What makes an argument convincing?

[fullerene]

This has been on my mind for a while, now... what makes a given set of premises for some conclusion "convincing"?

 

[snafupants]

This has been on my mind for a while, now... what makes a given set of premises for some conclusion "convincing"?

Usually the premises correspondence to what the other person already believes.

 

[Coolydudey]

Yes. There are certain things that are in perfect accordance with fundamental human psychology, and a persons beliefs.

 

[RaBind]

Evidence to support the argument or suggest that it may be true.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Evidence. Sound Logic.

 

[GodOfOrder]

the first step is logical consistency, the second step is sound preconditions, the third is a semi intelligent interlocutor

 

[BigApplePi]

what makes a given set of premises for some conclusion "convincing"?

Two answers. One is objectivity and the other is subjectivity. Either one alone won't do.

One can have an objective argument that is logical, without error and fully covering the ground. If the recipient can't follow it, isn't interested or has an ulterior reason for blowing it off, it won't convince.

One can have an erroneous argument, full or holes, even nonsense. If the recipient picks up on the subject or the conclusion and likes it, or has no logic ability, they can still be convinced.

So it's a relationship. You need the statements and you need the person to be convinced.

 

[Cognisant]

I think it's all a matter of framing so that the right connections are made, so if I want to convince you of something I have to explain it in a way that you can understand and accept, this is why logic works so well, we all understand that if A > B and B > C then A must be > C, so logic is really a collection of irrefutable axioms, and so anyone with any experience with logic will almost certainly be convinced by a logical argument.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

It amuses me that so many people think that logic and persuasion are related.

Humans, t-types included, are not rational creatures. Look around. Does 'logic' really seem to prevail?

 

[RaBind]

Humans, t-types included, are not rational creatures. Look around. Does 'logic' really seem to prevail?

Isn't that generally because it would be too energy consuming to assess everything that we are told. A much more effective way to cope with the shitload of information, in the modern world, is to assess it's face value and trust it unless you have have a reason to doubt or are knowledgeable in the subject.

A pilot would usually trust the diagnosis of a doctor. However he may be doubtful if he knew that the doctor had a history of giving incorrect diagnosis.

A pilot would usually trust the diagnosis of a doctor. However he would be more likely to challenge another pilot, if he thought that the pilot was making a mistake.

 

[snafupants]

It amuses me that so many people think that logic and persuasion are related.

Humans, t-types included, are not rational creatures. Look around. Does 'logic' really seem to prevail?

Very true. Hitler didn't really have the better argument - Hitler invigorated peoples' base, emotional natures. An appeal to emotion is all you see with political advertisements today. Almost all the ads you see are focused grouped and engineered to produce a rote emotional response.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Reasoning convinces me. I won't say it works for others.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

This has been on my mind for a while, now... what makes a given set of premises for some conclusion "convincing"?

Falsification of evidence, appeals to emotion, non-sequiturs, retarded metaphors and analogies, perversion of language and definitions, so on and so forth. Mainly the things I don't do.

 

[Proletar]

Evidence. Sound Logic.

Evidence can be falsified. Try supporting your arguments with studies made in fascist dictatorships and you can prove anything. Hell, just ask the juice-industry about the nutritious goodness of their products and you will soon be drinking their sold health until you die of a heart-attack.

Proxy: Sure.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Evidence can be falsified. Try supporting your arguments with studies made in fascist dictatorships and you can prove anything. Hell, just ask the juice-industry about the nutritious goodness of their products and you will soon be drinking their sold health until you die of a heart-attack.

How do you know something's wrong with the evidence these companies provide?

 

[Proletar]

How do you know something's wrong with the evidence these companies provide?

Why would a manufacturer of orange-juice advice against consuming orange-juice? They won't always tell the truth, but they will always act in a way to support their brand as much as they can. Do you think these two always align?

It's not always wrong, but they still can't be trusted. As of now, it's even beginning to be disputed if vitamin C is really as good for us as they told us. And all that fructose at that? Terrible stuff, orange-juice.

 

[snafupants]

How do you know something's wrong with the evidence these companies provide?

Spoiler

How can anyone know anything?

To be more realistic, comparing third-party studies with sponsored studies would be the place to start. A company will throw out results it doesn't like, while pedestaling findings it can prominently display on the label. It's really only nominally scientific. But yeah, the vitamin "Source of Life," for instance, puts third-party lab analyses in the box of shredded vitamin-granola matter.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Why would a manufacturer of orange-juice advice against consuming orange-juice? They won't always tell the truth, but they will always act in a way to support their brand as much as they can. Do you think these two always align?

It's not always wrong, but they still can't be trusted. As of now, it's even beginning to be disputed if vitamin C is really as good for us as they told us. And all that fructose at that? Terrible stuff, orange-juice.

Your arguing for skepticism, which is always a good, healthy virtue to have. But how do you actually figure out what's right?

Spoiler

How can anyone know anything?

To be more realistic, comparing third-party studies with sponsored studies would be the place to start. A company will throw out results it doesn't like, while pedestaling findings it can prominently display on the label. It's really only nominally scientific. But yeah, the vitamin "Source of Life," for instance, puts third-party lab analyses in the box of shredded vitamin-granola matter.

^ Evidence.

 

[Hadoblado]

It amuses me that so many people think that logic and persuasion are related.

Humans, t-types included, are not rational creatures. Look around. Does 'logic' really seem to prevail?

Logic and persuasion are related, though they are far from synonymous. The more logical and factual an argument, the more persuasive it is, but there are other factors in determining persuasive value that often overshadow logical consistency.

 

[fullerene]

Thanks for the answers. Sadly, the emotional component to arguments (yes, I believe that's important) isn't much help to me in this case. It's interesting, it's important, and I'd love to learn about it... but I'm sorta trying to work through the more "objectively applicable" forms of convincingness. I should have probably said it like this, at the beginning of the thread. Imagine you're writing an anonymous argument to an unknown audience, and you genuinely believe its conclusion to be true. What do you write in it so that nobody in your imagination could possibly doubt the conclusion at the end?

To those saying "logic": how flexible is the axiom/conclusion structure allowed to be, before the argument loses convincingness? Formal logic has already been proven incomplete (thanks a lot, Godel)... so I'm sure that's not what you mean. I think pretty much everyone agrees that deductive logic (like Aristotle's syllogisms) is convincing... but they're even more limited than formal/deductive logic. Do you include inductive logic in that? Inductive arguments, by their nature, have some holes whereby people could reasonably doubt them... but that doesn't mean they're never convincing. What makes some holes in an argument ok, while others aren't?

tl;dr: "logic" is a vague word with an enormous number of meanings. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's almost a vacuous word. Could you clarify more what you mean, on the conceptual level?

To those saying evidence: how "far from the core experiment" do you have to control the conditions, before they just "don't matter" to you anymore? As an example: to date, every single experiment done to confirm the mechanics of friction has been done with Alpha Centauri in existence. Likewise with the Sun, Mars, the Big Dipper, and Earth's oceans. Speaking strictly of what we're convinced of by experiment, perhaps friction would cease to exist if we blew Alpha Centauri out of the sky.

Maybe you would say "we expect to live our whole lives with Alpha Centauri in the sky, and it'd be awfully hard to piece it back together once it got blown up, so it's not worth experimenting so that we can know 'fully'". Fine. But it's also the case that 100% of our experiments took place before this precise moment in time. No experiment has been done to confirm friction's continued existence in the "absolute" future. Even if past "moments" have gone by with no change in frictional behavior, from a literal sense, we've currently done 0 experiments in future moments.

I would certainly not find it convincing, if someone were to argue that I should doubt friction's continued existence--but I also don't see how experimental evidence could be used to make a good counterargument against them.

tl;dr: Experiments and experience help us classify some properties as 'essential' or 'irrelevant', but the vast majority of "things which exist in the universe" are excluded from all experimental control conditions. At what point is an experiment thorough enough to become convincing, to you?

 

[Matt3737]

As the old saying goes, "It's not what one says, but how one says it that matters."

As you pointed out, epistemological justification is and has been a problem throughout history. The rhetorical method of logos is one of 'carrying weight' with other people.

Isn't it ironic that those so entrenched within their own sense of logic and evidence that they would be completely at a loss to attempt a dissoi logoi exercise?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Stating that evidence and logic is required to make an argument convincing is all well and good but to be actually be "convincing" is dependent on the audience. Even on this forum I have experienced people holding perverse versions of history, feel that they are apt in debating a subject that they have never studied in sufficient detail or their emotionally based predispositions make them impervious to any line of reasoning. When they loose a debate, they don't actually think 'well, maybe I am wrong and I will conduct further research into the topic'. Instead, they either do nothing (requires little to no effort) or wait until the next debate when they once against feel it necessary to interject their baseless beliefs.

 

[snafupants]

Stating that evidence and logic is required to make an argument convincing is all well and good but to be actually be "convincing" is dependent on the audience. Even on this forum I have experienced people holding perverse versions of history, feel that they are apt in debating a subject that they have never studied in sufficient detail or their emotionally based predispositions make them impervious to any line of reasoning. When they loose a debate, they don't actually think 'well, maybe I am wrong and I will conduct further research into the topic'. Instead, they either do nothing (requires little to no effort) or wait until the next debate when they once against feel it necessary to interject their baseless beliefs.

Proxy, you sound rather bitter.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Proxy, you sound rather bitter.

Yes, I have become quite bitter about this specific subject. For this reason I will no longer be participating in informal debates or discussions with many people.

 

[snafupants]

Yes, I have become quite bitter about this specific subject. For this reason I will no longer be participating in informal debates or discussions with many people.

That's understandable. Perhaps, though, instead of resorting to anger, you could teach?

 

[snafupants]

Yes, I have become quite bitter about this specific subject. For this reason I will no longer be participating in informal debates or discussions with many people.

Maybe the problem is viewing these cyber encounters as debates. Just say your piece and be done.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

That's understandable. Perhaps, though, instead of resorting to anger, you could teach?

I am not angry.

Teach people? I don't mind it in person. Well, providing I also have the time to do so. I am a supervisor for 2 masters students, I am lecturing and tutoring finance again and tutoring 3rd year numerical analysis. This additional work has enabled me to cease my data analysis part time work.

On the internet? It would be very unlikely for me to do so. Inappropriate Behavior, for example, wanted me to teach him historical and modern systems of jurisprudence. This would simply take too much of my time and he was probably wanting me to "teach" him this in order to waste my time. Wasting other people's time is a common disingenuous tactic used when people debate or discuss things with each other.

Maybe the problem is viewing these cyber encounters as debates. Just say your piece and be done.

It is the way in which the cyber encounter evolve.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'll give it a crack.

Persuasion is using the beliefs of the target to arrive at the conclusion you wish them to retain. In this case, the beliefs of the target include the way in which they think data can be extrapolated.

The truth value of both the target's beliefs, and the validity of the truth-preserving techniques used to arrive at your conclusion is a non-issue. It is only important that they believe them to be sound.

Once you have identified their beliefs, you can now use logic. You are limited to facts that they either believe or will believe, and logic forms that they both understand and believe valid.

Once you have established that there is reason to believe your conclusion, you must appease or eliminate any mutually exclusive beliefs they hold.

At this point, if you have been successful in every previous step, your conclusion should be your target's best hypothesis. In order to make them actually hold the belief you must provide evidence or rhetoric until their confidence in your conclusion is above (an entirely arbitrary) 90%.


Have I missed anything? I should probably add something on motivated belief, but that would take a lot longer.

 

[snafupants]

On the internet? It would be very unlikely for me to do so. Inappropriate Behavior, for example, wanted me to teach him historical and modern systems of jurisprudence. This would simply take too much of my time and he was probably wanting me to "teach" him this in order to waste my time. Wasting other people's time is a common disingenuous tactic used when people debate or discuss things with each other.

It's totally disingenuous and all too frequent on this forum.

I post as much for me as an audience, so it doesn't really matter.

That's unfortunately, though. Why can't people be more sincere?!

 

[Proletar]

To be more realistic, comparing third-party studies with sponsored studies would be the place to start. A company will throw out results it doesn't like, while pedestaling findings it can prominently display on the label. It's really only nominally scientific. But yeah, the vitamin "Source of Life," for instance, puts third-party lab analyses in the box of shredded vitamin-granola matter.

Your arguing for skepticism, which is always a good, healthy virtue to have. But how do you actually figure out what's right?

Any scientific study regarding any substance, especially those based on observational studies, can be really counter-intuitive and often causes misinformation.

Take for example one study conducted, concluding that coffee-drinkers live longer than non-coffee-drinkers. What does this tell us? That caffeine prolongues life? That coffee contains other nutrients that helps us? Does it tell us that the people engaged in coffee-drinking have a standard of living that also enables them other habits that are life-prolonguing? May the coffee in fact still be an unhealthy habit that otherwise healthy people engage in?

The list of question goes on. First we have evidence, and then we start asking ourselves lots of question about the evidence. With a good conclusion, we can make the effort to gather further evidence, which we in turn can use for asking other questions. With a good enough conclusion based on good enough evidence, we find an answer. I say that the truth is not only something that comes from evidence, but is mostly driven by analytical, logical and even philosophical thinking in the first hand. Logic cannot be falsified unless it's based upon falsified evidence, which is to say that empirical evidence is unreliable in practice, and must always be analysed.

That's much different than saying that coffee prolongues life. I'm still open to that concept, of course, but the study didn't really prove that. Unless there are people able to interpret the information gathered, the evidence is worth nothing. Worse yet, if they rely on just the information gathered (mostly by others in self-interest) instead of thinking for themselves, they are bound to be fooled.

So what makes an argument convincing? Well, first off, is their logic sound? Is their terminology open for interpretation? What is implicit? If the argument reaches through my critical filter, it's either a good argument or I am an idiot.


That's how I think.

 

[snafupants]

@Proletar

Wasn't there an early study speciously linking coffee and cancer?

If my memory serves me, the study neglected to account for cigarettes.

Apparently many coffee drinkers in the 80s also smoked. Who knew?

 

[Proletar]

@Proletar

Wasn't there an early study speciously linking coffee and cancer?

If my memory serves me, the study neglected to account for cigarettes.

Apparently many coffee drinkers in the 80s also smoked. Who knew?

Nope. Apparently, coffee was bad for you in the 80s, but good for you now. So sayeth the studies! All hail The Evidence!




But no, that's my point exactly. Thank you.

 

[snafupants]

Nope. Apparently, coffee was bad for you in the 80s, but good for you now. So sayeth the studies! All hail The Evidence!




But no, that's my point exactly. Thank you.

@Proletar

I'm not sure you comprehended what I said. The early study supposedly posited coffee was bad, but for the wrong reasons. Today, the evidence seems to be slanting the other way.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Stating that evidence and logic is required to make an argument convincing is all well and good but to be actually be "convincing" is dependent on the audience. Even on this forum I have experienced people holding perverse versions of history, feel that they are apt in debating a subject that they have never studied in sufficient detail or their emotionally based predispositions make them impervious to any line of reasoning. When they loose a debate, they don't actually think 'well, maybe I am wrong and I will conduct further research into the topic'. Instead, they either do nothing (requires little to no effort) or wait until the next debate when they once against feel it necessary to interject their baseless beliefs.

Something I've found, though, is that it takes most people a while to come around to reasoning. As long as you provide proper reasoning, it will eventually convince people... they just need time to think about it on their own and be willing to admit they were wrong, even if they don't budge while you're actually discussing the topic with them. And always be willing to admit it when you're the one who's wrong. Honesty is the best policy. Further, honesty makes life easy. Instead of needing to track all your lies, just simply say what's true.

 

[BigApplePi]

If A is close to B and B is closer to C, does that mean A is even closer to C?

 

[SpaceYeti]

If A is close to B and B is closer to C, does that mean A is even closer to C?

Only if C is somewhere betwixt the two.

 

[BigApplePi]

A hates B, B hates C. Therefore A hates C.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Negative, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. A gets along with C on a temporary basis, until B is eliminated.

 

[BigApplePi]

@ProxyAmenRa

Falsification of evidence, appeals to emotion, non-sequiturs, retarded metaphors and analogies, perversion of language and definitions, so on and so forth. Mainly the things I don't do.

Yes but is a retarded metaphor in the hands of a brilliant logician as good as a brilliant metaphor in the hands of a retarded logician?

 

[BigApplePi]

@Proxy

Yes, I have become quite bitter about this specific subject. For this reason I will no longer be participating in informal debates or discussions with many people.

Sometimes logic on both sides has holes in it. Only mathematical logic has a good record and even that has flaws discovered over time. Sometimes one has holes in their own logic that are not suspected as unconscious assumptions remain hidden. It is commonly easier to see holes in the other fellow's logic as their assumptions are "out there."

 

[BigApplePi]

Negative, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. A gets along with C on a temporary basis, until B is eliminated.

Doesn't that assume all know each other? If A hates B, B hates C, that doesn't mean A knows C at all. Then you have partials ... meaning A hates something about B, B hates something about C and yet A can love something about C.

With all this complicated logic, no wonder logic doesn't work well in the real world. If you read logic to me fast enough, I wouldn't be able to follow it. If you slow it down, I still might have a hard time.