One of the most common habits of internet discourse is to leap into attacking someone, something, or an idea without taking the time to understand that person, thing, or idea.
On the internet, all that you can see is some text and some attribution to an avatar. That avatar may or may not be related to a human being. The moderating factors that, in ordinary human communication, encourage people to be polite and considerate, don’t exist in the digital ocean of strangers emitting signals to one another’s computers.
When you take the time to engage fully with a book or some other text, it helps to show other people that you have actually read that text if you want to persuade others of your point of view.
Just because you see your opponents hurling attacks at you without having any idea about what you are and what you believe does not mean that it’s a good strategy to turn around at them. Attacking someone that you don’t understand is a bad idea, because it gives you no sense of their capabilities, position, allies, and mindset. Before you attack something, it’s wise to strive to understand them better than they probably understand themselves. Criticizing something that you can’t demonstrate intimate understanding of is a sign of immaturity.
The most common internet-attack style that I see is that the critic will take something, either specific or general, and then intuit a generalization about an entire group of people that they then declare as conclusive.
This isn’t a sensible argumentative style, because it can be refuted with specific counter-examples that disprove the declared rule, and because the arguer usually doesn’t spend much time surveying the territory that they’re attacking, the counter-examples are typically easy to find.
When arguing, to build a case that can’t be refuted effectively, you have to make the case specifically, confine your case to the specific evidence that you can substantiate, and prove your argument on those limited grounds. The ambition to make a larger case than your evidence can support is tempting, but will lead you onto unstable ground.
Mouthing big, world-encompassing ideas can draw crowds to you to adore your fine words, but your opponents can just as easily raise mobs to tear the meat from your bones using the same methods that you have countenanced with your lazy, self-serving behavior.
From the weight of multiple cases of that nature, you can make a more convincing general argument about a larger group of people.
The former argument can be composed in 10 minutes and can be dismissed in 20 seconds by a capable defense. The latter can take a lifetime to construct, and can devastate its target.
