December 3, 2005
Arguing Online
Up in Chicago, I wasn’t familiar with the local talk radio lineup, so I stumbled across Dennis Prager. I didn’t know Prager was a radio talk show host, but knew a little of him from Townhall.com.
He brought up an interesting idea. Typically in spousal and/or family arguments, one person is a more capable debater than the other. Or, one person may be more outspoken. Either way, arguing verbally can be a quick way to end up with hurt feelings and anger. The person who is less able to debate well finds themselves unable to articulate their feelings, and the “bully” in the room tends to dominate the direction and tone of the argument.
Prager suggested, alternatively, that if you are in this sort of a situation, there might be a very simple way around it. Go into separate rooms, get on your computers, and move the argument to IM instead of verbal debate. When you are forced to think out your arguments and type them, it helps you to clarify your thoughts and to avoid saying something that might be hurtful. It also gives the less assertive person the ability to complete their thoughts without being interrupted, and levels the playing field.
It seems to me like this would be a very smart thing for some people. I know that I’ve had situations where my wife and I get into a fight, and nothing is quite resolved. We tend to then make up over e-mail the next day, and both feel much better for it. It gives us the ability to step back and really think about what happened, express our full thoughts without interruption, and tends to clear up whatever we were arguing about in the first place. Perhaps IM could help a bit.
Prager also discussed the claim by some people that they “don’t write well”. He points out that you don’t need to compose the next great American novel to be able to argue over IM. And if you claim you don’t write well because you can’t clearly express an idea, perhaps that means that your ideas are muddled? I’ve found that writing regularly forces me to take the ideas into my head and put them into order and a cohesive structure on paper. I’ve realized that often, until I do this, they’re not in a cohesive structure in my head. I think there has been a causative mechanism that practicing writing not only makes me a better writer over time, it makes me a better thinker.
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This might be helpful for some people, but it would probably make it worse for others. It’s not hard to bully by text, especially if it is a friend or family member who you will see later. For strangers it might be a bit different, but even then, we’ve all seen someone browbeaten on line, right? Imagine your mom text-debating someone who slings “strawman” or “ad hominem” at her.
Um, I probably shouldn’t have brought your mom into this. Sometimes I do that in order to bully people.
Mrs. Sam was trained by Duke Law School to debate. I was trained by Purdue as a Computer Scientist.
She wins debates with me on artificial intelligence. It’s just not fair.
-Sam
Sam,
I’ll bet that even when she agrees with you, she’ll argue the opposite point just to beat you, huh?