Don't fall into this trap--two people are arguing about something, and they expect you to take sides--to decide who is right and who is wrong. Assuming that one of them has the "right" answer, you will be expected to help that person win the day. But what if they are both wrong? For example, suppose that one is maintaining that 1+1=3, and one is maintaining with equal emotion that 1+1=5? Which of them is right? Will you "side" with one of them? Or will you tell them that they are both wrong, and start a third party?
The two wrong people may believe that they are standing on a firm logical foundation, since two mutually exclusive propositions cannot both be true. Mutually exclusive would mean that if one is true, the other must be false--as in it's day or night outside--it is obvious, without formal logic, that only one of these can be true at any given time, and in any given place ( the clever will bring up time zones here, in an attempt to prove that these could both be true--not so). In the example of 1+1, however, the propositions are not mutually exclusive--if 1+1 does not equal 3 ( and it doesn't ), it does not necessarily follow that 1+1=5.
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