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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 9173066" data-attributes="member: 6801252">I'm going to point out something very important: I do not argue to convince the person I am directly responding to, I argue to convince whoever the voluntary audience of the argument happens to consist of-- that can include the person who my arguments are framed as a response to, but I never assume that it does, because I can't assume that they are putting their viewpoint on the table in the first place; instead I take for granted that there are other people reading my points of view who are essentially referring back to the debate as an exploration of whatever was being discussed-- something I do myself very frequently. I do this at least partially because I've had way too many experiences where someone engaged with me and tried to use themselves as a kind of hostage, using their own willingness to listen as a form of leverage, and using that to reshape the etiquette of the conversation around having to please them in some way or be "unconvincing" even if their arguments lacked quality relative to my own.One side effect of this practice, is that its most important for me to explore the cause and effect at work in the discussion to show my work and why I found something said to be without merit, often that means litigating exactly what about their argument doesn't follow; frequently enough people don't notice why something was convincing on an intellectual level and how it doesn't align with their values or follow or whatever without it being pointed out. Incidentally, this is also why I sometimes say something that sounds like it's sharply disagreeing with another sentiment in the thread, but don't actually respond to any particular post, because the getting at the idea itself is more important (and I've learned that keeps me out of some fights I don't need to be in)-- so instead it just kind of speaks for itself alongside the other views expressed.Within this context, specific informal fallacies allow you to easily shorthand specific arguments that are problematic and recur into a concept that can itself be discussed, calling the false dichotomy of "a person who is optimizing must not be roleplaying" or "the worse you are optimizing the better you are roleplaying" the "Stormwind Fallacy" is a nice way to identify it as a recurring problem, and then talk about the problem in the abstract, as well as teach the error-- I discuss the Stormwind Fallacy with players I introduce to the hobby (casually, generally well after they start playing) to make sure they don't actually pick up the habit of committing it from someone.  I'm actually little envious that you're convinced people don't really believe in the Dichotomy the Stormwind Fallacy was intended to address, I've been called "Exactly the Kind of Person Who Is Ruining This Hobby" because of it over on reddit, and I've seen people make really disparaging comments in exactly that vein over in World of Darkness oriented Discords when people discuss basic character optimization. I've also had players at my table (though not for long, for unrelated reasons) tell me in extremely smug tones when they heard about another player's build that "I don't do that, I actually LIKE roleplaying" so I experience it pretty regularly in some circles.</blockquote>

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