"You Can't Win an Argument With an Idiot"

I'm not sure who said this one first, but it's certainly true--you can't win an argument with an idiot.

After all, what makes a personal reveal themselves as an idiot in the course of argument? They show themselves such through an incapacity to distinguish between fact and opinion--and especially their own opinions and the facts, because of other lacks, like the slightest ability to reason, leaving them incapable of judging among claims and the arguments for them, something they have little inclination to try and do anyway. Because, after all, their attention spans are exceedingly limited, what attention span they do have they are unwilling to deploy because they are incapable of respect for, or even civility toward, other people, and they think all this is just fine--they think nothing needs to be longer than a six-paragraph blog post--as they "know what they know," and nothing anyone else has to say matters.

Alas, some of us find ourselves surrounded by nothing but idiots, with some of them people we are forced to deal with because they have the power in some situation.

Could it be that the world mostly consists of idiots?

Perhaps. But it also seems to me that the cultural moment, the political moment, we are in is all but designed to encourage idiocy. A society that, while denigrating intelligence and learning, worships mean and stupid self-assertiveness, and finds endless excuses for the worst sort of behavior, cannot be otherwise. It is also the case that, contrary to the stupid faith of the conformist that the world is a meritocracy idiots pursue position and power very successfully, the more in as, being idiots, they see in power not responsibility but only sources of satisfaction to themselves. And because, as David Graeber observed, power, especially when sanctified by "authority," makes people who were not necessarily idiots before into idiots.

Perhaps the best we can do is to choose those occasions when we do argue with care, avoiding argument whenever we can.

That most certainly includes not getting sucked into arguments with online strangers who may actually be bots.