Crimes Against Logic, Jamie Whyte

Shut Up!

P. 51

Your husband has not won the argument; he has not refuted your opinion.

In another sense, however, he probably has won the argument….his remark will have diverted you from your original hypothesis and on to other topics….you may well have been left altogether silent by the remark. The brute has won the argument, in the sense of getting you to drop your point, getting you to shut up.

P. 52

…three kinds of abuse that are commonly passed off as refutation.

Shut Up — You’re Not Allowed to Speak

P. 53

But this childish “you couldn’t do better” response is still only abuse and intimidation, not refutation.

So is the equally common “you can hardly talk” reply.

P. 54

In public debate, the idea that you can refute a view by claiming its advocate is not entitled to speak is pervasive….

Shut Up — You’re Boring

An opinion’s entertainment value suffers from wear and tear. When you hear something over and over it is likely to become dull. But its truth value does not. An opinion that was true on its first outing does not become false through overuse. Yet it is a common objection to an opinion—as if it constituted a refutation—that we have heard it all before. Opinions and arguments are dismissed as pedestrian, plodding, obvious, tired, and so on. Such objections might be to the point if we were discussing radio plays or striptease shows, but they are irrelevant when considering the truth of an opinion. The speaker may be shamed into silence, but his opinion is not thereby shown false.

On the contrary, most truths are apt to become familiar and unexciting.

P. 58

The consistent advocacy of an idea is turned on its head, so that instead of counting as an intellectual virtue in the advocate, it counts as a defect in the idea advocated. The idea must be wrong, look how boring its proponents are.

Shut Up — You Sound Like Hitler

P. 59

If you can associate someone’s opinion with Hitler, or the Nazis more generally, then goodbye to that idea….

Even if the accusation doesn’t completely silence the advocate…it will certainly put her on the defensive…until all this effort to disassociate herself from Nazism has had exactly the opposite effect in the mind of the listener. Apologizing is such a guilty thing to do.

P. 60

Hitler is a great favorite, but refutation by association does not require his services. Other objectionable individuals or groups will do just as well if the association can be made to stick.

….Many hold political or religious opinions not because they have any reason to think them true but just because they like the associations.