That's Beside The Point!

How often do you find yourself at least thinking about saying that to someone? Take the poll at the bottom of the blog and let's talk about it.

Wikipedia has almost unlimited descriptions of various types of arguments. Just go to wikipedia.com and search for "argumentum." I wanted to find the reason why some people are compelled to argue with me by using something that has either little or nothing to do with what I’m saying, or actually proves my point.

They tend to use “Yes, but” quite frequently and it annoys me. I want to be able to stop them and show them the error, but I pause for a moment and wonder what they are really trying to achieve.

Reductio Ad Absurdum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum] states basically that “one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result.

This appears to be close, but not quite there yet. In my situation, the person seems to grasp at notions related to the topic, and then through sheer vocal inflections, phrases it in opposition to the statement I just made.

I’ve heard this person in a conversation with someone else and it’s like they were on two different channels, talking past each other while trying to resolve the same issue. They both seemed to perceive that their own points were being understood.

Resolving the situation was really not the point of the conversation. The emotional dividend of acknowledgement, validation, and acceptance is usually the main course of any casual conversation regardless of its purpose.

Unfortunately, some people regard an educational conversation that contains valuable information needed for future reference, as an opportunity to try and make them selves feel validated, and they fail to retain the information, but instead, retain the emotional context of the moment.

They’ve made themselves feel better by arguing with you, even though they never successfully proved you wrong. The best thing to do in these situations is to simply go quietly into the night and leave them on their own path.