Argument serves a purpose of testing and challenging one’s own beliefs and the strength of the reasons and supports for them. I am a Christian who enjoys dialog with atheists and agnostics for this reason: they help me dispense with the weak supports I might not see as such.

Ideas, when unchallenged get puffy, flabby and foamy. Like the head on the top of a mug of beer. Argument with someone who disagrees with the thesis will serve to scrape off the foam and leave the substantial bits. We have to each personally face into the weak points and either work on buttressing them or dispense with them.

This serves your first point, credibility.

“The reason my second point was ‘Timing’ is because it trumps resistance to persuasion. . .anyone can be persuaded, as long as the timing of the argument is right. . .the better the timing, the less need for credibility, facts and/or presentation. The correct Timing renders resistance to argument moot. Witness every single Democrat on September 12, 2001 instantly believing in a very powerful and deadly military. . .”

While it might be true, in the abstract, that “anyone can be persuaded,” given the right timing, the reality is that the troll will not admit to being persuaded, even if he is in his “heart of hearts.”

To take your example, a person who regularly trolled a pro US military board prior to 9/11 simply wouldn’t show up on Sept. 12, 2001. Or, worse yet, he might show up and continue to make his trollish arguments even in the wake of the attacks, and infuriate his readers all the more. This is what, I contend, the troll lives for. He WANTS people to be angry at him, and if that anger reaches near apoplectic outrage, all the better.

Democratic party politicians and pundits, and even Democrats that one might know in real life, might have felt compelled by the force of events (by timing, as you would say) to espouse the need for a strong and deadly military on Sept. 12, 2001. Similarly, it might be difficult for a juror to stonewall a clearly convincing case, to refuse to even be open to persuasion, to look his fellow juror in the eye and, when asked to explain himself, to mouth some bogus-on-its-face, logically fallacious, factualy incorrect BS. But an anonymous troll, posting from his mother’s basement, can always refuse to assent, can always refuse to be persuaded, no matter the timing, or anything else.

And I think that is what Patterico was getting at, even if, as I say, his “challenge” did not really lead to that conclusion.

Comment by nk — 3/14/2009 @ 10:55 am

So, were you persuaded?

My local grocery store sells hot fried chicken at the deli counter. I went there to get some but wondered if I might not be a little early. So I asked the lady by the deep-fryer “Do you have two legs and two thighs for me?” She blushed, nodded, and then wrote down her phone number and handed it to me.

Usage: To {Convince}, {persuade}. To convince is an act of the understanding; to persuade, of the will or feelings. The one is effected by argument, the other by motives.