by Scott Adams
“people who have good arguments use them. People who don't have good arguments try to win by labeling.” Socialist, racist etc.
“Being absolutely right and being spectacularly wrong feel exactly the same.”
“The business model of the press guarantees you will see more negativity than the facts support.”
“If your only complain about another persons behavior is that it might normalize something, you might not have any reasons to back your opinion. When people have good arguments, they will more of then than not gleefully show their work to anyone who will listen. But when people have no compelling arguments for their points of view, they sometimes prefer to jump ahead to teh “Don’t normalize that behavior” stage and act like the argument makes itself.”
“The most effective approach to addressing critics who misinterpret you and then criticize their own misinterpretation as if it came from, is this challenge: State ONE thing you believe on this topic that you think I do NOT believe.”
“You can’t get the right answer until you frame the question correctly. And partisans rarely do.”
“If you have ever tried to win a debate by providing better facts and reasoning, you know it almost never works. That’s because people are confident in their own abilities to understand the world. That confidence should be your target, not the totality of the argument.”