamentally about addressing the problem of fruitless political discourse. In order to get to the root of the matter, I will start by saying that, if someone believes and says things which are false, wrong, and immoral, and additionally acts in accordance with those propositions, then that person is an enemy. Those who know better need to be prepared to fight him with deadly force in order to prevent real damage resulting from actions driven by such wrong beliefs.
In one sense, the vitriol in politics is perfect reasonable. Factions compete to have a say over the monopoly on violence in order to enact their view of justice and the common good. It makes perfect sense to hate those with contrary views of justice and the common good, as one necessarily believes they are evil, not just that they have a different preference.
I believe everyone can agree with these statements in the abstract, thinking about it purely logically. What this means for how one should act in reality is a much more troubling proposition. People do not generally think, much less speak, about doing violence against those they disagree with, and that is a good thing. I only propose that, if you do not want your opponents dead, or would at least find it particularly convenient if they were, then you should act like it.
I will suggest that simply arguing against someone and trying to win a debate can be a hostile act. “Winning” a debate means winning a confrontation in a propaganda war by saying something only slightly less wrong than the opponent. This is because no one is ever truly right about anything. Logical conclusions are only as good as their premises. Every person’s knowledge and point-of-view are limited, and so any conclusion can only be correct in a limited context.
Conversely, there is always a limited context in which everything anyone believes is true, beyond the most basic factual errors. It is possible to logically argue for anything with word games. No one is totally stupid and insane. If someone has an idea, there is some truth to it, as it was prompted by something. There is some context in which it makes sense. If nothing else, one is expressing what he wants by what he says, no matter how erroneous it is, and others need to deal with that.
I am not saying that everything anyone can conceivably believe contains some truth, but that the things people actually do believe so as to be anything remotely close to a political position worth debating almost certainly do. Put another way, people can only think in a limited number of dimensions. Two people can look at the same shape, and one might say it is a square and the other might say it is a triangle, when the truth is a they are both looking at the same triangular prism from different angles.
The winner of a confrontation in a propaganda war in the form of a debate is sure to be more correct than the loser, but this may not be so different from the winners of actual violent wars tending to be the ones who are more productive, civilized, and virtuous. In neither case is the winner simply guaranteed to be in the right with no caveats. Winning a debate does not settle an issue. The search for truth is not finished.
The title of this post means both that all arguments do not express the best version of the intent behind them and also that all arguments engage in the strawman fallacy because they are necessarily in response to such imperfect arguments. Arguing in a non-hostile way requires doing one’s best to steelman by addressing what people want, not just disputing what they say, by applying the logic of Chesterton’s fence to their contentions. It means treating argumentation first as a negotiation among the various interests of those involved and then as a cooperative enterprise by which the participants find solutions to the problems they face. The only facts and logic relevant in the former stage are the facts of what those involved want and the logic of whether those things are compatible. The latter stage is ultimately a matter of technical expertise, of which no one truly has enough. There can always be a better solution to any problem.
This way, true enemies will expose themselves as it becomes clear their desired ends are totally in conflict with yours. Perhaps this could be thought of as rhetorically turning the other cheek. In such cases of inherently hostile enemies, it becomes worthwhile to attack them rhetorically and by any other means available, but that does not need to be the default response. There can be a presumption of cooperation. By instead immediately arguing to win, one forces his opponent into a position of defending a necessarily flawed position and retaliating in an escalating rhetorical war which no one wins, because words are not actually violence. This is how it makes sense to me why Satan means “accuser”.
By instead having a default response of humility and asking what you are missing which causes your opponent to have radically different views, you may find that there is nothing inherently wrong with the basic thing your opponent wants and it is entirely possible for there to be a way for both of you to have your desired ends without conflict.
Of course, no one can devote the time and attention needed to address every stupid thing anyone says in this way. There is a third option in addition to treating people as potential enemies or as partners in cooperative enterprises, which is just ignoring them.
I could use any issue as an example of where hostile unproductive argumentation occurs. For now, I will say, in general, that ever since I started paying attention to political rhetoric in the early 2010s, I hated the left simply for how their self-righteous rhetoric. They obviously chose the positions which allowed them to most easily appear morally superior without trying to understand why anyone would disagree. It was clear they only desired power, not to cooperate with fellow citizens in solving problems.
Of course, “all arguments” in the title means all arguments. I started listening to conservatives and libertarians so that I would feel like I was not insane for my instinctive aversion to the left, but I knew that their logical arguments were usually not enough to address the actual reasons why someone would sincerely hold a leftist view. Even so, I knew they were taking the more unpopular and unintuitive, and thus more admirable, positions, so I kept listening so that I could find the ultimate steelman of rightism. It was only the critical view of aggression and conflict provided by radical Austro-libertarianism, ironically separated from ambiguous preferences regarding “liberty”, which explained the hostility in politics while also providing a starting place for understanding what peace means. I explain this in the other posts on my page.
“All arguments“ also applies to my own. I am sure that I am not articulating the issues I see in the best way possible. I welcome discussion for the purpose of better resolving the issues I attempt to address.