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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8357300" data-attributes="member: 18">Tbh, I've rarely seen that happen. But yeah it's unhelpful when it does. More often the person changes tack. Sometimes they back off or even admit they misunderstood.I also think the missing scenario you've got there is:"Person is too thoughtless and/or pleased with themselves to even consider/accept they might have misunderstood and that their wild misrepresentation is correct"That often only emerges after you point out that they're misrepresenting your argument. I'm not really sure how to deal with that, especially when people do it who are otherwise reasonable (and presumably having a bad day or something). Disengagement is normally best I think.But on a messageboard a discussion is not between two people. I actually agree with everything you're saying if you're talking about a 1-on-1 discussion IRL or in direct messages or something. But that's not what messageboard is. If someone misrepresents your argument on a messageboard, I know from long experience, that if you don't point out it's a misrepresentation, other people will start believing that the attractive simplification they've offered (which is typically a strawman, disregarding and removing any complexities, nuance, subtlety or the like in your argument, and often changing some key point outright). I tend to avoid "strawman" nowadays unless the misrepresentation appears intentional or extreme - otherwise I reiterate and explain that the person has misunderstood - which I'd say is accepted about 75% of the time here (it was like 20% of the time 15 years ago lol, people have become more reasonable!).Also like, the trouble for me personally with taking a Classical-style approach (logos, ethos, pathos) is that a lot of people in the Classical era "won" arguments in incredibly dirty ways (yeah I'm looking straight at you Cicero, straight at you), whilst being completely in the wrong, and using those sort of tools. They won over the audience, but that's because the audience was awful, awful, awful Roman elites. If I seem Roman-fixated at the moment it's because I've been reading about Rome a lot lately (and my ancient history studies largely centered on Rome - plus I never learned ancient Greek, only some Latin). The internet has particularly undermined the "credibility" side of things, because so many people who are "credible", are, in fact, wrong. Frequently factually wrong even. But I'm not a trained rhetorician.</blockquote>

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