Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Yesterday I was in a couple of conversations that I found frustrating and bewildering, and I eventually put my finger on at least part of the reason they seemed so strange. From my point of view, they went very much like this (though about a different topic, and X wasn't a single person):

X: Factoring is bullshit. You can't factor 31, factoring is pointless, all numbers are prime.

Me: While a minority of numbers are prime, most can be factored. Some are even squares or cubes.

X: Yeah, but 31, man. Numbers are evil. All of them. Also prime. Not like words. Words are nice. You can always split them up into smaller pieces.

Me: No, not all numbers are prime, not even most. Only some numbers are prime. You're ignoring the differences. Besides, not all words are splittable. Look at 'a' or 'I'. Just like numbers, some are and some aren't.

X: Oh hey, I never said that factorable numbers were evil, only primes. And I have nothing against words, so whether words are splittable or not is irrelevant. Just numbers that you can't factor.

Me: So we agree then, that most numbers can be factored and primes are a minority?

X: No, because they're all prime. Didn't you notice 31? Sheesh, liberals. You can talk all mathy, but that doesn't change 31.

Me: Yes, I noticed 31. And 17, too. But 12 can be factored -- it's 2x2x3; and 30 can be factored -- it's 2x3x5. Some numbers are prime. But no, not all numbers are prime. Just some of them.

X: Well, if you're going to deny that prime numbers exist, go factor 31, smartypants.

Me: I already admitted that 31 is prime. But what about 12 and 18 and 25 and 300?

X: Numbers are allowed to change how they look, like 12 can claim to be 10+2, so they're just deceiving you into thinking they can be factored. Any number that looks factorable has to be faking it.

Me: Wut?

It's a curious pattern. And it's a frustrating pattern. There's a bizarre cognitive shift in there, where one statement fails to connect up to another, and anything that challenges the initial premise is misunderstood, not-heard, or forgotten from one breath to the next.

It's a rigidity of thought, where anyone who challenges the assumptions using reason is first deemed mistaken, then deemed dangerous. New information is not allowed in. Reasoning is "just being fancy" and doesn't count. Arguments in favour of the initial premise don't have to make sense -- can even be contradictory -- and as long as they're dogmatically-correct the sound perfectly sensible to the speaker and his allies. "Have you thought of ____ as a sign that you might be mistaken?" never applies to the dogma, only to challengers of it. Positions cannot evolve, and nuance is seen as evidence of confusion, not evidence that the world is more complex than what is modelled in the dogma.

It's an odd pattern. And it's (*cough*) fundamentally broken.