Stupid Political Conversations, Part 2

When people give an argument and then do the equivalent of running away with their fingers in their ears:

Version 1: 

Person A: I think X.

Person B: Well you're wrong for these reasons, but that's just my opinion*.

Person A: I don't think your reasons make sense because of these other factors.

Person B: Hey, I can have my opinion.

Person A: That's true. I see now that because your opinion is an opinion, it can be totally illogical or based on false facts and I can't ask you to defend any of that because, as you mentioned, it's your opinion. As we all know, opinions are impervious to critique.

*Alternative versions:

"Just sayin'."

"We can agree to disagree."

Version 2:

Person A: I think X.

Person B: Well you're wrong for these reasons.

Person A: I don't think your reasons make sense because of these other factors.

Person B: I don't have time to argue about this. I have a life.

Person A: Well I guess I should count myself honored that you took time out from your life to start the argument in the first place. Thank you for gracing me with your presence and poor reasoning skills.

Version 3:

Person A: I think X.

Person B: Well you're wrong for these reasons. End of story*.

Person A: Oh, "end of story!" You've said the magical phrase that prevents anyone from disagreeing or continuing the conversation. I wish I'd thought of saying "end of story" before you--then I could've cleverly won the debate.

*Alternative Versions:

"Period."

"That's just all there is to it."

The Reason for the Season

Last Thanksgiving I saw this cutesy photo on Facebook:

Underneath it someone had linked to this:

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

...

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers. 

Then the other day I saw this:

Ok, so here's the thing.

For most people, Thanksgiving means talking about what you're grateful for, spending time with your family, and eating a lot. Christmas is similar, but with the addition of buying each other gifts, and, for Christians, rejoicing that their savior came to earth in the first place. 

That's the meaning of those holidays for most people. You can insist that the holidays "really" mean whatever you want, but it's not like there's some objective arbiter to enforce the meanings you've chosen to insist on for all cultures throughout all history. 

You can tell people all you want that when they eat a bunch of turkey and candy yams and talk about how grateful they are for their jobs that really they are celebrating genocide--but they're not. It's not like as long as you insist that's what people think and feel, it'll be true. It's not like you can instill in them a secret happiness at the deaths of others just by insisting that's what it means to hang out together and bake pies.

And you can tell people all you want that when they hang their kids' Popsicle-stick ornaments on their Christmas trees and give each other presents that really they are worshiping Babylonian idols--but they're not. As the cartoon itself shows, traditions are mixed, mingled, adjusted, and evolved over time and geography and so on. Why should the person co-opting Charlie Brown get to decide which time in history versus all other times is the most relevant to modern-day Christmas? In the distant future I doubt someone studying the American Christmas tradition would insist it's based on Babylonians.

This is just another version of telling people what they think and how they feel, and then decrying the thoughts and feelings you've assigned that they haven't embraced. Plus, to my mind, this attitude comes off as at least as self-righteous and obnoxious as the very behavior you're complaining about.

I actually am not a big fan of genocide, and I'm still going to celebrate Tday every year because I love being with my family. I don't believe in fertility gods and I'm still going to put up a Christmas tree because they fill me with a happy nostalgia for my childhood. 

You can just get over it.

"It is of interest to note that..."

Ugh, no!

1. First, awkward language, guys! You could just say "It's interesting that..."
2. Also, empty words. You could just say the supposedly interesting thing and let the reader decide whether it's interesting or not. If it's interesting do you really need to point out that it's interesting?
3. But mostly, cowardly and dishonest. That is, I notice people often use this phrase when they want to believe some correlation is a causation, but they don't have the evidence to show it. So for example:

"It is of interest to note that criminal defence witnesses whose evidence failed to meet the relevant statutory evidence standards were more likely to suffer complete exclusion, rather than limitation, of their evidence." - Forensic Identification Science Evidence Since Daubert

In other words, defense expert testimony gets thrown out more than prosecution expert testimony. Why this is true is unclear--it could be some insidious conspiracy by the courts to side with law enforcement, or it could be something simpler, like defense people overall have smaller budgets and can't hire as many high-quality expert witnesses. Or it could be any number of other things. We don't know, at least not just from this study.

People do this all the time. Right after the election I saw a lot of people use captions like "interesting" and "hmm" accompanied by this photo:

Obviously the photo tries to imply a correlation between the (racist) slave states and Republican voters. Of course correlation doesn't mean causation (C'MON PEOPLE) but this photo doesn't even show correlation--and it didn't take much Googling to find that out. If you look at voting trends with any kind of detail beyond state-level, the above correlation disappears. Here:

Source here.

"Oh. Hmm. Interesting." 

"Hmm"? "HMMM"?! Stop hiding behind non-committal ambiguity and either back up what you think is true or don't say anything to begin with.

End rant.

Stupid Abortion Conversations

She was on birth control and he used a condom. They did everything they could to avoid pregnancy!

Well, not everything. They still had sex.

Why do you hate sex? Why do you want to punish women?

...What?

Pointing out that sex can cause pregnancy is a statement of fact--not a preference, not a moral judgment. Don't try to act like there's no connection between sex and pregnancy and then accuse anyone who corrects you of hating sex. You don't have to hate sex to understand how pregnancy happens, guys.

Stupid Political Conversations

Person 1: Why do you believe X?

Person 2: Well, for these reasons.

Person 1: You're so wrong! You're stupid and/or evil! You will never convince me to believe X!

Person 2: ...I wasn't trying to convince you...you asked me.

Person 1: Premise A.

Person 2: No, premise B.

Person 1: No, premise A because of x,y,z reasons.

Person 2: No, premise B because of c,d,e reasons.

Person 1: Yeah, but you've gotta admit...premise A.

Person 2: I have to admit the very thing over which we're disagreeing? Good point. You win.

-OR-

Person 1: I think we all know that premise A.

Person 2: So...what? We all secretly "know" your opinion, and we're just pretending to disagree to be difficult?

-OR-

Person 1: If you think about it, premise A.

Person 2: Oh yes, if only I would think. All of your arguments are now logically sound, because you reminded me to think. Thank you.