Irrational argumentative attitudes and addiction
Someone responded to my previous note that there are some on most lists who display are certain argumentative irrationality. My response:
I know that the argumentation applies to all discussion lists. Note that the “one out of ten” applies to everyone in the U.S. in the aggregate, across the board. Therefore, we’d expect it to apply to the other lists as well as this one.
However, the form that addiction (or child-of) often takes among libertarians, who are disproportionately NT in personality type, is of the “I am smarter than you” style. We really need to be more cognizant of this if we hope to get our message across. I don’t expect to appeal to any practicing alcoholics, whose brain damage makes them incapable of self-diagnosis. I do hope to make an inroad or two among those who may be children of alcoholics, who have a rational brain undamaged by chemistry.
While I’m aware of the fact that there are other reasons for such volatile argumentation, I have reason to believe alcoholism (by which I include all the psychoactive drugs–i.e., “alcoholism” is short for “alcohol and other drug addiction”) is the most frequent cause of volatile emotions, evidenced by the sort of “I am always right and you are wrong” attitude on display on this list, as well as others.