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Let's say you say, "I don't really like apples" and then one day you say, "The honeycrisp is a really good apple". Someone might say, "I thought you said you didn't like apples? You're contradicting yourself."
And they feel really smart about having caught you in a contradiction. Ooh, debate points scored! Game, set, match. Total shutdown; as soon as you can find a contradiction in the core of someone's argument, you've demolished them, right?
The way this works in the law is, if you make a general statement, and then say something specific that contradicts it, then the specific statement takes precedence. So basically what happens is that your statement becomes effectively altered to, "I don't really like apples, except for the honeycrisp." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_specialis
It's not really a contradiction; it's nuance. But people are too dumb to just ask, "What's the explanation for why you're making an exception in this particular case?" They just assume you're too much of a retard to realize you made two conflicting statements.
A contradiction is when you say, "I don't really like apples" and then later you say, "I really like apples". But even then, if there's some gap of time between the two statements, you could've just changed your mind for some reason (e.g. maybe the quality of apples has gone up lately), unless you're saying it maybe five minutes later.
Basically, if someone says, "You're contradicting yourself," it probably is motivated somewhat by disrespect and a desire to put you in the wrong somehow rather than try to come to a better understanding of your position. They want to declare, "You've made a basic error in logic" rather than seeing if they've failed to understand your position.
Or it could be they're just trying to accuse you of wanting to have it both ways, i.e. get the benefits of saying 2 + 2 = 4, while also getting the benefits of saying 2 + 2 = 11. Well, 2 + 2 could very well be 11 if you're in base 3; maybe there's a misunderstanding about the context.
You can always ask, "So how is it that you would simultaneously have your cake and eat it too?" and see if they really did blunder in what they were saying, or what. I mean, if you do that, then they may admit that they fucked up, or they may come up with some explanation that you can then try to attack, etc.
But as soon as it gets to a point of saying, "Well, you're just arguing in bad faith," or "You don't care about logic, you just want to be right," then it's pretty much over because there has to be a certain amount of trust that both people are seeking the truth or otherwise we've just shifted to the realm of rhetoric or manipulation or something.
(Yeah, I've said elsewhere that certain little white lies might be disregarded, but that's when they truly are harmless white lies, e.g. that both people just tacitly acknowledge as such. It's like when Trump says, "These are incredible people who have done a tremendous job"; it's understood that he's probably exaggerating and that really they're just civil servants who did what the regulations told them to do and got paid well for it; basically what he's saying is, "I'm on their side and therefore I'm signaling I won't entertain discussion about their competence or achievements" and everyone understands this is the true message.)
And they feel really smart about having caught you in a contradiction. Ooh, debate points scored! Game, set, match. Total shutdown; as soon as you can find a contradiction in the core of someone's argument, you've demolished them, right?
The way this works in the law is, if you make a general statement, and then say something specific that contradicts it, then the specific statement takes precedence. So basically what happens is that your statement becomes effectively altered to, "I don't really like apples, except for the honeycrisp." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_specialis
It's not really a contradiction; it's nuance. But people are too dumb to just ask, "What's the explanation for why you're making an exception in this particular case?" They just assume you're too much of a retard to realize you made two conflicting statements.
A contradiction is when you say, "I don't really like apples" and then later you say, "I really like apples". But even then, if there's some gap of time between the two statements, you could've just changed your mind for some reason (e.g. maybe the quality of apples has gone up lately), unless you're saying it maybe five minutes later.
Basically, if someone says, "You're contradicting yourself," it probably is motivated somewhat by disrespect and a desire to put you in the wrong somehow rather than try to come to a better understanding of your position. They want to declare, "You've made a basic error in logic" rather than seeing if they've failed to understand your position.
Or it could be they're just trying to accuse you of wanting to have it both ways, i.e. get the benefits of saying 2 + 2 = 4, while also getting the benefits of saying 2 + 2 = 11. Well, 2 + 2 could very well be 11 if you're in base 3; maybe there's a misunderstanding about the context.
You can always ask, "So how is it that you would simultaneously have your cake and eat it too?" and see if they really did blunder in what they were saying, or what. I mean, if you do that, then they may admit that they fucked up, or they may come up with some explanation that you can then try to attack, etc.
But as soon as it gets to a point of saying, "Well, you're just arguing in bad faith," or "You don't care about logic, you just want to be right," then it's pretty much over because there has to be a certain amount of trust that both people are seeking the truth or otherwise we've just shifted to the realm of rhetoric or manipulation or something.
(Yeah, I've said elsewhere that certain little white lies might be disregarded, but that's when they truly are harmless white lies, e.g. that both people just tacitly acknowledge as such. It's like when Trump says, "These are incredible people who have done a tremendous job"; it's understood that he's probably exaggerating and that really they're just civil servants who did what the regulations told them to do and got paid well for it; basically what he's saying is, "I'm on their side and therefore I'm signaling I won't entertain discussion about their competence or achievements" and everyone understands this is the true message.)
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