Over the past 6 weeks or so, I've been landed in the beautiful... but wildly statist... city of Portland. There have been a few things that have been tough about this transition from living on the road with anarchists, as you can imagine. The biggest issues have been just being around so many people who consider themselves "political", and the fact that while anarchists absolutely LOVE intellectual debate, generally managing to keep emotions and personal attacks out of it... and statists seem to have a much bigger problem with that.

Of course, when I give something my attention, I notice more of it, so I'm sharing something that I've done that with so as to release it. Over the past few weeks I've multiple times had (generally hours & hours of) my research met with the phrase "let's agree to disagree", sometimes without ANY other conversation at all.

According to Logical Fallacies: A Taxonomy of Fallacious Arguments, this is called the "false surrender":

Definition: When there is offered an unwarranted or premature truce on a point of contention in order to misrepresent opponent’s position as unprovable or inconclusive.
Example: My belief that all swans are white isn’t necessarily falsified by your photo of a black swan. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Note: This tactic is often employed by the side who feels the other side has presented the better evidence/arguments.

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Truth is truth, reality is reality, opinion is not an argument

Patrick Stokes, a philosophy professor at Deakin University, in this awesome piece on the "right to one's opinion", had a few things to say that I really enjoyed:

"I'm sure you've heard the expression 'everyone is entitled to their opinion.' Perhaps you've even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it's no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for."

The problem with "I'm entitled to my opinion" is that, all too often, it's used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for "I can say or think whatever I like" - and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful.

If "everyone's entitled to their opinion" just means no one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial [...] But if "entitled to an opinion" means "entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth" then it's pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred.

If you are faced with evidence, facts, history, that run counter to your belief or argument, you can either be honest with yourself and the other person in the conversation (which you would do by conceding those points or challenging them with other evidence, facts, history) or you can succumb to cognitive dissonance and do what basically amounts to sticking your head in the sand and going "la la la".

Am I always right? Nope.

Do I know everything? Nope.

Those are exactly why I am constantly researching & synthesizing, expanding my knowledge base and challenging my beliefs through listening to/debating with those who hold opposing beliefs.

When it comes to things that are provable one way or the other (physical reality), and especially when one of those things results in violence or coercion, it is an absolute moral necessity to have the conversation, not to "agree to disagree"

Say what you mean!

If you don't have the energy for a conversation, say so. If you are getting frustrated or feeling unheard, say so. If you have been distracting yourself from something that actually needs to get done by having a debate, say so. Maybe you want to set the conversation aside so you can do more research or sit with the topic... just say so.

Saying "let's agree to disagree", when you actually mean something else is just being dishonest, and a little disrespectful. I can totally understand that some people do not enjoy debates, or are not ready for a debate, or simply don't have enough time/energy to participate. Just be honest.

Arguments & Debates don't require emotion or ill-will

It seems like many times folks are attempting to end an argument because either they feel emotionally triggered, or they are worried that one of the parties will if the conversation continues.

I've never really understood why people get so emotionally invested in their beliefs, to the point that having them challenged seems like a personal attack. To me, that seems like a huge indicator that I should step away from that belief and re-evaluate it from the bottom up.

Logical fallacies are the way to the Dark Side

There seem to be a LOT of folks who don't understand what a logical fallacy is, or what the many types are that exist. The meaning of a logical fallacy, according to Logically Fallacious:

The word "fallacy" comes from the Latin "fallacia" which means "deception, deceit, trick, artifice," however, a more specific meaning in logic (a logical fallacy) that dates back to the 1550s means "false syllogism, invalid argumentation."

One of the earliest academic discussions of logical fallacies comes from the book "Elementary Lessons in Logic : Deductive and Inductive", published by MacMillian and Co. in 1872 where the modern definition of logical fallacies is used: "the modes in which, by neglecting the rules of logic, we often fall into erroneous reasoning." Today, this basic definition is still used, and often abbreviated to just "an error in reasoning." It is not a factual error.

The dangers of logical fallacies are manifold. On the one hand, they allow us to maintain beliefs that are clearly not true, because we can basically build walls around them. On the other hand, they allow those hearing/reading a debate to be swayed towards a false viewpoint by through what amounts to deceit. From any angle, logical fallacies hold no place in mature, intellectual conversations.

I just recently found this awesome "master list of logical fallacies" from the University of Texas at El Paso, which has WAY more than I had ever seen before.

Here is a poster from YourLogicalFallacyIs breaking down the most common logical fallacies (click the image to see it full-size):