> The reality is that most people don't follow any rules when it comes to arguments. They just follow what feels good, ie what they(we) have learned via social immersion.
> I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.
I’m confused. You say normal people follow no rules in arguments, but then you say you’d like to learn more about how normal people argue. The two ideas seem mutually exclusive to me.
> I've always wondered about the usefulness of books that point out argument fallacies.
Presumably, the author would like people to approach arguments more methodically all around.
It would be nice if people were logical in their arguments but I've learned over time that logic seldom changes people's minds once they've locked their point of view. I think that you have to appeal to their emotions to move the argument forward. I guess that's the type of book I'd like to see.
Tragically, I think a pure "appeal to emotions”[1] argument will lead to a fragile victory at best. Emotions are awesome at being irrational (by definition?). Perhaps you could start with emotions and then migration people over to a rationalist perspective? Otherwise you’ll get stuck in the all-too-common emotional “race to the bottom” with anger, fear, etc.
The way I see it, there are two paradoxes implicit in most (or all) arguments:
1. If the outcome of an argument matters, it matters in the sense that we are emotionally invested in the outcome. The word argument itself implies an inextricably emotional component.
2. Most apparently fallacious arguments boil down to abuses of analogy. But analogy is also, fundamentally, how induction works. Unless the premises of the argument are completely unambiguous (and they rarely are), "rationality" only gets us so far.
IMO, the most important part about learning these "fallacies" is learning when they aren't fallacies at all, but actually the best tools we have for grappling with a complex problem, and hopefully arriving at some unexpected clarification.
> I'd like to see more books about how people actually argue in life and how to change their view.
I’m confused. You say normal people follow no rules in arguments, but then you say you’d like to learn more about how normal people argue. The two ideas seem mutually exclusive to me.
> I've always wondered about the usefulness of books that point out argument fallacies.
Presumably, the author would like people to approach arguments more methodically all around.