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Why are "some" old people impossible to debate with?

outhouse

outhouse

Atheistically
Is it true you cannot teach some old dogs new tricks?


I will say it is very true based on my observations when debating old people.


It really does go beyond reason and rational conversations. The intellect used is completely absurd. Comprehensive skills are out the window.


It is not just this forum, Im involved in many forums and hobbies, and this is ridiculous behaviour in every forum.


Please share your frustration. :p
 
savagewind

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I do not know about debating with old people. Reasoning with them is torture. Once they decide something NOTHING will change their minds. I have even told my children that when I get that way you remind me I said NO! I don't want to be like that. And make me stop.
 
Revoltingest

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Easy!
It's because some young people are impossible to debate with, & then they grow old...if they're lucky.
Some changes do happen with age, like the tendency to wear a hat while driving, or yelling at kids to get off the lawn.
 
Vinayaka

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
The longer you smoke, the harder it is to quit. Ways of thinking are no different. The more times you hear the same thing, the more likely you are to retain it. However, it isn't all people as you suggest, because sometimes that same way of thinking it to have an open mind.

But there are also young whippersnappers who like to think they know everything when they know very little. Us old guys have little patience for them either.
 
ametist

ametist

Active Member
Sadness, going through a lot of harm. Lifetime of seeing and living all the sadness and not having a tool to cope up with it makes them bitter and stiff and cause them to grow a shield to avoid further harm and sadness.
 
bobhikes

bobhikes

Nondetermined
Premium Member
outhouse said:
Is it true you cannot teach some old dogs new tricks?


I will say it is very true based on my observations when debating old people.


It really does go beyond reason and rational conversations. The intellect used is completely absurd. Comprehensive skills are out the window.


It is not just this forum, Im involved in many forums and hobbies, and this is ridiculous behaviour in every forum.


Please share your frustration. :p
Click to expand...

I don't know, how old are you. In several of our debates you seem very unreasonable and irrational even insisting you are being rational.:shrug:
 
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outhouse

outhouse

Atheistically
bobhikes said:
I don't know, how old are you. In several of our debates you see very unreasonable and irrational even insisting you are being rational.:shrug:
Click to expand...

My age was answered in the post before yours.

If you could be more specific to the arguement that was presented, I can offer an explanation.

I have studied many of these topics in depth. If you have not, the truth or what is "currently" known as truth, may not seem rational.

I love being corrected, I am here to learn.
 
bobhikes

bobhikes

Nondetermined
Premium Member
outhouse said:
My age was answered in the post before yours.

If you could be more specific to the arguement that was presented, I can offer an explanation.

I have studied many of these topics in depth. If you have not, the truth or what is "currently" known as truth, may not seem rational.

I love being corrected, I am here to learn.
Click to expand...

See unreasonable by your own words. I(bobhikes) must not be studied enough in the topics and I(bobhikes) am interfering with you being correct all the time and of course currently known as truth = rational.

Truth is when someone doesn't agree with you and you believe your truth, they are always impossible to debate with. Its much easier for me my truth is flexible and can allow for yours. Maybe instead of trying to crush an older persons truth, try to understand why they have it. You'll learn a lot more.:sarcastic

PS I am the younger guy 49 so maybe your right. Its just the fact that your an old guy.
 
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idav

idav

Being
Premium Member
outhouse said:
Is it true you cannot teach some old dogs new tricks?


I will say it is very true based on my observations when debating old people.


It really does go beyond reason and rational conversations. The intellect used is completely absurd. Comprehensive skills are out the window.


It is not just this forum, Im involved in many forums and hobbies, and this is ridiculous behaviour in every forum.


Please share your frustration. :p
Click to expand...
I personally would hesitate to even try and convince some old timer of anything, especially religious stuff or anything with there fortified bigotry. Not that they are all like that but many get very set in there ways and that makes sense. Unfortunately I dont always know if that is gonna be the case, especially in this forum setting.
 
YmirGF

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
I interact with many people who are older. I'm 58 and they still think I am a child. Though you can have some interesting conversations, you will often hit the wall of long held notions, opinion and beliefs. It doesn't matter what you say to counter this sort of thing. It can be trying, but if one expects it, one can bounce back and move along to other, more pleasant, conversations.

What I have noticed is that folks have held their ideas for so long, they gave up questioning the veracity of those ideas LONG ago and are almost bemused that people would look at a given thing differently than they. So, expect it, smile... and move on...

'mud said:
Up yours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm 75+....and younger in mind to most of you.
Like I said......up it !
~
'mud
Click to expand...
The downside to this is that many of your contemporaries are not quite as intellectually nimble.
 
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Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
outhouse said:
Is it true you cannot teach some old dogs new tricks?


I will say it is very true based on my observations when debating old people.


It really does go beyond reason and rational conversations. The intellect used is completely absurd. Comprehensive skills are out the window.


It is not just this forum, Im involved in many forums and hobbies, and this is ridiculous behaviour in every forum.


Please share your frustration. :p
Click to expand...

You might want to make a study of culture with attention to why cultures have in past changed so little from one generation to the next. Some of the earlier cultures endured relatively unchanged for 25,000 or 50,000 years. It is only very recently in human history that there has been significant cultural change within a single lifetime.

What does that tell us about the human brain? I think culture, along with many other strands of evidence, tells us the brain doesn't change all that much once it's fully wired around the age 22 or so. By that age, most of us have learned or formed most of our most basic beliefs about life and the world. And most of us are not going to think very far outside those boxes for the rest of our lives.

All of which suggests that there must have been strong evolutionary reasons for why culture gets such a hold on us. But think about it? If we could easily unlearn what we learned as children and adolescents, would it not be all too easy for us to forget or unlearn all the valuable lessons we had as children and adolescents? Evolution is not going to favor an animal that just as easily forgets or unlearns how to turn stone into a tool as it learned it in the first place. And it is not going to favor an animal that hankers after exchanging the tried and true for the purely experimental. Rather, it is going to favor what we are -- an animal that learns rapidly for the first 20 or so years of life when it is learning culture and tradition, and that then tends to become very slow to discard what it learned during those years. Slow to discard what works.
 
ShivaFan

ShivaFan

Satyameva Jayate
Premium Member
The reason you cannot debate with them is, if they have not suffered from brain disease, they have lived and become wiser in age then you. They know "the ways" of everything. They understand "how it really works". They are clever in their irony. You cannot debate them without exposing yourself the idiot you are. It doesn't mean they are more right than you, it just means they cannot be defeated. Simply bow to their feet and take the gemstones when you find them, drink the nectar. Do not argue with them. Worship them.
 
outhouse

outhouse

Atheistically
YmirGF said:
Though you can have some interesting conversations, you will often hit the wall of long held notions, opinion and beliefs.


.
Click to expand...

That is what I do get frustrated with.

When reason no longer applies or works, it is not a debate anymore is it?
 
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