How Not to Argue: They say...
written January 1, 2009
I don’t know if this is something that a lot of people do in general, or if I just hang around a bunch of mindless retards, but I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard somebody arguing passionately about something, or even just carrying on a normal conversation, and then cite their facts by prefacing the info with They say.
We’ve all heard them before:
They say the divorce rate is 50%.
They say you eat an average of 5 to 8 spiders while you sleep every year.
They say we were never really looking for weapons of mass destruction.
They say carbs are bad for you.
They say if you nose itches, somebody is thinking about you.
We’ve all heard theses pseudo-facts spewed about with confidence, as though they
are some sort of super elite, all-knowing, all-encompassing sect of experts on every topic imaginable. They
just sit around, think random shit up, and write it in stone. Who exactly are they? I absolutely love to interject this question into people’s mindless ramblings and passionate arguments. I’ll usually get some half stammered, I-just-got-caught-off-guard-spewing-bullshit-and-I-don’t-really-know-what-I’m-talking-about-so-I’m-going-to-try-to-be-as-dismissive-as-possible answer, like scientists,
researchers,
or my personal favorite, experts.
As if those aren’t the vaguest possible authorities. I don’t want to get too technical here, but there is no such thing as a credible group of authorities merely labeled experts
or scientists.
You could gather together fifteen or so physicists who are experts
about crap like gravity, antimatter, and whether light is a wave or a particle, but they would have no clue whether or not carbs are bad for you. And even if you gather a group of experts
on nutrition, different experts
have competing theories. If you read ten different books by ten different nutritionists, dieticians, medical doctors, gastro-intestinal surgeons, or whatever expert
you choose, in each of those books you’ll get a different opinion on what is healthy and what is not, depending on a variety of factors and circumstances. Rational arguments aside, expert
is such a vague, undefined, arbitrary term, anybody can be an expert on anything. The book Skinny Bitch
self-taught know-it-all.
How’s that for an expert? When I hear the indefinite pronoun they
as a source of information, I automatically assume they
are as credible as a self-taught know-it-all. Hell, if that’s the standard we’re going to accept, then I’m an expert on poker, driving, and sex. Each of those activities was self taught, and in each of those activities, I know all that I know about the given subject at this moment. Thus, I am a self-taught know-it-all. For that matter, so is everybody else that has ever played poker, driven a car, or engaged in penetration.
Think before you say something stupid. I hate you.
<< You Might Be a Slut If... | Poker, Driving, and Sex - Everyone's an Expert >>
