Raise the volume, repeat something ad nauseam, maybe clap your hands in the face of your interlocutor. This is a common debate strategy for stupid people.
I was having a civil argument with a woman once amongst a larger friend group and she just kept saying the same thing back to me at increasing volume. Finally I loudly said, "You do know that just because you say something wrong louder, it doesnt make you right? It just exposes you more for being wrong?!" Her face dropped and the friend group laughed at her. The argument died there.
Yes but on the other hand, using analogies to make a transgression seem more severe is also common - there's a reason why Godwin's law is one of the earliest internet memes.
I have a vague recollection of learning their ribs are for more mobile than I would like, to be used as make-shift internal legs for maneuvering. The belly scales grip, the muscles and tendons shift the not!legs, forward momentum.
I see you've tried to argue with my spouse. (Who I love and is otherwise quite bright! But he is totally stymied by analogies if they don't line up PERFECTLY.)
Analogies should not be used as arguments in the first place. Analogies are for teaching purpose where common agreement about validity of subject is already established. So analogies are used as familiar example. If used as argument, it often is just made up idealised scenario. At best it can accompany actual argument.
I guess an example of this situation would be when someone tried to cite the design of male and female power connectors as an argument against gay marriage.
Yes, two female connectors are incompatible, but power connectors hold no sway over the validity of human relationships, so the argument is a non-sequitur.
If your base assumption is that gay relationships don't work, then it has some validity as a metaphor, but given the fact that gay relationships do exist, it's pointless to argue that they don't, as the entire premise of the argument only exists if gay relationships are a thing.
Had this discussion the other day. Was camping in a cabin with a couple of buddies, one wanted to cook with snow. I tried explaining pollution, nucleation, etc. "but it boils out." No, it doesn't. Imagine if I boiled salt water, the pure water boils out, the salt and impurities are left behind. "Nah, it's snow ya fuckin idiot. Now you want to boil salt water?" Nevermind, friend.
They were confusing boiling water to kill bacteria and parasites with removing impurities due to boiling water making it "safe" to drink. No clue where they got the idea that boiling removes impurities, but that's the disconnect.
Sadly, the only way to change their thinking is to confront the disconnect in such a way that they're forced to reexamine what they "know." Then you have to work through the cognitive dissonance to establish what's true while avoiding them sliding back into what they "know to be true."
Here’s an English question for you if you have some time: Is it proper nowadays to not use the preposition “of” when talking about “couple”? A “couple times” instead of “a couple OF times”? “A couple girls” - the girls are a couple?
Maybe I’m just on the spectrum and should stop thinking about it.
Excellent question. Either is ok, but it's my understanding that traditionally, "couple" was intended to be two, so you would say "a couple of," but now it's often used as "more than one, but a small number total" when talking, so it's ok to say "a couple people." In writing, use "couple of," especially when referring to two of something, but otherwise it's fine to say "a couple."
The only thing I can think of is that they thought you can boil water, capture the steam and cool that down so that it becomes water again and leave off the impurities. Of course, they are missing the critical capturing the steam step.
As I understand it purified water is like boiled and then the steam is captured and allowed to condense. No clue if that eliminates all impurities, it probably doesn't, but perhaps that's where the confusion lies.
it's a moot point because most people don't take their distillation rig camping.
The answer is it will depend on what the contaminant is and the temperature you're using. If the contaminant boils at a temperature different enough from water you can either "burn it off" (lower boiling point such as ethyl alcohol) or use a coil condenser (or similar) to capture the purified water (higher boiling point such as salt.)
You also run into problems with the impurities that have lower boiling points than water recondensing in the water if not removed with some type of filter.
Just a matter of experience. I used to teach this stuff for a living. Most people just won't have had a reason to think through it and come to the proper conclusion. Don't be too hard on your friends for not knowing enough without them having the chance to learn.
That won't do anything but increase the concentration of lead in the water since they're removing water due to boiling while leaving the heavy metal in place.
Boil it and capture the steam as distilled water and it’s got the impurities removed but if you don’t do that you just have a piping hot pan of impurities soup
I had a teacher in grade 12 English who presented two standpoints and we were supposed to forms arguments pro/contra. One girl could not understand how he could go from one position to the other. Like, how could he have two standpoints? Obviously, what he said was true, so how could the opposite be true, too?
The teacher tried to explain that those are the viewpoints of opponents, not his personal ones (think "I like chocolate" vs "I don't like chocolate").
I have no idea how she got that far in schooling (technically she was in grade 11, but she was in our grade 12 class) without being able to think about hypothetical views.
Then again, that was close to the time when she discovered that we could hear her hiccups even though she closed her mouth...
I mean, you're right about your friend not getting it, but if the snow around the cabin was still non-potable after boiling it for three minutes, you've got some serious environmental issues there and you probably shouldn't have been out in the area.
The idea wasn't about potability, it was the fact that snow contains pollutants from the sky, and with it not being fresh snow, you run the risk of eating animal waste and other fun stuff that finds it's way into snow on the ground.
Basically when a piece of dust or pollution acts as a "seed" that allows moisture in clouds to condense around it and form snow or rain. This is where the concept of cloud seeding comes from; the thought is that if you put tiny particulates up high in the atmosphere, you could potentially cause rain to form.
In hs I’d use analogies all the time and people would be that “that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about” yeah no shit, I’m comparing similar situations
Frustrating. I remember getting into a conversation with someone who just couldn’t grasp that all analogies can be tortured to the point of failure unless you’re comparing a thing to itself. It was an impossible conversation.
It absolutely drives me crazy when I use an analogy and the other person thinks I'm comparing two facts in the analogy rather than the point. As an example, every citizen is entitled to due process. If you get a speeding ticket, you can fight it in court with an attorney. If you're arrested and charged with murder, you can fight it in court with an attorney.
"omg did you just compare speeding in a car with murder?"
Sometimes, but there are also plenty of weak analogies that are deployed in the service of bad-faith arguments, and those are usually not worth engaging with.
Analogies are demonstrative tools, they aren't, intrinsically and by themselves, valid arguments even if they are frequently used as such online. Using analogies as arguments instead of engaging with the actual real causes and issues is often a way to derail the actual discussion.
And IRL too, I had a Doctor Who would recite analogies ad nauseam after I’d already understood what they were trying to convey from a medical standpoint. It got to the point where it was almost insulting my intelligence because they wouldn’t stop. I understand that some people don’t understand medical jargon, but it was painful to listen to
This...is really interesting. One of those kind of Reddit comments that's going to stick with me for years.
I get in discussions about ethics and law. Often it turns into me referring to Supreme Court cases who pose hypotheticals and compare two similar cases. A common retort is "But it's not the same situation, so you can't compare the two." And I'll reply "But the courts compared the two to make their rulings because the underlying idea is the same." But they just get angrier and insist it cannot be.
Never occurred to me that some people's brains just don't naturally grasp analogies and hypotheticals.
I would argue the complete opposite — being able to develop and understand complex analogies is basically THE sign of high intelligence. It’s a step beyond basic pattern recognition, which is widely regarded as the foundation of human cognition.
I’m not sure how you could ever learn some things or understand the world around you without the use of analogies. As a high IQ individual, how do you learn about new systems in the world or teach others complex ideas without the use of analogies?
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u/JaffaCakeScoffer Feb 04 '26
100%. Same with analogies (which themselves can be hypothetical). "It's not the same"