Ask HN: How to be less argumentative online?
I've come to the realization that when I'm communicating online, particularly in chats, I'm really argumentative. It's like if someone writes something that I disagree with, I'm compelled to launch into a logical argument with them right there and then. I've realised it's a bad habit and I likely come across as boorish.
The weird thing is, I don't think I used to be like this. I love debate and hang around forums and HN a fair bit when online - maybe that's the issue? It's not that I actively want to 'prove someone wrong', but part of the way I learn is through argument; expressing my disagreement in the hope that the other person will prove me wrong and I might learn something.
So I'm throwing it out there to the HN community - anyone else in the same boat? How did you deal with it and break the habit?
244 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadI would say: If you try to convince others of something, focus your energy on one thing. You won't be very convincing if you argue "I've heard that X" on 100 topics, but it will be more effective if you go deep into one topic and have a huge number of arguments on standby, with links to further resources, so that you can create a concise and focused rebuttal when that particular topic comes up.
There's convincing with words, and convincing by example.
"The Master does his job" - not necessarily in private or alone. If people see someone successfully accomplishing something, they will follow. For me, seeing something work is a lot more powerful change actor than someone talking in hypotheticals trying to convince me.
If you say something to someone and they are unconvinced, I doubt more prodding will convince them. Eventually they will say they are convinced, just to have you go away, and let them do it the same way. Then they become more entrenched in their beliefs, even if they know it's wrong.
“Every truth has four corners. As a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.”
–Confucius
To build on quotes from the Tao Te Ching, same translation:
“Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away industry and profit, and there won't be any thieves.
If these three aren't enough, just stay at the center of the circle and let all things take their course.”
This "who can talk better to convince the crowd" business appeared more than once throughout history and was at it's peak effectiveness among the scientific community during the enlightenment phase of europe where your peers are actually as intelligent or more intelligent than you are, and your tools are empirical evidence rather than your charisma.
The idea later reverted to it's hellenistic form of democratic political dialogue which is only effective as the critics of it's listeners, or the demos.
Other chapters in the Tao address this objection, by emphasizing the value of humility and leading by example over cleverness and trying to beat people into submission with words.
(http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=23&a=Stephen+Mitchell) (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=15&a=Stephen+Mitchell) (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=17&a=Stephen+Mitchell)There's something oxymoronic about this phrase.
No, sometimes the master's job is to teach someone something. It's just not all the time or even every time someone is wrong on the internet.
That's different from other translations: http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?l=Daodejing&no=30
If Mitchell branched into more classics, that'd be very valuable to the cause.
"Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn't try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself."
What this is saying (again IMHO ;-) ) is that in the conversation, you can't control both sides: only your side. You can't control how someone receives your words, or how they interpret them. If you try to press your case, you will cause things to occur which you may not anticipate and for which you have no control.
Therefore, if you are trying to assert some idea, rather than to clarify your own understanding, then you may actually create the antagonistic forces which you were originally trying subdue (cut off one head of the hydra and be rewarded with 2 growing).
This is one of the core principles in the tao te ching. The word tall has no meaning unless you compare it with short. If I draw a box and ask you if the box is tall, you can't really say. However, if I draw another box of a different size next to it, it is easy to distinguish which one is tall and which one is short. Similarly, if I draw a single box and call it "tall", you can get an idea of what "short" means -- definitely shorter than the box I drew.
In than way, declaration of one thing "creates" its opposite. If you make a declaration on the internet, it can create its own opposition. People who would never have thought about the issue, may come to defend the opposite point of view. The more you push your point, the more vigorous the defense. Had you done nothing, then nothing would have been the result.
In taoist literature, the middle point between 2 extremes is called the "pivot" point. There is a point between being "tall" and being "short". If I grow my short box, it will eventually cease to be short and start becoming tall (and in comparison, the other box will become short). That point is the "pivot" point.
This is a concept of "utility". Normally for something to be "useful" you must transition between an extreme and the pivot point. If you have a cup that is always full of water, then it is not "useful" (in the ordinary sense of the use of a cup -- it might still be useful as a weight ;-) ). If the cup is always empty, then it is equally not useful. It only has utility when the cup transitions between being empty and full. The same is true of spokes on a bicycle wheel. Which is more important: the wires that provide tension on the outside of the wheel, or the spaces between the wires? Without the spaces, there would be no wires: only a disk. And then there would be no spokes. It's important to alternate between spoke and space.
So, to answer the parent's question: from (my interpretation of) a taoist point of view, you need to be careful not to press your case because you will create your own opposition. However, if you wish to have utility in your argument, it is important to move from the pivot point, to an extreme and back to the pivot point again (possibly over and over and over again). How you do that is beyond my ability to answer ;-)
As I recall, nothing was ever deleted. It was classified, and you could filter as you liked. But I don't remember specifics.
The owner took it down some years ago. Because the trolling had become intolerable.
That a Nobel laureate scientist and a redneck can share equal space on a subject is a real problem.
I’m not suggesting anybody be censored, merely that all opinions on a topic are not equal and shouldn’t be treated as such.
The BBC in Britain has adopted the policy you suggest for a few years. They try pretty hard to show 2 opposing views in interviews.
It falls apart when all the experts align on one side of an issue, which is unreasonably common in these days of brexit. Yet, equal airtime is given to someone who is not an expert, lacks knowledge of the system being discussed, but has an opinion.
There is little similar between what was suggested by the person you're replying to and any policy which simply throws both opinions out. What he was describing was engaging with the content of an argument, not its speaker. This is proper. This is how things should be decided. "Who gets on TV" is an antiquated limitation which generated the difficult situation where someone has to make that call, and the unrelated constraint of needing to break for commercial or move on to the next topic in order to keep the audience engaged or keep to a programming schedule exacerbates it. The way the medium is used makes it impossible for a positions justification to be explained, only the position with no justification can be presented. This simply should not be done, but is the sort of thing which due to technological limitation was done out of desperation for a time. Commercial interests, of course, still motivate this approach, but those commercial interests, I think we can both agree, are not intimately tied to the ability of the medium to assist the audience in coming to a nuanced understanding of available views.
There is a very big difference between the ideal situation, where in every instance you have infinite time and access to all possible relevant information, and the practical situation with limited time (not 'oh I can't pay attention to one argument for 45 minutes' but 'if we do not do something before Tuesday, hundreds could die') and resources. It is not incorrect to discuss the ideal situation, because it will always be present and always provide the limiting constraints on the practical case. While you can be in a position where you could argue 'we should trust the expert because we have exactly and only 2 choices and his authority is better even though he can not explain it', even in that situation it must be admitted that what you are doing is wrong. It is a wrong thing which is being forced by circumstance to be done. In the ideal case, you are guaranteed truth. In the practical case, you try to do the best you can. In the practical case, the redneck might have a point (farmers, for instance, had been talking about global dimming for years before scientists gathered the data and became concerned... we were able to reverse it, but not before the pollution from England caused the jetstream to shift and led to several years of intense drought and famine (remember Live Aid? That was global dimmings work) in Ethiopia. Then you have cases where a doctor says other doctors should wash their hands between doing autopsies and delivering babies. He was not right because he had authority. In fact, the argument against him was that he was not respected enough in his field and that it was insulting to suggest that the doctors killing women and children left and right were actually at fault. Those were the more respected members of the medical community. We were saddled with leaded gasoline for decades because the community of research chemists all agreed it was safe and did so for financial benefit and based on very 'common sense' arguments (lead is so heavy! It will fall to the ground and not travel far from the road, how would it get in the air?). When a toxicologist reported the danger, he was met with insult and told he was entreating on chemists territory. Because people trusted the authority of the professional research chemists, he got ignored. Because of them having their authority trusted, they could not afford to even investigate the truth. If they lost that authority, and the trust, they would be done. All unnecessary and a tragic bit of scientific history every researcher should know. Those authorities are just people. They can be just as selfish, mistake-prone, pridef...
Most real-world problems are over-constrained or under-constrained, and a missing axiom (as much as you can have axioms for things as fuzzy as the real world) can give bogus results without being immediately obvious.
If it is something that I do not expect neither to have detailed knowledge of, I'll base my trust on the transferability of the domain. So, for example, a nobel price winner in physics will still have a reasonable understanding of chemistry, and thus cooking.
I'd simply expect a scientist to have finished 4-8 years more in school, and to have spent several decades with smart and learned people. Again, depending on the subject being discussed.
There is also the case to be made that a Nobel price winner will have a reputation to uphold. Going on the record saying silly things will hurt him more than someone that has no reputation. Though I'm less inclined to this reasoning, as this assumes that reputation is something important to the Nobel prize winner.
Instead, it is a state of mind reached through experience and enlightenment, endowed to one by those whom seek same.
The Master does his job and then stops. He understands that the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao. Because he believes in himself, he doesn't try to convince others. Because he is content with himself, he doesn't need others' approval. Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.
— Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=30&a=Stephen+Mitchell) reply
(1) Does anyone know why the preformatted sections (<pre>) are limited to a width smaller than the width of the post? At all widths, it's roughly 75% of the comment's width. For mobile, this is especially bad, but I'm not sure why it's there on normal screens resolutions either.
(2) You could test different widths. Right click the preformatted section and choose "inspect element". You should have the <code> block highlighted. Move to the parent element, the <pre>. On the right, you should see a max-width with some pixel value. Try setting that to "100%" (without quotes) rather than some pixel amount. Does that work fine for you? Would you like that change? It would be great if someone could somehow test this on mobile as well, but on desktop (if I resize the browser) it seems to work well.
Don’t know what can be done to fix this, short of physical violence.
I'm given to understand changes may be in the offing, though whether or not this specifically is addressed, I'm not sure.
On desktop browsers with extension support, you can use Stylus to fix this specific annoyance by setting "pre-wrap: word".
And yes, blockquote support would be hugely appreciated.
FYI: https://lobste.rs offers full Markdown for comments.
Front end is not back end, etc.
Iirc they didn't want to publish details of the ranking algorithm at some point, to prevent "hacking" of submissions.
Maybe they stopped publishing the code since then.
they would only need to add this to the CSS, yes? then you get the same four-spaces code block, but it doesn't cause horizontal scrollbars any more.
HN admins, could you please add this?
If a blockquote format is desired, that's great, but don't change the code formatting to make it a slightly-less bad (but still horrible, because of monospacing) way of presenting blockquotes.
You know, like how there is "topcolor" already; just a bit more of the same.
And on copy/paste, the linebreaks in the original are preserved, which obviates the code objection answering you below.
Material progress is useful, but hollow.
- http://beatrice.com/wordpress/tao-te-ching/
- The original free version - http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf
Here's the same verse, I think:
Some of these types of books say that yourself is the only thing which you can truly change because, they say, everything else is an illusion or simply that trying to change others is a futile task. How you perceive reality is everything.
I find this idea to be very liberating and pragmatic and when I remember to utilize this in practice, things flow much better for me. I become more flexible.
As Bruce Lee says - "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend."
It means that everything will only change when you change yourself. Find your own harmony and don’t worry about others. Their path is theirs.
Essentially, it means "lead by example", "let others learn through acts and not words", "there are situations which no amount of skill can rectify", and "accept that some may not understand what you try to teach."
Asking what something means is effectively asking for a translation. Unfortunately, that's almost always a lossy process, and in the worst case it invites an "understanding" that's largely different than the author's original intent.
If intended meaning is something you'd like to get at, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the question, "what mindset and situation would I have to be in such that those words come naturally, spontaneously to mind?"
Anyway, in my experience with lots of meditation, the sentiment expressed in OP's quote is something that feels close to home. I think it has more to do with staying close to the problem at hand and being keenly aware of how all the pieces of you fit into that picture.
There exists a mental space where you can do things and have desires while at the same time seeing a larger context that breeds equanimity. It's a space thst makes things like personal thoughts, feeling and beliefs seem as simple and matter-of-fact as crickets chirping in the night.
Watch them flourish.
Revisit them.
To watch them crumble.
Update them to learn your mistake.
Educate the next generation.
On where you failed.
Rinse and repeat.
Education is the only thing holding society together.
Maybe some real wisdom exists out there, that unfortunately involves not telling other people about it.
This is one of the key passages. Whenever we name something, it's opposite is created too. This problem lies at the heart of categorization and knowledge. Try to avoid that.
For those interested [1] has many translations of the Tao Te Ching to compare.
[0] https://terebess.hu/english/tao/e-m-chen.html
[1] https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html
Or, you could check out my personal introduction to the Tao... The Tao of Pooh. I read it when I was a teenager, thinking it positively absurd that anyone would create a book attempting to explain an ancient school of philosophy through Winnie the Pooh. It's not absurd. I found it sublime, and the idea of taoism made a powerful impression on me and probably played a sizable role in driving me to further study of philosophy.
Chinese Medicine is new age, and yet the practice supposedly dates back 3,500 years. I wonder if they were also killing rhinos for their horns to make useless “medicine” back then?
> the whole world accepts him
These lines seem a simplified stretch or an incorrect observation, particularly in the current context.
Some people, e.g. minorities, accept themselves, yet they seem repeatedly rejected by others. This is a very common occurrence online.
Tao Te Ching shall be the next book on my reading list. Have a nice day!
There are a lot of factors at play, but keep the old saying "don't cut your nose off to spite your face" in mind, even if you win you argument are you going to enjoy the results?
Also if you're repeatedly arguing with the same people, maybe disengage with that group because you're probably not going to help them nor grow as a person.
Rarely does one get into an argument with a whole group. That's a different game that is best avoided.
I'm in a Facebook group for vegans, where people continually justify eating things that have meat byproducts in them because they're convenient or they "don't believe its actually there" even though something is labeled as such. Its quite comical. I also just stopped participating because it was ridiculous.
It's fine to debate people. Just work on developing a more engaging style.
Of course, that's the opposite of lazy, so far easier said than done.
If you really, really can't stop, consider getting checked for an issue like ADHD. Compulsive arguing, no matter how much it gets them burned, seems to be something done by bright people with other issues that interfere with them getting their intellectual needs met.
(I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice by any stretch of the imagination, much less some kind of diagnosis.)
Understanding does not mean acceptance or an endorsement.
Humor can often replace righteous indignation.
You can control your end of a conversation.
You should understand why you argue. It might not be easy to identify. Talk with trusted others.
More seriously, there's ways to deflate the heat.
1) avoid use of language like liar or flat out wrong - the first goes to Intent more than correctness, the second is as hyperbolic as the million wrong things which motivated it.
2) I beseech you, consider but you are wrong: appeal to their better nature, posit the alternative view.
2a) be prepared to acknowledge you may also be wrong
3) Hanlon's razor
4) Some people are just dicks but you don't have to feed it.
5) remember English is a federated language and to a welchman a faggot is just a tasty meatball wrapped in caul-fat. Sometimes what people write is confused or confusing and it can be reader or sender miscommunication or.. both.
6) thomism: do not attempt to rebut or convert. State your view and restate it. Sometimes works but can be infuriating.
To expand on the first, I recently came across a tweet that provides examples of ways to rephrase something to achieve a more neutral tone: https://twitter.com/shl/status/1164924044061237254
So am I. It's cathartic and I get a dopamine hit from running my brain through my fingers into language. For me, the useful behavioral changes center around the browser's back button and the 'delete' item on the edit menu. The back button keeps me out of rabbit holes internal to me and delete keeps me out of black holes of back and forth for the sake of back and forth. Both have helped me better recognize when I am probably making more noise rather than signal. Both give me an excuse to recognize when I don't actually know what I'm saying, don't care about what I'm saying, and when what I am saying is an over-reaction.
Writing this, I'd estimate >90% of what I start typing in little online boxes gets deleted or never gets posted in the first place. I default to not posting what I type because the typing is usually enough. Maybe I should have deleted this.
I do this far more often with e-mail, sometimes i'll be e-mailing my friend about something, and then all of a sudden go on a big tangent about a problem i'm having or facing and by the time I'm finished the e-mail it's a novel, but I fleshed out my problems and it helped me immensely. I just delete the e-mail at the end / send the one liner response I had in the first place.
Writing to someone else comes from a different perspective then just journaling for yourself.
At some point, however, it might not be the best use of your time.
Where people go astray is mistaking the one for the other. If someone is wrong about a point of fact, it's easy (and potentially valuable) to correct them. If you find yourself wanting to correct someone on their ideology or value system (liberal vs. conservative, religious vs. atheist, tabs vs. spaces), you've set yourself an impossible task. All you can do is 1) agree on common facts, 2) make your opinion as clear as possible (in that order).
Re: learning through argument, I often find the time I take before sending the response to be helpful in crafting the argument and learning how I feel. If you really get value from this, have you considered writing essays and posting publicly?
I try to restrain myself to calling out the most obvious hooey I see, because I think that there are some unsubstantiated but seductive ideas out there that are flat out dangerous if left unchecked.
I also try to pay attention to my vocabulary. My first choice above was not "hooey".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19490573
Quoting a gist from the blog:
> At the core of NVC is a straightforward communication pattern: “When ____[observation], I feel ____[emotion] because I’m needing some ____[universal needs]. Would you be able to ____[request]?”
> At first glance, this looks easy. But in practice, it’s extremely difficult to pull off. To grasp the complexity, NVC makes some subtle but critical distinctions: observations versus evaluations, emotions versus thoughts, universal needs versus strategies, and requests versus demands.
There in fact an entire book on the subject (part of recommended reading by Sam Altman for startup founders): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/560861.Non_Violent_Commu...
It's valuable to understand different viewpoints, and also to share your own arguments - it helps people learn from each other and discover shared truths. So I don't think it's the arguing that is necessarily the problem. Arguments are simply the reasoning behind conclusions. The ugly parts of argumentation are more about style and irresponsible rhetoric.
(I'd also suggest that the common online format incentivizes boorishness. Most comment threads don't make it convenient to have a full respectful sharing of views. You're probably incentivized to lead with your provocative counterargument to "cut to the chase", to minimize the chance of your counterpart getting distracted and moving on to other things.)
Beyond that, Postel's Law is pretty decent, for protocols and for people.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=postels+law&t=fpas&ia=web
Right, wrong, who cares, just so longs as one of us learns then the world's a better place and that's what I want.
If someone keeps pushing a losing position or asserts X without justification, or can't be bothered to read what I wrote, or a post with evidence I spent time collating gets downvoted sans reason, I get pissed off and The Dick races out of the blue corner, fists swinging[0] (and DanG often ends up wielding the big stick to calm things down).
How do I cope with it? - I am thinking of leaving HN. It's avoiding the problem not solving it, but it's a solution of sorts.
[0] Well I hope those are his fists swinging.
In other areas of life, F2F disagreements don't happen much, if they do they can be sorted out much more easily. I don't know why.
But for what purpose? Or is it just a way of tricking oneself as a coping mechanism?
For me, at least, it's less a coping mechanism and more a mindset I've found to be more constructive both online and off.
If I notice a reply to my comments, I don't feel compelled to respond by conversational norms. I am more likely to reply if I see evidence that my original comment has failed to communicate my thoughts, and less likely to reply if I think I was understood but merely have disagreement.
As a reader, I also get more out of the interesting alternate viewpoints that I see from people using the site in a similar manner. I don't tend to want to read comment chains that look like a transcribed conversation between only a few people.
You know, progress of humankind etc. ...
Full source: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html
That sort of argumentation is generally just boring to read, lacks value, and happens between the two or three people involved. As such, it doesn't really contribute much value on a public internet forum and I usually skip all that stuff myself.
You can sense if a comment is written for no one in particular. It washes away all the need to argue, and it humbly gives to each reader what they're willing to accept from it. This can be a lot or nothing but it all depends on the reader, too.
I write comments with a similar idea in mind. I feel that if what I've written might give one person an idea, point of validation, sense of similarity, or a moment to seriously think about something for a while, it's worth posting. I of course do not know beforehand whether this happens or which year it might happen if it does. I rarely write as a direct response to the parent, and if I do I tend to eventually diverge from the "reply mode" to "writing mode".
Arguably, HN is just a website where people request for others to share their notes on a topic they're interested in.
I suspect that the very structure of voting-based comment sections intensifies this. if you actually follow the etiquette, you upvote posts you agree with instead of leaving a comment to say so. on the other hand, you are not supposed to downvote comments you disagree with. this probably tips the balance enough to make the median comment be a rebuttal to OP. of course, people sometimes respond with supplemental information, but people either twist this to interpret it as an argument or take it as an implicit critique of OP for not including all the relevant information.
in the end, I don't really have any advice for you; I think it's just inherent to the medium. I personally enjoy arguing a lot, but many people I know irl do not. so I just accept the internet for what it is and get my arguing fix here and stick to lighter topics irl.
It gets old.
That said, I didn't break the habit entirely. It's one of those "guilty pleasure" things. The important part is that you're otherwise pleasurable enough to be around to make up for it. Everyone has their pathological traits that others have to put up with, it's give and take.
It often happens that a comment gets some initial downvotes and then bounces back. In some cases, this can even be from fat-fingering on a mobile device. I've accidentally downvoted comments more than a few times, so I always try to remember to check whether the header line changes to "unvote" or "undown".
Just kidding! Please forgive me, my friend. I only wanted to illustrate in a hopefully humorous way that just changing an assertion to a question isn't an guaranteed fix.
You did mention some key points: Don't be argumentative or threatening. Be gentle, kind and respectful. Look for ways to make your communication effective instead of triggering defensive reactions. Respect others' opinions and recognize that you may not change their views.
I would add that when someone's comment triggers something in you (I mean any of us, not you specifically), that's a good time to step back, get away from the keyboard, and go do something completely different. And really do something different that occupies your mind in a different way - don't be fuming over the online conversation the whole time.
There is a chance that when you do get back to the conversation you will have a new perspective or will at least have calmed down. You may even find that you simply don't need to reply at all.
These are all matters of the heart, and even if asking questions instead of making assertions won't automatically fix everything, it may be one good place to start. As long as you don't ask questions like the ones in my first paragraph!
So I am sorry you got downvoted for your valuable comment. I hope some of the downvoters will reverse their votes.
That said, it requires some nuance and subtext awareness to ensure it comes across as authentically asking, rather than coming across a know-it-all with delusions of being Socrates, or a trial lawyer in a courtroom drama.
And if you're a recognized expert on some factual topic and are correcting some incorrect statement of fact, just assert. However very few people meet that bar, and often argue vehemently for something that later turns out to be embarrassingly wrong. Better to have just started with questions instead, especially if the topic has any degree of complexity to it.
I only meant it as a caution: it's all too easy to take one point out of a message ("ask questions instead of making assertions") and neglect the many other wonderful points you mentioned about being calm and respectful and all that.
Don't you get pretty irritated when people do this? Don't you think just rephrasing an argument as a question is a pretty poor way of making your point? See what I did there?
Questioning, or leastwise buffering with caveats, indicates one's own limits are recognised, which I find a positive trait as it shows an open mind.
Also if I question something instead of stating it, it invites kinder answers from experts, and I feel less of a fool when said expert demonstrates I'm wrong.
Because you expected exactly those responses, it's easy to not get emotionally invested and it's a much more likely way to learn something.
Adding caveats and exceptions directly in the post usually just obfuscates your point and makes it harder for people to understand you. Sure, in a formal publication absolutely recognise the limitations of your argument. But when having an internet discussion, the time for elaborating and explaining limitations is either in an appendix or a follow-up post.
This doesn't apply to exceptions which are material to the main point you're trying to make though. Just things which, if asked "Give me the bottom line," you'd omit.
No responses, as there's nothing particularly objectionable to bait people into replying. The simple fact is, online people will almost always only respond when they disagree.
For the purpose of actually getting people to engage in a discussion or when you want to learn something, I stand by the approach I said. I didn't say you had to be argumentative or negative when you do it.
Shrug. Works for me.
> it's better to baldly assert something as confidently as possible
Oh Noooo! That misleads people who don't know better and pisses off experts who do, and makes you look stupid when you're told you're wrong - which in my case I don't mind but for some people public embarrassment will cause them to double down, driving them into a corner, igniting long chain posts based on ill feelings, and wasting everyone's time. Happened between me and another just 7 days ago - check my postings.
I know the bit about the best way to get a right answer online is to post a wrong one, but I don't find that so, in fact the opposite. Maybe it works best in toxic communities?
> Adding caveats and exceptions directly in the post usually just obfuscates your point
Simple rewrite rule is simple:
I'm afraid we have to agree to differ.I still have a lot of trouble controlling myself but I am getting better. I think all these instant gratification of social media has made us trigger happy; especially platforms like twitter.
Mostly, I want to argue when I'm angry with someone. Online, I'm becoming less and less interested in discussing/arguing with people I've never met, such as yourself. Far too often, nothing comes of it but more anger.
Slightly more interesting is if there's a common forum or issue (ie: github), but most interesting is people I've met in person.
What I'm trying to do is ask myself, am I angry with this person? If so, is it really worth engaging them this moment? (Sometimes you need to--but offline is usually better for that.)
If I do have rapport with them, and I can address my anger first, then there may be some usefulness in responding to them. But, I don't want to contribute to America's 24/7 outrage culture any more.
If you're interested, I wrote a little more about this here.
https://medium.com/@bjt2n3904/mass-shootings-dealing-with-ha...
If you don't put this into the preamble (e.g.: for the sake of the argument) of your opinion then there's no way other parties can infer that you are seeking more information through disagreement (or something along the lines of the Socratic methods).
But people aren't punching bags for you to use in order to get to know more. Most don't like being abused and misled regarding your real intentions.
I'd deal with it by just replacing the habit of being argumentative by the habit of closing the tab and get back later to it to see if you can still add something more valuable to the conversation than adding fuel to the fire.
like if you are making a comment on bitcoin block size limits, and noticed that another blockchain has an interesting solution, someone might ignore your observation and simply have a derogatory statement about another blockchain while not realizing that this limits their view of what the bitcoin block chain can be modified to do. You can ignore that and just keep talking about what happened and how it could possibly help the bitcoin blockchain
the similarity here is that these are divisive political arguments within that community, which echoes the divisiveness in country's politics that seem to be a part of everyone's life now.
Start with this comment!