As you may or may not have heard, the Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2016 is "post-truth".
[quote][url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth][b]post-truth[/b][/url]
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief:[/quote]
As I would like to think most people would agree, typically, when someone posits an argument based on emotion, when there is relevant objective data available, the gold-standard of rebuttal is to make an argument based on what the data says.
However, in this post-truth world we live in now, where people are too easily swayed by what merely [i]sounds[/i] good, how best should we respond?
Do we stand our ground and continue to assert the facts?
Do we meet them on their level with similar material of what [i]sounds[/i] good?
Do we bend the truth, misrepresent the facts, and falsify information if it helps achieve our goals, even if those goals are noble causes; is the ends beginning to justify the means?
I'd be curious to hear about any other stories you have of post-truths and how, if you did, respond to them.
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I always try to stay as objective as possible. I avoid articles and other similar texts that twist words to influence opinion because if they could convince the reader (me) with facts alone, they would imo. Shows a weakness of argument to me