How to Argue

[Publius]

I was wondering what this forum is for. I think I have one topic:

How to argue.

I have an issue we all seem to be encountering (I have heard it a lot, and from almost everyone present on these boards). I also have some questions for everyone.

The Issue
In our modern society, people are not taught how to engage in verbal discourse productively.

I honestly don't know if this is a new phenomenon or if it's something that every generation says as they come up in the world. I could easily see this being a case of "the next generation is full of disrespectful youths that have no idea what they're talking about, and the world is going to Hell in a handbasket!"

It could also be that given technological innovations, the art of rhetoric is no longer as valuable as it once was. It's possible it's not taught in schools, business, or in polite society to the same degree it used to be. Maybe it doesn't need to be taught as much as it used to be either.

When every conversation is one that takes place in a chat room, on Twitter, Facebook, or a message board, the etiquette of dialogue is no longer relevant. If someone's off topic it doesn't matter because the statement can be easily ignored by the other chatters. If someone filibusters, that has no impact because again others can simply speak around them. If a chatter says things that are completely false, they may or may not ever be asked to explain, and they don't have to answer anyone even if someone asks for an explanation. A person really can't Gish gallop over anyone, and they can't talk so fast and fanciful that no one has time to dissect an answer. They can't raise their voice, and they can't make themselves more animated. Fact-checking can be done on the spot on the Internet. Not so in real life.

In other words, people have to argue fairly (or more fairly at least).

But face-to-face, conversations don't have these limitations. People can pretty much be a giant jerk, face-to-face.

Some (but not all) of these things happened to me tonight, and they happened within the span of about ten minutes, with someone who is clearly very intelligent, and who I am probably more in agreement with than disagreement. However, he would not answer direct questions, wouldn't shut up long enough for me to get a point out, and generally just had no damned idea how to argue at all. Or maybe he didn't want to have a discussion, but really was just very hungry to be heard, and felt that making a speech would give him that chance. I honestly have no idea what this person's malfunction was, but it certainly was a malfunction, and it made me think of these questions.

Humor me, please.

Questions

1. How often do you see people have constructive conversations outside of a business environment?

2. For that matter, what about inside of a business environment? How often are people actually hearing and understanding one another in your business experience?

3. Do you think this is getting worse in our society? If so, why?

4. What could be done to make our society better at verbal communication and argument?

5. Have you had any conversations like this recently? If so, what were the details of that conversation?

6. What do you do when you encounter conversations like this?

7. If you could sit down with a person and a moderator, and create rules for the conversation and then both be bound to follow them, would that be interesting to you? Is that something that would be worthwhile to you? Note that these wouldn't be formal debate rules or anything, but just basic - really basic verbal social skills.

8. What would the rules be, if you have any ideas on that? What rules would make sense?

This is a topic and a behavior that has long frustrated me. Any genuine answers or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you have to share.