Tip #87 Accept Loss
Sep. 15th, 2017 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeast"A faith that makes losing a sin will make cheating a sacrament." This was said, recently, regarding politics of recent campaigns and adminstrations. It should have been applied, long ago, to Evangelism and Apologetics.
I haven't gotten into matters of logical fallacies. The internet is full of places you can go to see those. I bring them up because, as easy as they are to fall into by accident, they represent cheating. So can the bulk of the subjects of previous tips in this series.
For the most part, people who cheat don't cheat for its own sake. They cheat in order to win. In conversation and debate, often times, "win" takes on the functional definition of "not lose." And, the way to not lose is to organize your points and the effective rules so that your position doesn't have to be right in order to avoid losing.
By example, William Lane Craig is well known in apologetics and among atheists who respond to apologetics. He is well known for throwing many arguments out at once and arguing that, unless the opponent can successfully refute all of them in the time given, he wins the argument. This is known as the Gish Gallop.
Among apologists, he is seen as winning and coming up with arguments that are just too good. Part of that is bias for one's own team. But, also part of that is bias for one's team winning as defined by not-losing.
If the general culture of apologists and evangelists was more accepting of loss, William Lane Craig could be identified for someone who puts a face of dishonesty on their faith. If William Lane Craig were accepting of loss, he could acknowledge that his method doesn't preference truth but convenient technicality before the privilege of a biased judge.
To go way back to a tip from near the beginning of this series, the tenth tip*, the focus on curse words and vulgar language represents a similar cheat. Without having to address any matters of morality, one can claim to be the morally superior and others the morally inferior based on nothing more than contextually meaningless letter&sound combinations.
In much of the case, these cheats are ways to avoid the potential of a loss. By throwing out arguments all at once in a structured, timed event, William Lane Craig avoids the potential of having to deal with his arguments being invalidated and he having to change tactic. By focusing on the side-issue of use of curse-words, a person can avoid having to deal with their morality being shown to be less than satisfactory upon examination.
You need to go into these conversations accepting the possibility and even the probability of loss. Personal failure is a tool you need to have at your avail. By accepting that you will lose some arguments, you can take the risk of acknowledging the loss. You can, then, look at the position and the argument and either adjust or reject as needed.
Maybe a premise is wrong. That isn't a bad thing. As I stated in tip 19, you are wrong about important things and learning that doesn't invalidate you or your faith. Maybe your argument made use of bad information or the technique favored something other than truth. In either case, you can correct the information and choose a technique that is more interested in truth than in protecting itself from losing an argument.
This is a conversation and the reason I do this is that conversation is civilization. Conversation necessitates change, forward progress. And, if you're too focused on winning as defined by not-losing, you're going to stall the conversation, and, in the process, show yourself to be more focused on not-losing than on truth.
The loss might hurt in the moment, but it will, if you can accept it, make you better.
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/17363.html
I haven't gotten into matters of logical fallacies. The internet is full of places you can go to see those. I bring them up because, as easy as they are to fall into by accident, they represent cheating. So can the bulk of the subjects of previous tips in this series.
For the most part, people who cheat don't cheat for its own sake. They cheat in order to win. In conversation and debate, often times, "win" takes on the functional definition of "not lose." And, the way to not lose is to organize your points and the effective rules so that your position doesn't have to be right in order to avoid losing.
By example, William Lane Craig is well known in apologetics and among atheists who respond to apologetics. He is well known for throwing many arguments out at once and arguing that, unless the opponent can successfully refute all of them in the time given, he wins the argument. This is known as the Gish Gallop.
Among apologists, he is seen as winning and coming up with arguments that are just too good. Part of that is bias for one's own team. But, also part of that is bias for one's team winning as defined by not-losing.
If the general culture of apologists and evangelists was more accepting of loss, William Lane Craig could be identified for someone who puts a face of dishonesty on their faith. If William Lane Craig were accepting of loss, he could acknowledge that his method doesn't preference truth but convenient technicality before the privilege of a biased judge.
To go way back to a tip from near the beginning of this series, the tenth tip*, the focus on curse words and vulgar language represents a similar cheat. Without having to address any matters of morality, one can claim to be the morally superior and others the morally inferior based on nothing more than contextually meaningless letter&sound combinations.
In much of the case, these cheats are ways to avoid the potential of a loss. By throwing out arguments all at once in a structured, timed event, William Lane Craig avoids the potential of having to deal with his arguments being invalidated and he having to change tactic. By focusing on the side-issue of use of curse-words, a person can avoid having to deal with their morality being shown to be less than satisfactory upon examination.
You need to go into these conversations accepting the possibility and even the probability of loss. Personal failure is a tool you need to have at your avail. By accepting that you will lose some arguments, you can take the risk of acknowledging the loss. You can, then, look at the position and the argument and either adjust or reject as needed.
Maybe a premise is wrong. That isn't a bad thing. As I stated in tip 19, you are wrong about important things and learning that doesn't invalidate you or your faith. Maybe your argument made use of bad information or the technique favored something other than truth. In either case, you can correct the information and choose a technique that is more interested in truth than in protecting itself from losing an argument.
This is a conversation and the reason I do this is that conversation is civilization. Conversation necessitates change, forward progress. And, if you're too focused on winning as defined by not-losing, you're going to stall the conversation, and, in the process, show yourself to be more focused on not-losing than on truth.
The loss might hurt in the moment, but it will, if you can accept it, make you better.
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/17363.html
no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 03:52 pm (UTC)I wonder if the conflation of "win" and "don't lose" is part of the problem? There's many situations where they are not the same thing, in life as in gaming.
"Be among the first three racers across the finish line" is a win condition.
"Don't be the slowest gazelle when the cheetah comes calling" is a lose condition.
If you had some theoretical construct where the first few cheetah-fleeing gazelles to cross a line received a prize they cared about, you'd create not two, but three, classes - the winning group (first x across the line); the losing group (caught by the cheetah) and the rest, who have neither won nor lost.
Yet, most people don't meaningfully distinguish the two states, and either say the third group has lost (when they've not been eaten) or say it has won (when it wasn't among the first few across the line).
I think that's a problem in itself, compounded by the refusal to accept anything but Teh Biggest Winnar as legitimate.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 04:31 pm (UTC)The loss is "argument that could have saved soul proven wrong". And, there are any number of ways that evangelists and apologists have of avoiding the feeling of having lost. They don't necessarily win (although, there is a previous tip regarding assumed or invisible wins), but they certainly avoid having to change due to a loss.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 05:47 pm (UTC)In which case, "learn to lose well" really is the best medicine.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 07:10 pm (UTC)