A lot of people rely on legal analyses to make decisions. Sometimes, your legal analysis might be very wrong, and you might wind up walking into a trap based on having done something that you thought was legal that actually wasn't, or something that you thought was "not economically costly due to being legally defensible" but that wasn't.

My argument is: As a regular citizen dealing with laws, you should not cut off channels of communication prematurely, including with your adversaries, regarding discussions about conflicts. In particular, if you have an objection to someone else's behavior, and you are not a defendant in court exercising your right to remain silent to avoid testifying when such testimony might lead to you getting convicted, rightly or wrongly, and then losing your freedom, then you should be willing to have some amount of discussion with your adversary, your lawyers, and likely others, before you cut off the communication channels and demand that everyone shut up and cease stating your arguments in public or in negotiations/discussions with your allies/adversaries.

I think that silencing your opponents and becoming strictly silent yourself causes your adversaries to be able to say, "See, my enemy doesn't even want to present his/her argument; my argument has not been responded to." In high school policy debate, there is something called "dropping topicality" and it causes you to immediately lose the debate if you do it.

You don't have to debate forever, but unless you're a defendant in court, I argue, again: You should discuss your perspective and argument with your adversary, and try to be fair--your opponent might not know how to be articulate and you don't want to crush your opponent if it's a "non-desperate" dispute for you--at least for a little while. The exception is if it is about something where you genuinely and legitimately cannot afford to lose, e.g. if you are very seriously and urgently threatened and need to act to protect your interests without discussing something. Otherwise, failure to be reasonable is very unwise.

Note, the above is a political opinion of mine about how to deal with the legal system and laws...it is not legal advice from a lawyer, since I'm not a lawyer.

On Saturday, November 27, 2021 at 2:15:12 PM UTC-5, DV wrote:
> A lot of people rely on legal analyses to make decisions. Sometimes, your legal analysis might be very wrong, and you might wind up walking into a trap based on having done something that you thought was legal that actually wasn't, or something that you thought was "not economically costly due to being legally defensible" but that wasn't.
>
> My argument is: As a regular citizen dealing with laws, you should not cut off channels of communication prematurely, including with your adversaries, regarding discussions about conflicts. In particular, if you have an objection to someone else's behavior, and you are not a defendant in court exercising your right to remain silent to avoid testifying when such testimony might lead to you getting convicted, rightly or wrongly, and then losing your freedom, then you should be willing to have some amount of discussion with your adversary, your lawyers, and likely others, before you cut off the communication channels and demand that everyone shut up and cease stating your arguments in public or in negotiations/discussions with your allies/adversaries.
>
> I think that silencing your opponents and becoming strictly silent yourself causes your adversaries to be able to say, "See, my enemy doesn't even want to present his/her argument; my argument has not been responded to." In high school policy debate, there is something called "dropping topicality" and it causes you to immediately lose the debate if you do it.
>
> You don't have to debate forever, but unless you're a defendant in court, I argue, again: You should discuss your perspective and argument with your adversary, and try to be fair--your opponent might not know how to be articulate and you don't want to crush your opponent if it's a "non-desperate" dispute for you--at least for a little while. The exception is if it is about something where you genuinely and legitimately cannot afford to lose, e.g. if you are very seriously and urgently threatened and need to act to protect your interests without discussing something. Otherwise, failure to be reasonable is very unwise.
>
> Note, the above is a political opinion of mine about how to deal with the legal system and laws...it is not legal advice from a lawyer, since I'm not a lawyer.

A way to think about this:

If you challenge your adversary in an argument, and your adversary refuses to respond in spite of it being reasonable from a time perspective and other perspectives, then you can basically claim:

a) My opponent has no good response to present to my argument.
b) If the debate has been proposed reasonably, then my opponent, by his/her silence, could be argued to have invited all onlookers to accept my argument since there's no response to it.
c) My opponent doesn't care to win the debate, and has no interest in being persuasive about this.
d) My opponent might claim to have a "secret valid argument" that shows that he/she is right--that's what they all say--but what if he/she is lying or wrong? What's so important about the secrecy of "the secret reason why my opponent thinks he/she is right?"

No one has to socialize with you, and no one should be allowed to be a total "time burglar" (that phrase is from The Simpsons) with you...nevertheless, failure to respond to a pretty good argument that sounds like it has merit and isn't prima facie absurd invites human beings to get suspicious of the silent one. Note, in court settings, a silent defendant is not fully silent, in the sense that his/her lawyer will argue for him/her, without him/her having to give sworn testimony for whatever reason--maybe the defendant thinks the court will be unfair or doesn't know how to deal with aggressive cross-examination from lawyers.