Or, as others will ask, are they sometimes unnecessarily hostile?

Obviously, I think that the answer to the first question is "no", otherwise my arguments would have been briefer. If you'd rather read shorter arguments, I'd surely rather be typing them, as I'm doing this page by "hunt and peck". And I will have to pay for extra storage space by the megabyte, eventually, as this web page grows.

As for the second question, no, I don't enjoy hostile exchanges, but sometimes hostility is an unpleasant necessity, because others elect to make it so through their rhetorical choices. If I must become hostile to avoid being effectively silenced, the answer is not for me to docily allow myself to be stifled, but for those forcing this choice to modify their behavior so that this choice is no longer necessary. Failing this, for those around us to have the maturity to recognise that the responsibility for the outcome of the making of such a choice lies, not on whomever they are used to thinking of as being the easiest to pressure at the moment, but on those who elected to force the choice. Justice should not be sacrificed for the sake of another's cowardice, or laziness.


What results when we take the details out of our arguments is casual discussion, not careful examination. Now, here is something that really bothers me about casual debate about serious issues. It seems to empower people, in inverse proportion to the reasonability of what they have to say. If anything, the advent of the net has made matters worse, in this regard.

In person, lengthy arguments are tiring to listen to, and while one is offering one, others are squirming, trying to remember all of the counterarguments that they wish to offer when one is done.

As for the net ...

No doubt about it, lengthy articles can be unpleasant to read. The characters on the screen are fuzzier than those on the printed page, the position is uncomfortable, all of which makes for headaches, and reduced attention spans. When I write such an article, I have to acknowledge that this complaint has a degree of legitimacy. But it is far easier to write an ill considered, off the cuff response, and be brief, than to write a well thought out one, and do the same.

The problem is, that on serious issues, lengthy arguments are often necessary. Logical arguments rarely fit into sound bites as easily as do thoughtless, flippant responses, and to construct a fallacy takes less space than it does to dissect one. After all, there are only finitely many possible arguments of a given length, given the finite character set a language draws from. By restricting oneself to rational arguments, one has introduced a constraint in one's selection from the set of arguments leading to the desired points, so the minimum length attainable will increase. Unfortunately, the lengthier arguments, are the ones more vulnerable to disruptive tactics on the part of the opposition.

Many people would rather "win" than be right, and stifling points that one has no rational answer to, is a good way of doing so. So, many will resort to such tactics, indifferent to the harm they do in the process.

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