Tired of arguing (repost)
I've been told that the key to having a popular blog is posting regularly. I don't want to write a new post today, though, so I'm reposting an old Facebook status update.
Note: after the original post, some people commented that I had in fact changed their beliefs with some of my arguments. Thus, this post was too pessimistic about the prospects of changing the minds of ideologues. But I'm going to repost it as is, anyway. (Is it interesting? I don't know. But it's a post!) From 6/2017:
I used to argue with people with opposing ideologies. Christian proselytizers, subjectivists, Randian objectivists, Marxists, positivists, other victims of scientism. Now I generally don't.
For instance, in graduate school, I wrote a long essay on my disagreements with Ayn Rand (http://www.owl232.net/papers/rand.htm). I wouldn't do that now. Too bad I didn't get around to writing about all those other ideologies, because now I'll probably never do it.
Why? I think I know why I don't do it anymore: 1. I'm not going to learn anything. I know these ideologies. It is highly unlikely that the next Marxist I meet is going to say something importantly different from all the other Marxists. If they do, it's still highly unlikely that I'm going to find it interesting or illuminating. I'll probably just find it confused or irrational. Unless they're an established scholar, there's a pretty good chance that I will actually know more than they do about their own ideology, and I'll have to teach them what ridiculous thing they're supposed to say at a given point in the conversation. 2. They're not going to learn anything either. I have a fair chance of being able to tell, say, the positivist subjectivist something relevant that they don't yet know. But it is extremely unlikely that they're going to use it to improve their belief system. They'll just try to make up an excuse for disregarding it. 3. I find it tedious to struggle with people to convince them to open their mind.
Now I'm not sure why I ever did it. Maybe it helped me develop my own views; now that my views are long since developed, it's only boring. Maybe in the past I had more energy and patience. Maybe I had more faith in humanity. Now I tend to assume by default that a person cannot be moved on any ideological question, and that they can't say anything interesting on the subject either.