Arguing and debating

[VEGHATERMEATLOVER]

As I've said in a previous thread; everybody is entitled to there opinion whether it is right or wrong, Dizzle.

[l0rd]

It's a basic human (predominantly male) need.

 

Here's an interesting bit on the whole gender side of it:

Men often enjoy interpersonal conflict and competition;

they even get a positive boost from it. In women, conflict is more

likely to set in motion a cascade of negative chemical reactions, creating

feelings of stress, upset, and fear. Just the thought that there might

be a conflict will be read by the female brain as threatening the relationship,

and bring with it the real concern that the next conversation

she has with her friend will be their last.

[Dizzle229]

As I've said in a previous thread; everybody is entitled to there opinion whether it is right or wrong, Dizzle.

 

An opinion does not have a right or wrong answer. Whether or not you like a movie or video game is an opinion. Whether Albany is the capital of New York or not is not an opinion. You frequently make posts with nothing to back them up. The only reason you say Rocco's posts are uneducated is because he explains to you why you are wrong. An axe attached to a pole would not be an effective method of killing zombies. This is a fact, not an opinion.

[krimi]

I could never stand the "It's my opinion, therefore I can say it and it is valid!" argument, if you could even call it that. But anyways, I guess people like arguing and debating here, and anywhere on the internet for that matter, because perhaps it is the only place available. I don't think a lot of people here and on the rest of the internet can get away with what they say in real life; that goes for either end of the spectrum of a certain issue.

 

Also, I'll be taking a "basics to arguements" course of something similar next semester, should be fun.

[rangeor]

I'm terrible at debating but I like reading/listening to them. However it's very annoying when someone else is trying to argue and you don't want to <.<

[dusqi]

It's a basic human (predominantly male) need.

 

Here's an interesting bit on the whole gender side of it:

Men often enjoy interpersonal conflict and competition;

they even get a positive boost from it. In women, conflict is more

likely to set in motion a cascade of negative chemical reactions, creating

feelings of stress, upset, and fear. Just the thought that there might

be a conflict will be read by the female brain as threatening the relationship,

and bring with it the real concern that the next conversation

she has with her friend will be their last.

 

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

[Intriguing]

I'm by no means a great debater myself, but I tend to avoid debates on these forums. Though there are a few well-educated and skilled debaters here, most discussions end up in a "majority wins" situation, or a thread going for 100+ pages because one person doesn't know how to accept defeat. I'm not saying that problem is peculiar to forums, but at least in real life the debates I involve myself in generally consist of no more than four or so people, and it's easier to avoid engaging in debates with people who are particularly obstinate.

 

It's a basic human (predominantly male) need.

 

Here's an interesting bit on the whole gender side of it:

Men often enjoy interpersonal conflict and competition;

they even get a positive boost from it. In women, conflict is more

likely to set in motion a cascade of negative chemical reactions, creating

feelings of stress, upset, and fear. Just the thought that there might

be a conflict will be read by the female brain as threatening the relationship,

and bring with it the real concern that the next conversation

she has with her friend will be their last.

Really? I absolutely hate experiencing any form of conflict. Even debating, which I appreciate for the learning aspect, makes me incredibly nervous whenever I do it.. I'd have to say I think his conclusion is a bit of an overgeneralisation.

[l0rd]

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

My mistake on her job title.

 

All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance.

[dusqi]

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

My mistake on her job title.

 

All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance.

 

I didn't say that she was utterly ignorant, only that she may be going outside of her area of expertise when she strays into these kinds of areas. For all I know though, she might have cited a load of studies where they look at how women behaviourally react to conflict vs. men. But if she's just going by chemicals though then I am dubious, since they can be far removed from actual behaviour.

 

But yes, in general I do find it annoying when people think that they know something about psychology just because they are a human. I don't pretend to know anything about kidneys despite having two of them.

[Intriguing]

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

My mistake on her job title.

 

All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance.

Another reason why I don't like debating on these forums.

"I quoted someone smarter than you so despite any research you've done, your opinion is invalid." Always classy.

[Guest Mrmegakirby]

As I've said in a previous thread; everybody is entitled to there opinion whether it is right or wrong, Dizzle.

 

My opinion is that you have no opinion.

just kidding, hex ;)

[Lateralus]

I think it's essential to test your opinions in order to have any real belief in them.

[l0rd]

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

My mistake on her job title.

 

All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance.

 

I didn't say that she was utterly ignorant, only that she may be going outside of her area of expertise when she strays into these kinds of areas. For all I know though, she might have cited a load of studies where they look at how women behaviourally react to conflict vs. men. But if she's just going by chemicals though then I am dubious, since they can be far removed from actual behaviour.

 

But yes, in general I do find it annoying when people think that they know something about psychology just because they are a human. I don't pretend to know anything about kidneys despite having two of them.

You can attack her credentials all day, it doesn't have anything to do with the thread, but that's okay.

The information quoted is from a NY Times bestseller The Female Brain which was required reading in many college settings, and was reviewed itself by multiple PhDs, she got a Neurobiology degree from Berkley, a M.D. from Yale, and a MMHC from Harvard Medical School.

[Latinoking]

Debating (even if you know little of what you're debating) causes the person to conduct research to gain more knowledge on the topic. Causes the person to look at other people's opinions. All these things put together expands your knowledge.

[Dizzle229]

You are in no position to say Rocco's posts are uneducated.

 

 

Battery on camera was low, couldn't take a new one.

 

 

To get on-topic, I have honestly learned more in a year and a half of OT than I have in school. I like it because it always has an opinion from every side of the story. We have people from many countries, religions, etc...

 

Now of course, I don't just take everything said here as fact, but the information here is generally VERY reliable, mainly because, unlike other forums, people here actually have to THINK. People who don't usually get flamed and disappear within a few weeks.

 

The other reason this place is epic is because we can debate controversial topics, aka, the things that actually matter. I swear every other forum I've tried have had rules against debating politics, religion, anything that someone might have a conflicting opinion on.

[Abc1230]

You are in no position to say Rocco's posts are uneducated.

I High-Fived it

[Giordano]

I'm pretty sure you can't talk about politics and religion in school (teacher to students). Will cause brainwashing they say. :roll:

[unkn0wnwarrior]

I'm pretty sure you can't talk about politics and religion in school (teacher to students). Will cause brainwashing they say. :roll:

Around here, you can talk about it, but you can't say anything that could be considered "influential". In other words, you can't say much. Although my history and biology teachers did anyway.

[Omar]

I don't like debating on a forum very much. I do it but I'd rather have a (serious and calm) debate with 2-3 people in real life. Any more and they start hitting each other :lol:

[dusqi]

Personality research suggests that women are slightly more emotional (easily stressed, anxious, upset), but not that women are different when it comes to preferring competition vs. co-operation.

 

Importantly, Louann Brizendine is an MD rather than a PhD, so although I'm sure she knows a lot about brains and physiology, it is not certain that she is qualified to talk about psychology.

My mistake on her job title.

 

All MDs should bow down to your credentials in their utter ignorance.

 

I didn't say that she was utterly ignorant, only that she may be going outside of her area of expertise when she strays into these kinds of areas. For all I know though, she might have cited a load of studies where they look at how women behaviourally react to conflict vs. men. But if she's just going by chemicals though then I am dubious, since they can be far removed from actual behaviour.

 

But yes, in general I do find it annoying when people think that they know something about psychology just because they are a human. I don't pretend to know anything about kidneys despite having two of them.

You can attack her credentials all day, it doesn't have anything to do with the thread, but that's okay.

The information quoted is from a NY Times bestseller The Female Brain which was required reading in many college settings, and was reviewed itself by multiple PhDs, she got a Neurobiology degree from Berkley, a M.D. from Yale, and a MMHC from Harvard Medical School.

 

...as I found out when I looked her up earlier, which caused me to say that she knows about physiology, not psychology.

 

In fact, after she published her NY Times Bestseller, there was a fair amount of controversy since some of her 'facts' were not.

 

Sadly you'll find that a NY Times "bestseller" is often not so academically rigorous, given that no other expert will check the facts before they get to print. Publishers will print anything as long as it's controversial enough that it'll sell books. Here is part of a review of the book from Nature (an extremely academically rigorous journal)

 

Yet, despite the author's extensive academic credentials, The Female Brain disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance. The book is riddled with scientific errors and is misleading about the processes of brain development, the neuroendocrine system, and the nature of sex differences in general. At the 'big picture' level, three errors stand out. First, human sex differences are elevated almost to the point of creating different species, yet virtually all differences in brain structure, and most differences in behaviour, are characterized by small average differences and a great deal of male–female overlap at the individual level. Second, data on structural and functional differences in the brain are routinely framed as if they must precede all sex differences in behaviour. Finally, the focus on hormone levels to the virtual exclusion of the systems that interpret them (and the mutual regulatory interactions between receptor and secretion systems) is especially lamentable, given the book's clinical emphasis on hormone therapies.

 

Misrepresentations of scientific details are legion. Readers who studied biology in high school may puzzle over the invocations of the male brain with its single "dose of X chromosome (there are two Xs in a girl)": is the author suggesting that X-chromosome dosage compensation is absent from female brains? Is it an improvement to dispel the myth that testosterone is a "male hormone" only to call it the "sex and aggression hormone"? (If each hormone needs a sound bite, "confidence and sense of well-being hormone" might better fit the data.) Ironically, at the intracellular level, much of the differentiation of the "testosterone-formed male brain" is accomplished by oestrogens. Fostering such misleading metaphors may prevent broader understanding.

 

The text is rife with 'facts' that do not exist in the supporting references. A typical example is the claim that young boys "physically cannot hear" the cues in the intonation of adult human female voices that girls can, "just as bats can hear sounds that even cats and dogs cannot". The references provided (including a paper on songbird brains) require major misunderstanding or misrepresentation to be twisted into such a statement, a state of affairs that is repeated throughout the book.

 

So, my point about her credentials stands. She knows about hormones and biology, but not how they translate into psychology. She's going beyond her area of expertise.

 

And thus, coming back to the topic at hand, the idea that men are more argumentative than women is not supported by this quote.

[Youmu]

I try not to do debates, seeing that I'm not very good at them.

[Rainy_Day]

People think they are correct, so will argue/debate to death their point until they are happy that others understand it/accept it. There's no point to it really apart from that.

[Faux]

People think they are correct, so will argue/debate to death their point until they are happy that others understand it/accept it. There's no point to it really apart from that.

That's not true

[i_love_burritos]

Heh' I like arguing or "debating" very much. Even though I dont do it that often.

 

I only get really into it when it's subject I am knowledgeable about or feel strongly towards.

 

However most arguments I get into fizzle out, and I cant sustain them after 2 or 3 pages.

 

Eitherway, OT is a good place.

[IGoddessI]

It's stimulating (depending upon who you're arguing with...) and makes you feel better on a really crappy day ;-)