It's like a Rays fan trying to convince a Philies fan that the Rays are better. It doesn't stop there. The point of hilarity is what comes after the Philies fan disagrees with the rays fan. Once the Philies fan denies that the rays are better the Rays fan will go off on a huge tangent yelling at the philies fan claiming he has mental disorders, herpes and finally telling him to go fuck himself. The online political forums are second to none as the most dysfunctional orginizations of opinions ever composed of.
I've had online debates on a forum where another poster changed my mind on a few items, by citing specific facts and figures, and I, him. The key ingredient seems to be to inject a sense of humor into the debate, which forces readers to keep an open mind. I haven't seen that here yet, unfortunately.
I've come up with another theory as well. Political forums are filled with people like bigdave who have to disagree on everything even if the debate is politics. I will go ahead and agree that small proportions of debate might enter into some realm of truth but the huge majority of it is just downright dysfunctional.
You wind up agreeing in the second paragraph, but your first paragraph is argumentative. So you've kind of proven your own point here.
Look at it in degrees of importance. On a scale of 1-10 agreeing that tiny amounts of truth are received is around a 2 because there is no importance when there is only a tiny amount of it. On the other hand the fact that the majority of the forum is dysfunctional should be around an 8 or a 9 on the importance scale because the forum is the most important aspect. I am starting to think now that sense the majority of the forum is filled with small levels of importance and levels of importance that disorientate the forum the users of the forum have no real regard for the actual function of the forum. They use it for other means instead of truth which is left unanswered.
Well I agree with that, although I would say that people ignore what truth they see because it conflicts with their world view. If someone disregards an opinion without reflection on it's value, that's one thing. When people disregard statistics and facts in favor of their own opinion, that is dysfunctional. It comes back to cognitive dissonance.
True. The problem comes not so simply as you state though. Facts and figures may be stated for one issue but then facts and figures against those same facts and figures may be present as well. Most of the time there is a clear winner as to which degree of importance the facts and figures fit in but sense people are so defined by the ideology they follow they have no ability to judge with any accuracy which fact and figure is more important. Therefore your argument for facts and figures can only be taken with a grain of salt because the agenda, motives and logic of each ideology is much more deeper than the ability of judging which fact and figure is more important. Example- Giving illegal immigrants driver licenses will give them more freedom and liberty to succeed in the country. Letting more illegal immigrants inhabit the country will hurt the country. Each argument has very persuasive facts and figures but one argument wins when it comes to the most important.
Then nothing can be proven because there's always someone who will scan a hundred pages to cherry pick the one statistic that supports his argument. Let's say in an argument one side quotes the FEC, or other primary source, and the other side quotes the New York Post. Obviously these should not be given equal weight. I doubt that argument could be proven with facts and figures to conclude one side is obviously right. Try to argue both sides with statistics and syllogisms and see if you can come to a conclusion. (Both statements are not provable, the first requires the word "success" which is entirely opinion and based on the assessment of the speaker, and the second uses the word "hurt" and again that is not definable statistically.)