I am not so convinced that the response of "we'll agree to disagree" is lame. Having been commenting online even prior to the existence of the web, I've come to see that there are times when neither party is going to be able to convince the other regarding a particular point or position or issue. And so, to keep on trading comments back and forth will not lead to light but just continued exasperation and anger. Life is too short to waste it doing that. There are already too many people who get publicity and big bucks for keeping us angry with each other.
It really is a mean thing to do if the other person is already full of rage. You *must* stick to it, though, and I've gotten to where I don't even sneak back to the conversation to see what that last word might be. I rarely deploy it.
Absolutely, debates reach a final point, past which there's really no point in continuing.
Thing is, anyone can walk away from a conversation at any time. There's no need to offer up the "agree to disagree" bit, and there's no need to have the last word (which "agree to disagree" is, in a manner). "Agree to disagree" can be considered somewhat genial, but it does also have a vibe of "I don't want try to defend my point any more." Most of the time that I've seen it, it's a rejection of legit rebuttals.
I regularly run into online discussions where others for some reason known only by God continue to disagree with me. LOL! I try to phrase it as "it's obvious that neither of us will be able to convince the other and so it's really pointless to be making the same arguments over and over again" before using the "agree to disagree" comment. You can respect someone while agreeing that there's really no point to continuing the discussion.
Either I just ghost the conversation if things have been genial and I see no point in continuing, or if the other respondent has been an ass, I'll say "I've said all I have to say, I offer you the last word." And never look back.
You don't need to formally close out such dialogues. By the time they get to that point, no one else is paying attention anyway.
Peter, you honor your Grecian ancestors with a nice treatise on informal fallacies and rhetoric, but I must ask whether “circle-jerk” is of Socratic, Platonic or Aristotlean genesis?😲
I am not so convinced that the response of "we'll agree to disagree" is lame. Having been commenting online even prior to the existence of the web, I've come to see that there are times when neither party is going to be able to convince the other regarding a particular point or position or issue. And so, to keep on trading comments back and forth will not lead to light but just continued exasperation and anger. Life is too short to waste it doing that. There are already too many people who get publicity and big bucks for keeping us angry with each other.
Agreed.
The intellectually lame response is, "I'm going to agree you're wrong."
:)
I had never thought of that before. It is funny even if it will be infuriating to the other person.
It really is a mean thing to do if the other person is already full of rage. You *must* stick to it, though, and I've gotten to where I don't even sneak back to the conversation to see what that last word might be. I rarely deploy it.
Apathy is a wonderful thing.
It's too bad that you aren't a NR columnist.
Absolutely, debates reach a final point, past which there's really no point in continuing.
Thing is, anyone can walk away from a conversation at any time. There's no need to offer up the "agree to disagree" bit, and there's no need to have the last word (which "agree to disagree" is, in a manner). "Agree to disagree" can be considered somewhat genial, but it does also have a vibe of "I don't want try to defend my point any more." Most of the time that I've seen it, it's a rejection of legit rebuttals.
I regularly run into online discussions where others for some reason known only by God continue to disagree with me. LOL! I try to phrase it as "it's obvious that neither of us will be able to convince the other and so it's really pointless to be making the same arguments over and over again" before using the "agree to disagree" comment. You can respect someone while agreeing that there's really no point to continuing the discussion.
I've grown used to two forms of response.
Either I just ghost the conversation if things have been genial and I see no point in continuing, or if the other respondent has been an ass, I'll say "I've said all I have to say, I offer you the last word." And never look back.
You don't need to formally close out such dialogues. By the time they get to that point, no one else is paying attention anyway.
Peter, you honor your Grecian ancestors with a nice treatise on informal fallacies and rhetoric, but I must ask whether “circle-jerk” is of Socratic, Platonic or Aristotlean genesis?😲
There's 2500 years of history between them and me, so I'll pick some random in-betweener as the originator.
Of course, there's a Greek word that's highly apropos, but that's for another time.