General Advice Post #1: Ad Hominem, Paper, and Smiling

This series of posts, called "General Advice Posts", is one of my methods of using my personal experience to help you and make your life easier. You should expect to see that all, if not most, of my pieces of advice are based not on logic, but on experience. Being a logical person, I find it hard to give advice to others when the advice is rooted so strongly in empiricism, but since I believe that people learn through both reasoning and experiences, this action is not against my principles in any way. Honestly, there does not need to be a classic "rationalism versus empiricism" debate, for moderation between the two is best for learning, at least in my views.

Anyway, I would like to start with a very simple suggestion to keep in mind. When your views differ from someone else's argument, it is not appropriate to argue with that person via personal attacks. This is a common logical fallacy called an "ad hominem fallacy", and makes your own argument weaker. For instance, Billy may say, "Our group should change our entire project idea and build a model castle instead of a cathedral for Art 101." If you support the idea of sticking to the plan of building a cathedral, you are allowed to defend that point of view, but attacking Billy personally is not okay. The following statements are logically fallacious:

1. "Stop arguing, Billy; you're so dumb! You're just wasting everyone's time!"
2. "But you're only saying to build a castle instead because Jenna dared you to do so!"
3. "You're the one with twelve-thousand model cathedrals at home. You can't just be suddenly against that idea, you hypocrite!"
4. "But Arthur McArthur also wanted to build model castles instead of cathedrals when he was young, and now he's in jail for piracy! You don't want to be like him, right?"

These attacks are illogical and represent (respectively) the four types of ad hominem attacks: the abusive attack, the circumstantial attack, the argumentum ad hominem tu quoque, and the guilt-by-association attack. You can find out more about ad hominem in my YouTube video about them. 

The next tip for you is quite specific in topic. I recommend that you keep a pile of scratch paper on your desk or near it. Being an inquisitive learner, I find it convenient to use scratch paper to write down interesting or important information that one would not usually learn at school. Paper can also be used for the synthesis of new ideas. (Bloom's Taxonomy is something you should at least comprehend at this point. If you don't know what it is, search it!) Knowledge can be gathered on paper, and the lasting graphite or ink marks on the paper allow for a test of comprehension of what has been learnt. Application, analysis and synthesis follow. Personally, I believe that synthesis is the most important aspect of learning. Synthesis is innovation. It does not necessarily mean that you are an absolute pioneer in that field of knowledge, but synthesis allows you to train your mind and improve the world around you. For instance, I may learn about mechanics and how dryer sheets can remove the static electricity from your hair. When I write these things down on paper, I can physically see what I have learnt, combine these ideas, and design a mechanical machine that effectively and quickly attaches a dryer sheet to a hairbrush. (This is something I'm working on right now.) I give thanks to myself for placing scratch paper on my desk. However, I must point out that lined paper, especially notebook paper, does not have the same beneficial effects. Lined paper has boundaries set up for you—literally! In school, you learn to write letters in the space between lines. This causes you to write only what you can fit on these lines. Pictures and diagrams do not "belong", in a way, on lined paper, where everything you write has already been limited by your own habits. It makes you less creative, simply speaking. Although I avoid using notebook paper for writing, I find it useful in another area. Since notebook paper is unsuitable for writing, is thinner than normal paper, and thereby is softer, it is suitable to be used as an oil-blotting sheet. (I will conduct a study later to see if lined paper inhibits creativity.)

An unlined sheet and a lined sheet of scratch paper lay next to each other on my desk.

Finally (for this post), I will discuss a way to determine how much a person is interested in a conversation. Notice if the person smiles. Usually, people find typical conversations boring. It is simply because there is a habituation to regular conversations that prevents them from developing acute interest in a subject of discussion. In these cases, smiling is not common. Smiling is the result of something in a conversation affecting the emotions. If one smiles genuinely, his/her emotions are engaged in the conversation. This test does not always work. In some cases, people who are emotionally engaged do not smile because they simply do not have the habit of smiling. I am one of these people. However, when something is particularly interesting, I could possibly smile. More often than not, I do not smile, but people like me are generally very logical, straightforward beings who will readily admit interest when asked about it in an unambiguous fashion. Some others, though, will seem like they are interested by smiling, but are only doing so out of politeness. These people, however, usually only move the muscles of their mouths and ignore the muscles of the eyes, which are involved during genuine emotional engagement. The point is that people who care about what you're saying generally smile. You can also pay attention to body language, etc., but that is not my point for today.

I hope that these tips about ad hominem, paper, and smiling are applicable in your life. Have a nice day.