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People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed... Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you're on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it's like stabbing your soldiers in the back — providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
--
Politics Is The Mind-Killer (February 2007)

 

Eliezer Yudkowsky

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In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs." And I said, "Well that's wrong."

 

Ward Cunningham

 

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.

 

Jascha Heifetz

 

Why can't she say extremist Muslims rather than just Muslims? "If that'll make you happy. They slaughtered 3,000 people and I'm making unfair generalisations. I think we're even." Well, no, I don't think we're even, I begin to reply — and at this point I see a side of Ann Coulter that goes beyond the ludicrous opinions. I see someone who is not afraid to twist, distort, bully and lie in order to "win" her argument.
Before I can elaborate or finish my sentence, she's off again. "Oh no, you're right, a generalisation is so much worse than slaughtering 3,000 people." I'm not saying that, I say. "I can't go beyond that, an ethnic generalisation is worse than slaughter. That is the essence of liberalism, you really do believe that. You get a glass of wine in you and you spit it out. You heard it. Making an un-PC generalisation is worse than the attack of 9/11." I'm not saying that, I repeat. "Yes, you are, you just said it." Of course I don't think that, I start, before I'm cut off again. "Liar!"
The irony is that she claims to be above this kind of steamrolling. "The country is trapped in a political discourse that resembles professional wrestling," she has written. "Liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments." But her view of what constitutes an argument seems to be a distinctly one-sided affair. I try again: "Do you think I have any point at all about..." I begin, but she interrupts again. "No!" She doesn't even know what my point was.

 

Ann Coulter

 

An "Argument" is any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief. An "Argumentation" is an Argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premisses.
If God Really be, and be benign, then, in view of the generally conceded truth that religion, were it but proved, would be a good outweighing all others, we should naturally expect that there would be some Argument for His Reality that should be obvious to all minds, high and low alike, that should earnestly strive to find the truth of the matter; and further, that this Argument should present its conclusion, not as a proposition of metaphysical theology, but in a form directly applicable to the conduct of life, and full of nutrition for man's highest growth. What I shall refer to as the N.A. — the Neglected Argument — seems to me best to fulfil this condition, and I should not wonder if the majority of those whose own reflections have harvested belief in God must bless the radiance of the N.A. for that wealth. Its persuasiveness is no less than extraordinary; while it is not unknown to anybody. Nevertheless, of all those theologians (within my little range of reading) who, with commendable assiduity, scrape together all the sound reasons they can find or concoct to prove the first proposition of theology, few mention this one, and they most briefly. They probably share those current notions of logic which recognise no other Arguments than Argumentations.

 

Charles Sanders Peirce