Conversation Halters

I feel that the such signals are often used when the person you are talking to just wants to end the conversation without losing face; in the frame where a search for the truth is construed as a status competition, this is hardly surprising.

Appeal to harmony - "Let's agree to disagree." If you keep talking, you're being quarrelsome.

A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World contains a nice example:

As a final example, a buffer overflow checker flagged a bunch of errors of the form

unsigned p[4]; ... p[4] = 1;

"No, ANSI lets you write 1 past the end of the array."

After heated argument, the programmer said, "We'll have to agree to disagree."

(It helps to know that this is forbidden by the C and C++ Standards. This rule is so well-known among programmers that if this guy were a physicist, he may as well have said, "No, neutrons are positively charged.")

In the wild, people use these gambits mostly for social, rather than argumentative, reasons. If you are arguing with someone and believe their arguments are pathological, and engagement is not working, you need to be able to stop the debate. Hence, one of the above -- this is most clear with "Let's agree to disagree."

In practice, it can be almost impossible to get out of a degrading argument without being somewhat intellectually dishonest. And people generally are willing to be a little dishonest if it will get them out of an annoying and unproductive situation.

If you have frequently been on the receiving end of "conversation halters," consider the hypothesis that you are doing something wrong. If you often provoke the reaction that people would rather not engage with you, the social part of your argumentative technique is badly broken.

An aside: many people here assume that attempts to cut off debate stem from a desire to protect a meme - but there are at least two other motivations:

1. Time constraints.
2. Distaste for tone (e.g. if the opposite party is growing aggressive in their comments).

The items on that list of appeals can also be ranked. According to mainstream US values, "Appeal to egalitarianism" trumps "Appeal to unquestionable authority", "Appeal to personal freedom" trumps "Appeal to egalitarianism"; and so on. The standard political talk show debate consists of a back-and-forth escalation up this ladder.

For example, in a televised debate on regulation:

Person 1: "The National Bureau of Economics Research published a study showing conclusively that regulation of X is harmful" (authority)

Person 2: "Well, I don't care what the elite economists say; the poor are not getting equal access to X and that is unfair." (egalitarianism)

Person 1: "Sure, it's unequal, but if the government played big brother with X, that would violate our fundamental freedoms." (personal freedom)

Eliezer - this is an interesting list, but perhaps it has more to do with you than with the people you're talking to.

For instance, when I was younger I had many arguments that ended in debates over definitions. (apparently the source of three of your above examples), but that's because I wanted (and was hanging out with people who wanted) to win for winnings sake. It was how that group determined status.

This is a list of symptoms -- what are the things you're doing in conversation that reduce people to saying things like this to escape? (or, alternatively, why are you talking to people who care more about proving to you that they're not listening than they do about learning from you? [and you learning from them])

I hear appeals to my politeness.

That is, because many people debate in order to show their skill at debating, or because they want to dominate the other person by making them submit to their position, some folks will mistake you for one of those people (assuming, of course, that you aren't), and they'll be upset by a debate continuing on for too long.

A rarer and sillier objection: the argument to coolness. "Why are you getting so upset about this? It's not like it, or anything else, matters that much."

Also: appeal to less than absolute certainty: "There's no way we can know for sure, since we weren't there. We can make judgments, but we don't have knowledge." Or, when you say "X", someone responds "are you really sure of X?", and you say "I'm 99% sure of X", they accuse you of retreating from your position: "Oh, well you didn't say that before; you just said 'X', which is an expression of absolute certainty" -- thereby interrupting the conversation and dodging the disagreement.

Closely related to the appeal to permanent unknowability and the appeal to humility.

I have just been reminded of another kind of Conversation Halter: fogging.

Essentially it involves just saying that they could be right. Not contesting any particular argument or even continuing to assert the position and yet not clearly updating either. In its most practical use it is a debate halter used when debating is not necessarily desired, but I mention it because it often also serves as a rhetorical tactic when debating. Depending on the tone and context 'you could be right' can mean "You're wrong and I do not need to justify myself, I'm authoritative enough to countersignal and you have no chance to reply!"

Can also be used as a parallel to 'Appeal to inner privacy' and 'Appeal to humility'.

(I advocate the careful use of this Halter in non-epistemic circumstances.)

This is similar to something I had started in my drafts folder. I guess it now belongs better as a comment here:

Distracting Honesty

A behavior of written argument is to anticipate an objection and answer it before the opposition can raise it against you. A similar, slipperier act is to simply acknowledge a weakness and never bring it up again.

There are various examples of this but an obvious one can be found in my confession. My claim is that I want to be Rational. The objection is, "But you believe in God!" So, before anyone gets to point that out, I bring it up, confess it, and move on while claiming I will address it in the future.

All of this is completely honest, but beware lest it acts as a curiosity stopper. A point addressed by an author with a claim of solutions in the future isn't grounds for dismissal of the point.

This isn't to say I have changed my mind and will be opening my worldview for public display. I happen to think I have a good reason for ignoring the elephant in the room and can merrily dodge requests for details. But if someone throws me a ringer by asking anyway, it may do me some good. After all, my rationality is your business.

The point: Honesty is an easy ping of following in EY's list above:

Appeal to humility; Appeal to common guilt; Appeal to inner privacy;

I'm a bit confused by your use of Appeal to personal freedom. If the "personal freedom" is the freedom of everyone to hold their own opinions, then it's just a restatement of egalitarianism. If it's about the definitions of words, then it seems to fall under the arbitrariness category.

Can you explain what sets this apart from the other categories?

I've found the best way to continue a discussion (if one wished to do so under the stated conditions...) when encountering a conversation halter is to put on a quizzical expression and utter a simple, confused-sounding question like, "How so?" or "Really?"

Asking questions, especially when you act confused (and many of these tactics are confusing on purpose, and thus it's not a false front), seems to put people in a better mood to counter with more substantive debate. Maybe it puts them into teaching mode, automatically granting them status without conceding the argument itself, or it shows that you genuinely would like to discuss the topic but aren't being combative about it, I'm not sure. It just works well for me.

There has been a lot of work on argumentation, argumentation schemes, and burden-of-proof moves; I'm thinking in particular of Douglas Walton - http://www.dougwalton.ca/ - but the field of argumentation is big and old. This is heavily-trodden territory.

EY has a somewhat novel slant on things, and so may be able contribute to the conversation, but by not citing (or not looking for previous work) he's being (accidentally) somewhat deceptive here.

It's tempting to portray your thoughts as original and without precedent, but even if they feel original and without precedent, they probably aren't.

See EY's critique of Gould - http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould/

Don't forget the "Appeal to Google" i.e. the person claims that there is plenty of evidence to support his position but refuses to concisely summarize or quote it. Instead, he just points to just points to some big document, or even the entire internet.

Thinking about various other conversation-stoppers, these come to mind:

• Announce that you are leaving the conversation;

• Declare that the conversation is insignificant;

• Declare that the conversation is a digression;

• Declare that the conversation is off-topic;

• Declare that the issue has been resolved elsewhere;

• Declare that the conversation has stooped to ad-hominen;

• Invoke Godwin's law;

Add false appeal to present ignorance to the list. Sometimes people will say that there currently isn't enough evidence available to finish the debate, so we should put it off. When this is said, it usually either misrepresents the amount of evidence currently available as less than it is, or accurately represents the amount of evidence available but is spoken by someone with no intention of ever gathering more. For example, "We don't know whether the earth is warming right now, so we shouldn't do anything hasty until we know more."

Of the top of my head I can think of a few items to add to the list.

Appeal to intra-group agreement - An example would be "If the FSM really exists, our family/tribe/facebook fraternity would have to be broken apart" in this case the person is putting the fate of a social bond at stake so as to counterbalance the value or arguing with him. You may win the debate over me, but you'll destroy your community - is the spirit behind it.

Appeal to Low energy level - This is mostly used in social situations in which the energy level is high, everyone is having a good time, for instance. If an argument is going on, someone may slightly start fading her attention away, looking bored, so as to oblige those arguing to change topic to keep the energy level high. I do it all the time when people start arguing about astrology or god. I suppose this is used mostly by alpha males and women, since they have more power over the group. It can also be done explicitly, by complaining, if the person has enough status in the group.

Appeal to common cause - "I see your point (even though she doesn't) but we must remember that we are here for a reason, the Party must prevail" The cause justifies the end of the debate. We shouldn't risk the causes loss over such a mundane issue.

Appeal to status lowering - "Well, yes, you may think freezing your head is a rational idea, but what do you think your girlfriend would think of this?" Rationality is supposed to include baby-producing strategies, so this can be quite appealing in the presence of someone who would actually think less of you for an opinion.

Appeal to biological need - Anything that one's body can do that will halt the debate can be used as an excuse, bathroom, thirst, headache, sleepiness. Even a short break might bring the debate's energy level below its working threshold.

Appeal to time constraint - same as above, but due to external circumstance.

Appeal to lack of intelligence - This is quite unlikely to happen in this blog comments, but someone could easily declare incapacity to understand subject X in order to stop someone else from arguing Y, given both know that X is required knowledge to grasp the persuasiveness of Y.

Appeal to humor - As most of the above, this is not epistemic in nature, but it is by far the one most available in my memory along with inescapable assumptions. Thor is trying to be serious, but everything that he says seriously is turned into a joke, or everything new. In this way it is never possible to delve deep, and the argument fades away.

There is also the example Eliezer originally linked to: appeal to your interlocutor's limitations, as in Grobian's behaviour. It's a universal counterargument against anything you can say in reply.

a slightly modified version of Appeal to permanent unknowability can be quite legitimate IMO, make it into Appeal to permanent unknowablity given existing conditions then consider the position that our theories are not accurate enough to conclude the existence of Everett branches-or competing theories if one supports them-beyond mathematical abstraction, this seems quite a reasonable position to me-though I'm not so well versed in QM.

on the other hand Appeal to inescapable assumptions seems to be what Eliezer used to be in favor of them being an accurate description of reality. that, or I'm missing something?

EDIT: I agree with byrnnema here

This is an uncharitable interpretation -- I only believe it in a grouchy way -- but my bias here is that I see empiricism as a huge, impenetrable fortress built on assumptions that are reasonable but not necessary. Interestingly, while appealing to the possession of different assumptions, I probably would appeal to humility, personal choice, .etc.

I've personally only seen appeals to inner privacy when how the person feels is indeed the subject matter being disputed (e.g. when they're faced with accusations about their intentions). I'd like to see an example of this being used outside that context, so I better understand how it's used as a general conversation halter ...

'If you cannot convince them, confuse them'

Throwing in irrelevant facts, needless complication can be frustratingly effective, esp. when the real party to convince is the audience, not the opponent.

This is not so much a halter as it is a derailer.

Appeal to inescapable assumptions - closely related, the idea that you need some assumptions and therefore everyone is free to choose whatever assumptions they want.

Eliezer I think this might be correct in some cases, since we all have different prior beliefs and therefore update differently on the same data.

Consider Jaynes' example of the experiment with the psychic: the skeptic sees evidence of cheating and the believer a proof of his beliefs.

I notice I'm confused.

I literally don't know what it means to say "The definition of words are not arbitrary." I suspect either that I lack the background knowledge to understand this sentence, or ironically Eliezer and I may have a different definition of the word arbitrary.

Furthermore, I don't know what the implications are of what he's trying to say. Is he saying that language is not a system of symbols? Is he saying that every word has a "correct" definition?

I disagree with, Appeal to inescapable assumptions. My specific reason is that I think it would insulate physical materialism from the main type of argument you can make against it. I see empiricism as a huge, impenetrable fortress built on assumptions that are reasonable but not necessary. Interestingly, while appealing to the possession of different assumptions, I probably would appeal to humility, personal choice, etc.

so some "assumptions" are right and others wrong.

An assumption is still an assumption. Some assumptions are more natural than others in the context of a scientific worldview, however, we haven't established that the scientific worldview is applicable always and everywhere. If anything changes -- for example, if reality is far more strange than we anticipate -- then as a culture and a society we need the flexibility to reconsider assumptions.

Also, did you mean, 'appeal to escapable assumptions'?