Which claim are you questioning here? That they are ad-hominem *or* that ad-hominems will make the person defensive *or*that making someone defensive makes them less likely to listen to reason?
As far as what I'm assuming, well... have you ever tried telling someone that they are being stupid or dishonest during an argument, or had someone do this to you? It pretty much always goes down as I described, at least in my experience.
There are certainly situations when it's appropriate, and I do it with close friends and appreciate it when they call out...
If you make someone defensive, they are incentivized to defend their character, rather than their argument. This makes it less likely that you will hear convincing arguments from them, even if they have them.
Also, speech can affect people and have consequences, such as passing on information or changing someones mood (e.g. making them defensive). For that matter, thinking is a behavior I can choose to engage in that can have consequences, e.g. if I lie to myself it will influence later perceptions and behavior, if I do a mental calculation then I have gai...
What other reasonable purposes of arguing do you see, other than the one in the footnote? I am confused by your comment.
I guess that's possible, but why is that my problem?
Why are you arguing with someone if you don't want to learn from their point of view or share your point of view? Making someone defensive is counter productive to both goals.
Is there a reasonable third goal? (Maybe to convince an audience? Although, including an audience is starting to add more to the scenario 'suppose you are arguing with someone.')
This seems like a potentially counter productive heuristic. If the conclusion is that the person who is 'wrong' is either 'stupid' or 'dishonest' you are establishing an antogonistic tone to the interaction.
There are several other arrows pointing to disagreement (perception of 'wrongness'), including different interpretations of the question or different information about the problem. Making it easier to feel certain that someone is either 'stupid or dishonest' doesn't seem like a helpful way to move...
you are establishing an antogonistic [sic] tone to the interaction
Yes, that's right, but I don't care about not establishing an antagonistic tone to the interaction. I care about achieving the map that reflects the territory. To be sure, different maps can reflect different aspects of the same territory, and words can be used in many ways depending on context! So it would certainly be possible to write a slightly different blog post making more-or-less the same point and proposing the same causal graph, but labeling the parent nodes something like "Syst
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I see what you are saying. I think an assumption I'm making is that it is correct to say what you believe in an argument. I'm not always successful at this, but if my heuristics where telling me that the person I'm talking to is stupid or dishonest, it would definitely come through the subtext even if I didn't say it out loud. People are generally pretty perceptive and I'm not a good liar, and I wouldn't be surprised if they felt defensive without knowing why.
I'm also making the assumption that what the OP labels as wrong... (read more)