If there are T's & C's I need to read before being permitted to talk to someone, I'll probably just skip the whole thing. Which I guess lines up with the title of the article.
I was fortunate to learn this from pointless internet flamewars early in my life. Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument. On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy.
I think applying this has generally made me more successful outside of the Internet, too, by being more conscious about how I approach conflict. Unfortunately, in the less pseudonymous world where preconceptions and reputation have more weight, the advice also holds, but the calculus is a big mess. Arguments can have only downside risk, but you don't have the option to disengage.
> On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy.
I'm going to disagree here. I've learned quite a lot from internet arguments. Admittedly, the majority of it was from attempting to argue positions I don't hold.
You're taking it as a given that the only goal of an argument is to convince someone, and if you can't do that, then there is no point. But there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point.
With all that said, I will admit that some random news site's comments probably aren't the best place to do that.
The thrust of their point is that the time spent engaging isn’t worth it for the person debating, not whether it does or doesn’t impact the perspectives on those that view the debate.
> there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point
If you want someone to educate you, the polite thing to do is ask. This kind of "stealth learning" where you say things you don't believe, expecting to learn via corrections, is inconsiderate and inefficient. I know people who have lost practically all of their friends because they couldn't bring themselves to acknowledge anyone else's expertise in either the subject itself or how to explain it. Don't be that guy.
ETA: Even if what you want is a spirited debate, mutual consent and respect matter. A voluntary debate can be a lot of fun for everyone, contrarian provocation out of the blue much less so.
I'm okay with people trying out different viewpoints—I do think it's a good way to explore new ideas—but I'd prefer the post be prefaced with "to play devil's advocate" or something to that effect.
I think that's really depends on what you're trying to learn. If you want to learn about someone's position it may be better to ask them than play Devil's Advocate. If you want to learn about the devil's position, the other person won't be able to help you.
As you mentioned, time, place, and consent are important. You see this a lot in forums dedicated to debate. What consent means in general forms like this one is a little bit more ambiguous. Some people are looking to debate and some people are looking to just talk.
Or, if you just want get practice (internet) arguing, its always a good idea.
OFC, the other people need to be interested in arguing. Random debate is a valuable skill, and I don't know that I 100% agree that "consent" is important. There's a difference between harassing someone and letting them know you don't agree (we call that discourse), if they're not interested in continuing the conversation a lot of people will just stop talking. Otherwise, you don't get to say things and then have some shield that nobody will disagree with you, putting it in the public forum itself is the only consent needed.
The only major danger is when someone doesn't reply at all. The OP's article ignores the fact that argument is often not just about being right, but about winning the perception. I think it is probably better (with someone who is not being disingenuous or harassing) to state if you don't have time or interest to reply, rather than letting the other argument hang -
- the last, simplest thing said usually sticks out in onlookers brains, not the 5 paragraphs of well (or not well) thought out response.
>I don't know that I 100% agree that "consent" is important.
That's why I said it is ambiguous what consent means. Engaging is always discretionary as nobody is forced to respond. That said, I think there is value in people being more clear about their intent, so that people have more information when deciding to engage.
This leads to higher quality debate and discussion than when two people have different notions of what the topic and purpose of the conversation is.
> If you want someone to educate you, the polite thing to do is ask. This kind of "stealth learning" where you say things you don't believe, expecting to learn via corrections, is inconsiderate and inefficient.
Unfortunately, it is also unreasonably effective. I mean, learning by being wrong is how learning works. It's how science works.
Often the fastest way to find the right answer to a problem is to loudly and confidently proclaim the wrong answer.
As the ancient advice goes: want to know how to do something in Linux? Tell a bunch of Linux users Linux can't do that.
Sometimes I argue things I hope aren't true, but just don't have a good argument against in the hopes someone better equipped will come along and convince me I'm wrong.
I think as long as you're civil and willing to admit defeat then it isn't really a problem.
There are different forms of argumentation and they have a different tone that maybe doesn't come through so well on the internet without context. I dislike the debate club mentality where arguments are more like a spectator sport than a deliberation most of all, but there are less combatative forms of arguments that are really more like questions with extra scaffolding. I think all people are weakly informed and weakly opinionated about a different subset of most things and it's not always clear when you are in an environment with people who aren't also weakly informed and weakly opinionated. Arguments of the form "I believe this" and "here are my (maybe not so great) reasons" can be a reasonable starting point for laying out your prior knowledge and biases. Making it clear that it is only a weakly held belief is an art form, though, and I can understand why someone might omit that step in an (assumed to be) hostile environment. It's one of the reasons why I think the choice of forum matters. It can be easier to be more open about what you don't know if you aren't subconsciously worried about being attacked for it.
As you said, (I'm paraphrasing) there are often better ways to go about things.
You're not wrong. You can think of internet arguments as a method of developing a thought and collecting counterarguments in a real environment to refine it. The choice of forum affects the quality of the counterargument though, and developing a thought can be done with a crowd more likely to give constructive feedback. If some random website works for you, that's fine.
My statement is more that if you're interested in external impact, exposing someone to a new idea should be treated as the most likely outcome, so assess your effort spent accordingly. I've gotten a lot of value out of reading the different sides of other people's arguments, but I know I personally wouldn't have wanted to spend time being part of it.
I can't remember the exact origins of it, but I think it was a tweet that was essentially:
No one will remember who won an argument on the internet, they'll just remember that everyone involved is the kind of person who gets in arguments on the internet.
I'm not even sure that's really limited to just the internet either - outside of very niche cases, you don't win any argument, you just become known as someone who likes to argue, and thus you need to decide if this is a venue you want to become known as someone who argues about things. There's venues that may be good, wholesome, and useful, but it's been an axiom that's definitely stopped me from contributing to a lot of arguments.
> I've gotten a lot of value out of reading the different sides of other people's arguments, but I know I personally wouldn't have wanted to spend time being part of it.
The problem with discussions on the internet is that there's a lot of ignorance and ideology out there and a lack of interest in applying a modicum of thought, research and critical thinking. People know what they know because they know what they know, and that's the end of it. This can be incredibly frustrating to those of us who make an attempt to live in some kind of an objective realty, where arguments from reason and facts are considered and respected.
On the internet, the earth can be flat and there is no amount of math and science you can deploy that will convince a certain audience otherwise.
The only exception to this rule are narrowly focused professional discussion groups. HN fits this description ONLY when the topic at hand tends to be in the realm of specific engineering disciplines. In a wide range of other areas, including technical areas, discussions on HN can be just as dumb and pointless as almost anywhere else.
I've been using online forums of various kinds of four decades. You could find good, bad and ugly on USENET and the same is true today in various forms. The only thing that has changed is that the size of the audience and the reach of the nonsense have expanded.
How is this any different from arguing in person? You state 'on the internet' as if it is some kind of exception and makes "People know what they know because they know what they know" a fact that exists only there.
What you neglect totally are these:
1. this can be fact of arguments anywhere, and the key to having a decent one is for all members to act in good faith
2. the internet affords the ability to find sources quickly and quote them, unlike non-internet (especially before smart phones) where it is 'who can say things most convincingly or plead to already existing biases' (which of course does happen, but at least opposition has a chance)
3. on the internet you are not arguing with one person, you are holding a public debate which is forever etched into history for anyone to read
Simple. Most people do not behave as they do online when in person. Or, put a different way, the online physical gap enables behaviors and interactions not often seen in person.
And, yes, in real life you better know what you are talking about. You can’t google yourself out of it, particularly in professional settings.
Like you I learned this early on. But I somehow manage to forget the lesson every time I engage on a significantly new platform. I had to re-learn it again on Twitter and on Hacker News.
It’s weird because it makes no sense rationally, but there you go.
> Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument.
There's a spectrum here, but I've noticed that a lot of people like to debate things online because they're genuinely trying to understand the problem set, or want to play around with ideas. They're not looking to "argue" necessarily. However, on the other end, some people do interpret any disagreement as an argument and will then turn the discussion into one that they will try to "win".
It can be frustrating if you're coming at it from a "discovery" perspective and the other person wants to fight, or you're coming at it from a fight perspective and the other one wants to discover. This happens in real life as well, but it's a little bit easier to communicate what your intent is based on your tone and expression.
not knowing when to engage is as important as knowing when to do so. some people learn from their mistakes. some people don't, they look for reasons that make them feel vindicated.
I sometimes notice my nervous system relax a bit when I log out of this website, because I know I won't get sucked into anything (he writes on this website)
> Even if you are a formal spokesperson for a company, you don't have to engage.
This is key! At a lower level, if you're modding a Discord server or whatever, you can ignore people, and if they become a real problem you can just ban them. You don't need to engage with their drama, you don't owe them anything.
In my experience this leads to accusations about "power tripping mods" who "silence different opinions". Ditto on subreddits.
Not engaging in those cases means stepping down as a moderator or even quitting the community. It will be worse off - moderating aside, it will lose some institutional knowledge. But in the long run you will feel better.
You're right that you don't owe them anything. It's the same in the open source projects.
Reddit is great because someone can says 1 + 1 = 3, get fifty upvotes, you can point out that it's actually 2, get downvoted into oblivion, and then some other idiot will come along and say it's 4
That depends. In math, you can say a function f(x) has “one zero” if there exists some element z in the relevant domain such that f(x) = 0 iff x = z. Since z is arbitrary, you can even have the value of z be nonzero. So, “a zero,” in fact, need not actually be 0, and, one can speak of “the zeros of f, so there may be more than “one zero,” none of which are actually 0.
And worth keeping in mind that every sub, every comment section, including this place, is a self-selected narrow group that is very much not representative of public opinion in general.
And this goes far beyond politics (though it's the obvious one). People say they only can use reddit to find organic recommendations, but the representation is still very narrow.
Take podcasts or books for example: if you use reddit to source recommendations, you'll get the same ones coming up over and over. Many of my favorite podcasts I've found have been stumbled across by chance and have rarely even been mentioned on reddit.
Hobby subreddits in hobbies I’m more versed in are incredibly frustrating as it converges to people trying to fit the same rehashed suggestions onto whatever is being asked without any real thought about the context of the question. I get the feeling its just people trying to fit in by repeating authoritative recommendations while having next to no experience with what they’re suggesting.
I’ve experienced this same thing. Very frustrating when you get downvoted for pointing out the flaws of commonly held misconceptions which only novices would fall for. I hate to gatekeep hobbies, but the bar for entry to speaking with authority on Reddit is too low.
I have frequented r/de for a long time (German subreddit) and it's very much on the student life / left-leaning site of political opinions as a community. It is fascinating how repeated reality checks with the rest of society regarding political and the social landscape (e.g. national polls, elections) seemingly violate the moralist self-image of this community over and over again which is represented in flabbergasted comments. How can all of these people be against my opinion?
I happen to share many of the popular ideas on r/de - disagreement and mud-slinging is not my point. Just this notable lack of self awareness and the, frankly, authoritarian mods that enforce their political ideas on others in a de facto public forum. I really understand moderation is a hard problem but deleting entire comment sections and putting threads into contest mode if the left-leaning political opinion is in danger is painful to watch since the essence of democracy suffers: pluralistic (but respectful) discussions and arguments. The main points of debate here seem to be nuclear power, COVID and migration. Very divisive topics.
There has been a very interesting example of this in the case of the Bavarian lockdown which enforced an actual curfew of citizens in March 2020 when COVID was new and entirely unpredictable. This law was later taken to the Verfassungsgericht ("Supreme Court") and the discussion did a complete 180 degree turn strictly for political reasons and social media dynamics.
First, there was massive support (against COVID deniers) [1] where top commenters complain about the lockdown being too soft (!) and users even threatened others with violence (pepper spray to cite a specific comment) if they dont wear masks in public or take walks doing the curfew. But later, when the law was challenged in court, COVID became politically irrelvant and it was an opportunity to undermine the conservative leader of Bavaria, Markus Söder. Suddenly the curfew was a sign of a police state [2].
As long as the own agenda is propagated in a specific moment, you can collect upvotes with fitting comments. Facts and consistency just don't matter.
>I really understand moderation is a hard problem but deleting entire comment sections and putting threads into contest mode if the left-leaning political opinion is in danger is painful to watch since the essence of democracy suffers: pluralistic (but respectful) discussions and arguments.
If there is a better term for this someone let me know, otherwise I'm going to coin this kind of moderation "bush sculpture" moderation. That's how subreddit moderation works.
If a person saw a bush sculpture for the first time ever they would probably think how it's really curious the bush has this well defined shape, and happily conclude that the bush is just like that. "Pretty cool how there is a bush with the shape of a dog's face" they'll think.
In the same way, visiting a subreddit you would think that that's just the community and content. But once you see how moderation works you realize that in reality, the community is pulling to all sorts of places at the same time, and by pruning the content here and there with the shears of moderation, using the chainsaw that is automod and by motivating growth with precision via shadowbanning and choosing what becomes popular, you can perfectly shape a subreddit into the content you want.
In a parallel reality, four out of the three are trolls who know that it equals two, but pretend it doesn't just to trigger those who're outraged by it.
Some of that, sure, but I'd imagine more often it's just "realized they're wrong (consciously or subconsciously), try to save face by derailing conversation".
There is of course flipside of it, "is actually right but can't explain it properly, either by own ineptitude or target audience's ignorance".
I really struggle with this; to this day I haven't found a good resolution.
I'd say by analogy you could also say: "You don't have to pursue people romantically." It's really, really true: you don't. No one will blame you for keeping to yourself. In many settings it may even be better (example: a club, where the club organizers find the drama caused by romantic entanglements annoying).
But there's a problem behind this problem, which is: while it's not necessary, if I act is if I don't 'need' to do it all (again: strictly true), that also causes problems.
Basically I have an impulse towards sex, and towards being social, which exists in a hard to measure but much-more-than-zero state. The social impulse in particular needs attention daily.
So - put that way - I kind of do have to engage. Because I work remotely I spend too long away from other people in my opinion to not engage socially whatsoever, during work hours.
Like I said, I struggle with this. But my middle-of-the-road position is that, while any individual act of engagement (like a comment) is expendable, the general behavior of seeking community on the Internet is something which I can accurately treat like a need (especially in the sense that, if I haven't done it in hours, it's time to do it).
Oh, but this isn't even about that kind of engagement. It's just saying you don't need to comment in threads about your employer. I'll go one step further and say you shouldn't. Better not to find out you said the wrong thing as a company representative. And maybe it's good practice for seeing threads and not saying anything.
But you don't have to engage on every topic, for example about your employer (as Xe mentions).
If something topic is not pleasant -- walk by, and satisfy your social impulse in some other way. Go to Hacker News and leave some comments under topics you find interesting. Go to your local Reddit and discuss how badly your town services work. Find a forum for your favorite series and start a --flamewar-- heated discussion about motivations of one of the main characters. In the age of internet, the possibilities for communications are endless.
(In-person/private communications is harder, but that's not what the post was about)
> I really struggle with this; to this day I haven't found a good resolution.
For me, if somebody has posted something that's factually wrong and it's not much trouble I'll try to post a correction. There's little harm in that and maybe my correction gets corrected and I learn something new!
The trick is knowing when to walk away so you're not caught up in bad faith arguments against facts, and you're not letting people who are just argumentative or 'fact/reality resistant' rope you into an emotional investment over internet bickering. Especially when it comes to "attacks" on your work or your employer. Don't take anything personally.
I know you can't always change people's minds with evidence (although I think sometimes too much is made of the backfire effect), but even if you fail to convince the person you respond to it's nice to not leave actually false information uncorrected for everyone else who comes across the discussion. Leaving lies and disinformation around unchallenged seems like a bad idea too. I just try not to let it eat up too much time or emotional energy.
I think the whole point of this is about maximizing your own enjoyment of things or as the article somewhat oddly puts it, avoiding "psychic damage." In online "discussions" some people get extremely riled up when they can't convince the other guy they're wrong.
Many seem to lack the empathy/introspection to understand that you'll never be able to convince him that he's wrong anymore than he'll be able to convince you that you're wrong. Those sort of folks would generally make their lives a whole lot more enjoyable if they didn't get involved in the first place.
But if you enjoy it and it's not interfering with other things you view as more relevant? Then obviously there's no reason to avoid it. And that extrapolates to more or less everything in life.
On the other hand, the interaction is mostly with total strangers and is almost always in text form. Most of the time you don't even have to see their faces!
(also I don't understand why there wouldn't be subtext)
Do you mean this one? Please explain, I don’t understand what you’ve meant with the first part of your response.
The subtext that’s missing is how something is said: The sarcastic tone, sing-song intonation, the short pause, the smirk, the small sentence that turns into a little rant, curtness, an abrupt ending, the barely suppressed yawns, crossed arms, smiling eyes.
I think most importantly, a direct, face-to-face, breathed air-to-breathed air conversation is vulnerable, you’re communicating much more than you ever could in textual form, and you immediately get feedback how what you’ve said is perceived, you might try a different approach, and say something you’ve never intended to do whilst in the flow.
because that's the place where i can find people who actually share my interests.
as nice as the neighbors are, i really don't care to discuss weather or local politics or whatever. on the other hand, i made a number of friends online over shared interests.
of course, one doesn't preclude the other, but both forms can be fulfilling if done well. but finding local friends is just so much harder, especially in the last three years.
It's mostly because on the Internet you can self-select (sort of) your topic of discussion and your "social" circles.
In real life it would be difficult to have a "fight" and a discussion over public transportation or some random history subject, because, presumably, your friends from real life are not that interested in those subjects. But if you are interested in those subjects you most probably frequent places on the internet that discuss them, hence the fights and the discussions.
My online social interaction is mostly with people I've talked to daily for years, sometimes decades. Most of them I've had close personal talks with. While I haven't met most of them face to face, they're certainly not strangers.
> almost always in text form (no subtext, no facial expression, no body language)
While most of my online social interactions is via text, some is via speech. TeamSpeak was common before but more niche, Discord is making it very convenient so more general these days. That said, I'd say you can express a lot through text, but it's a different art perhaps.
I sorta grew up on newsgroups and IRC. While it's nice meeting people in person, I can certainly fill most of my social quota via Discord or similar these days.
Thinking more about it, I think the key difference is that what I enjoy is the content of the talk, not how it's performed (ie body language etc).
I have the "hide comments section" turned on my ad blocker. Makes the internet a much nicer place in general on a lot of general news/info type sites that aren't explicitly for discussion (eg. HN, Reddit).
I was pretty excited a couple of years back when some bigger news sites explicitly turned off their comments saying they only generated distracting noise and added no value.
Then, after that I can rigorously filter what I see - on Reddit I have multireddits that I care about, and set those to Home using Apollo to browse, and I keep only generally positive sub-reddits in there.
I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk. Same reason I deleted Facebook - don't invite in the noise, and don't engage with trolls.
It's the same old strategy - the only way to win is not to play.
>I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk.
I'll go on a tweet made by a Twitter user with a large follower count and just start blocking people. AOC and Ilhan Omar are great because I can very easily pick out the crap comments being made just to try and troll them, I've started reading George Takei's tweets recently to block the trolling homophobes that respond to him.
How many monthly active users does Twitter have? I mean, blocking trolls individually is certainly a way to keep busy, but ultimately useless as there are too many, and the craftier and more dangerous trolls (i.e. government sponsored) might have a blue checkmark next to their name and already in your follows list.
It also affects what the what algorithm recommends for you and which comments on highly commented threads will be at the top and being verified doesn't protect you from being blocked by me.
Or at least that was the way in the past, haven't used twitter since a long while.
And the main purpose is to filter out all the pointless noise which existence has in the end absolutely no meaning for you. Keeping some of the clever expertised subtle manipulator in your timeline can be useful to better understand what is going on. You know like the people which aren't just misguided or afraid but are instead misguiding and outright deeply rooted evil knowing exactly how much pain and suffering their manipulative spiel will create.
Creating an echo chamber where you assume any criticism of members of a certain political faction are motivated by bigotry and are seeking to troll and deceive, and block the critics accordingly, is going to leave you woefully under-informed.
As original poster I meant more that if you know somewhere like 4Chan is generally a highly negative place, I'd stay away from it, and in bulk (ie, the whole site), cut off that source of noise.
Really applies to somewhere like Facebook too.
I didn't mean to cut off discussion or specific sides in a view point, but more to cut off sources of low-quality discussion. I do realize there's danger in how you categorize low quality too.
Absolutely. It's like a journal I can get feedback on in a low stakes environment. It lets me practice my writing and formulate my thoughts on the outside of my head. I find that simply expressing some thoughts in writing and getting feedback on them helps with developing clarity and even changing my own mind. One does not necessarily have to believe every thought that they've ever written out on the internet. In fact, I'd argue it's a sign of a dull and stagnant intellect if it is the case.
I have tried this often, while it is really useful, sometimes it isn't enough. What I found more useful a good chunk of the time (on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit..) is to start blocking people. There are some people that are so far off the mark that what they say not only gets in the way, it actively erodes the quality of what's out there. I've found it far more beneficial than just shrugging and moving on.
> Sometimes people will engage in performative angst in comments about companies as a way to signal they are part of the "in-crowd" that totally hates everything corporations have "ruined". These views are not representative of the larger world. It is just them trying to get upvoted because they care about the internet point number.
I feel like this is close to another point that has been hard to learn for me too: often, when talking about something, people care more about the talking than the something, or at least they care more about the talking and less about the something than me. This is not a value judgement, I don't think one way is "better" than the other, it's just one of those things that can cause a lot of trouble when you don't know about it.
It also helps not engaging with people. What usually attracts me when I engage with people that I don't know very well is that they're talking about something that I know, and thus I feel in a way involved in the conversation, I can contribute something. But when I see it through the lens of a group of people that know each others and just happen to talk about something that I know, it's easier to let it go.
As a more general comment, I really appreciate this blog. There's some variety in the subjects, the writing is engaging, sometimes there are cool technical tricks, sometimes interesting insights.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadI think applying this has generally made me more successful outside of the Internet, too, by being more conscious about how I approach conflict. Unfortunately, in the less pseudonymous world where preconceptions and reputation have more weight, the advice also holds, but the calculus is a big mess. Arguments can have only downside risk, but you don't have the option to disengage.
I'm going to disagree here. I've learned quite a lot from internet arguments. Admittedly, the majority of it was from attempting to argue positions I don't hold.
You're taking it as a given that the only goal of an argument is to convince someone, and if you can't do that, then there is no point. But there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point.
With all that said, I will admit that some random news site's comments probably aren't the best place to do that.
The thrust of their point is that the time spent engaging isn’t worth it for the person debating, not whether it does or doesn’t impact the perspectives on those that view the debate.
Yes, and this is my main point of disagreement with them. My point is that there is plenty of value if you want there to be.
If you want someone to educate you, the polite thing to do is ask. This kind of "stealth learning" where you say things you don't believe, expecting to learn via corrections, is inconsiderate and inefficient. I know people who have lost practically all of their friends because they couldn't bring themselves to acknowledge anyone else's expertise in either the subject itself or how to explain it. Don't be that guy.
ETA: Even if what you want is a spirited debate, mutual consent and respect matter. A voluntary debate can be a lot of fun for everyone, contrarian provocation out of the blue much less so.
As you mentioned, time, place, and consent are important. You see this a lot in forums dedicated to debate. What consent means in general forms like this one is a little bit more ambiguous. Some people are looking to debate and some people are looking to just talk.
OFC, the other people need to be interested in arguing. Random debate is a valuable skill, and I don't know that I 100% agree that "consent" is important. There's a difference between harassing someone and letting them know you don't agree (we call that discourse), if they're not interested in continuing the conversation a lot of people will just stop talking. Otherwise, you don't get to say things and then have some shield that nobody will disagree with you, putting it in the public forum itself is the only consent needed.
The only major danger is when someone doesn't reply at all. The OP's article ignores the fact that argument is often not just about being right, but about winning the perception. I think it is probably better (with someone who is not being disingenuous or harassing) to state if you don't have time or interest to reply, rather than letting the other argument hang -
- the last, simplest thing said usually sticks out in onlookers brains, not the 5 paragraphs of well (or not well) thought out response.
That's why I said it is ambiguous what consent means. Engaging is always discretionary as nobody is forced to respond. That said, I think there is value in people being more clear about their intent, so that people have more information when deciding to engage.
This leads to higher quality debate and discussion than when two people have different notions of what the topic and purpose of the conversation is.
Unfortunately, it is also unreasonably effective. I mean, learning by being wrong is how learning works. It's how science works.
Often the fastest way to find the right answer to a problem is to loudly and confidently proclaim the wrong answer.
As the ancient advice goes: want to know how to do something in Linux? Tell a bunch of Linux users Linux can't do that.
Sometimes I argue things I hope aren't true, but just don't have a good argument against in the hopes someone better equipped will come along and convince me I'm wrong.
I think as long as you're civil and willing to admit defeat then it isn't really a problem.
As you said, (I'm paraphrasing) there are often better ways to go about things.
My statement is more that if you're interested in external impact, exposing someone to a new idea should be treated as the most likely outcome, so assess your effort spent accordingly. I've gotten a lot of value out of reading the different sides of other people's arguments, but I know I personally wouldn't have wanted to spend time being part of it.
No one will remember who won an argument on the internet, they'll just remember that everyone involved is the kind of person who gets in arguments on the internet.
I'm not even sure that's really limited to just the internet either - outside of very niche cases, you don't win any argument, you just become known as someone who likes to argue, and thus you need to decide if this is a venue you want to become known as someone who argues about things. There's venues that may be good, wholesome, and useful, but it's been an axiom that's definitely stopped me from contributing to a lot of arguments.
The problem with discussions on the internet is that there's a lot of ignorance and ideology out there and a lack of interest in applying a modicum of thought, research and critical thinking. People know what they know because they know what they know, and that's the end of it. This can be incredibly frustrating to those of us who make an attempt to live in some kind of an objective realty, where arguments from reason and facts are considered and respected.
On the internet, the earth can be flat and there is no amount of math and science you can deploy that will convince a certain audience otherwise.
The only exception to this rule are narrowly focused professional discussion groups. HN fits this description ONLY when the topic at hand tends to be in the realm of specific engineering disciplines. In a wide range of other areas, including technical areas, discussions on HN can be just as dumb and pointless as almost anywhere else.
I've been using online forums of various kinds of four decades. You could find good, bad and ugly on USENET and the same is true today in various forms. The only thing that has changed is that the size of the audience and the reach of the nonsense have expanded.
Relevant:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/19/yale-researchers-how-highly-...
What you neglect totally are these:
1. this can be fact of arguments anywhere, and the key to having a decent one is for all members to act in good faith
2. the internet affords the ability to find sources quickly and quote them, unlike non-internet (especially before smart phones) where it is 'who can say things most convincingly or plead to already existing biases' (which of course does happen, but at least opposition has a chance)
3. on the internet you are not arguing with one person, you are holding a public debate which is forever etched into history for anyone to read
And, yes, in real life you better know what you are talking about. You can’t google yourself out of it, particularly in professional settings.
It’s weird because it makes no sense rationally, but there you go.
There's a spectrum here, but I've noticed that a lot of people like to debate things online because they're genuinely trying to understand the problem set, or want to play around with ideas. They're not looking to "argue" necessarily. However, on the other end, some people do interpret any disagreement as an argument and will then turn the discussion into one that they will try to "win".
It can be frustrating if you're coming at it from a "discovery" perspective and the other person wants to fight, or you're coming at it from a fight perspective and the other one wants to discover. This happens in real life as well, but it's a little bit easier to communicate what your intent is based on your tone and expression.
No can do. Someone has to correct them.
It's getting better as I age but there are times when the pressure has to be released
I was expecting you
-Cunningham's law
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
It's solid advice.
This is key! At a lower level, if you're modding a Discord server or whatever, you can ignore people, and if they become a real problem you can just ban them. You don't need to engage with their drama, you don't owe them anything.
Not engaging in those cases means stepping down as a moderator or even quitting the community. It will be worse off - moderating aside, it will lose some institutional knowledge. But in the long run you will feel better.
You're right that you don't owe them anything. It's the same in the open source projects.
In my limited experience, it seems that people think that developers owe them. It is so very strange how they have come to this conclusion.
Edit: https://youtu.be/ohDB5gbtaEQ
Thinking about it, "there are ten types of people" might be even funnier.
Take podcasts or books for example: if you use reddit to source recommendations, you'll get the same ones coming up over and over. Many of my favorite podcasts I've found have been stumbled across by chance and have rarely even been mentioned on reddit.
I happen to share many of the popular ideas on r/de - disagreement and mud-slinging is not my point. Just this notable lack of self awareness and the, frankly, authoritarian mods that enforce their political ideas on others in a de facto public forum. I really understand moderation is a hard problem but deleting entire comment sections and putting threads into contest mode if the left-leaning political opinion is in danger is painful to watch since the essence of democracy suffers: pluralistic (but respectful) discussions and arguments. The main points of debate here seem to be nuclear power, COVID and migration. Very divisive topics.
There has been a very interesting example of this in the case of the Bavarian lockdown which enforced an actual curfew of citizens in March 2020 when COVID was new and entirely unpredictable. This law was later taken to the Verfassungsgericht ("Supreme Court") and the discussion did a complete 180 degree turn strictly for political reasons and social media dynamics.
First, there was massive support (against COVID deniers) [1] where top commenters complain about the lockdown being too soft (!) and users even threatened others with violence (pepper spray to cite a specific comment) if they dont wear masks in public or take walks doing the curfew. But later, when the law was challenged in court, COVID became politically irrelvant and it was an opportunity to undermine the conservative leader of Bavaria, Markus Söder. Suddenly the curfew was a sign of a police state [2].
As long as the own agenda is propagated in a specific moment, you can collect upvotes with fitting comments. Facts and consistency just don't matter.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/kcxnin/harter_lockdown_...
[2.1] https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/q2jtka/vgh_bayern_coron... [2.2] https://old.reddit.com/r/de/comments/z1vwuk/bundesverwaltung...
If there is a better term for this someone let me know, otherwise I'm going to coin this kind of moderation "bush sculpture" moderation. That's how subreddit moderation works.
If a person saw a bush sculpture for the first time ever they would probably think how it's really curious the bush has this well defined shape, and happily conclude that the bush is just like that. "Pretty cool how there is a bush with the shape of a dog's face" they'll think.
In the same way, visiting a subreddit you would think that that's just the community and content. But once you see how moderation works you realize that in reality, the community is pulling to all sorts of places at the same time, and by pruning the content here and there with the shears of moderation, using the chainsaw that is automod and by motivating growth with precision via shadowbanning and choosing what becomes popular, you can perfectly shape a subreddit into the content you want.
There is of course flipside of it, "is actually right but can't explain it properly, either by own ineptitude or target audience's ignorance".
I see that you've already been effected by the bad math here ;) Careful out there, kids!
I'd say by analogy you could also say: "You don't have to pursue people romantically." It's really, really true: you don't. No one will blame you for keeping to yourself. In many settings it may even be better (example: a club, where the club organizers find the drama caused by romantic entanglements annoying).
But there's a problem behind this problem, which is: while it's not necessary, if I act is if I don't 'need' to do it all (again: strictly true), that also causes problems.
Basically I have an impulse towards sex, and towards being social, which exists in a hard to measure but much-more-than-zero state. The social impulse in particular needs attention daily.
So - put that way - I kind of do have to engage. Because I work remotely I spend too long away from other people in my opinion to not engage socially whatsoever, during work hours.
Like I said, I struggle with this. But my middle-of-the-road position is that, while any individual act of engagement (like a comment) is expendable, the general behavior of seeking community on the Internet is something which I can accurately treat like a need (especially in the sense that, if I haven't done it in hours, it's time to do it).
If something topic is not pleasant -- walk by, and satisfy your social impulse in some other way. Go to Hacker News and leave some comments under topics you find interesting. Go to your local Reddit and discuss how badly your town services work. Find a forum for your favorite series and start a --flamewar-- heated discussion about motivations of one of the main characters. In the age of internet, the possibilities for communications are endless.
(In-person/private communications is harder, but that's not what the post was about)
For me, if somebody has posted something that's factually wrong and it's not much trouble I'll try to post a correction. There's little harm in that and maybe my correction gets corrected and I learn something new!
The trick is knowing when to walk away so you're not caught up in bad faith arguments against facts, and you're not letting people who are just argumentative or 'fact/reality resistant' rope you into an emotional investment over internet bickering. Especially when it comes to "attacks" on your work or your employer. Don't take anything personally.
I know you can't always change people's minds with evidence (although I think sometimes too much is made of the backfire effect), but even if you fail to convince the person you respond to it's nice to not leave actually false information uncorrected for everyone else who comes across the discussion. Leaving lies and disinformation around unchallenged seems like a bad idea too. I just try not to let it eat up too much time or emotional energy.
Many seem to lack the empathy/introspection to understand that you'll never be able to convince him that he's wrong anymore than he'll be able to convince you that you're wrong. Those sort of folks would generally make their lives a whole lot more enjoyable if they didn't get involved in the first place.
But if you enjoy it and it's not interfering with other things you view as more relevant? Then obviously there's no reason to avoid it. And that extrapolates to more or less everything in life.
There is nothing about the dynamics involved that I’d consider social.
Interaction is mostly with total strangers, almost always in text form (no subtext, no facial expression, no body language).
Comments are written at people, not to people — to illicit support for one’s position or condemnation of the opposing one.
Social networks : Being social = Sock : Loving spouse
(also I don't understand why there wouldn't be subtext)
The subtext that’s missing is how something is said: The sarcastic tone, sing-song intonation, the short pause, the smirk, the small sentence that turns into a little rant, curtness, an abrupt ending, the barely suppressed yawns, crossed arms, smiling eyes.
I think most importantly, a direct, face-to-face, breathed air-to-breathed air conversation is vulnerable, you’re communicating much more than you ever could in textual form, and you immediately get feedback how what you’ve said is perceived, you might try a different approach, and say something you’ve never intended to do whilst in the flow.
as nice as the neighbors are, i really don't care to discuss weather or local politics or whatever. on the other hand, i made a number of friends online over shared interests.
of course, one doesn't preclude the other, but both forms can be fulfilling if done well. but finding local friends is just so much harder, especially in the last three years.
In real life it would be difficult to have a "fight" and a discussion over public transportation or some random history subject, because, presumably, your friends from real life are not that interested in those subjects. But if you are interested in those subjects you most probably frequent places on the internet that discuss them, hence the fights and the discussions.
My online social interaction is mostly with people I've talked to daily for years, sometimes decades. Most of them I've had close personal talks with. While I haven't met most of them face to face, they're certainly not strangers.
> almost always in text form (no subtext, no facial expression, no body language)
While most of my online social interactions is via text, some is via speech. TeamSpeak was common before but more niche, Discord is making it very convenient so more general these days. That said, I'd say you can express a lot through text, but it's a different art perhaps.
I sorta grew up on newsgroups and IRC. While it's nice meeting people in person, I can certainly fill most of my social quota via Discord or similar these days.
Thinking more about it, I think the key difference is that what I enjoy is the content of the talk, not how it's performed (ie body language etc).
I was pretty excited a couple of years back when some bigger news sites explicitly turned off their comments saying they only generated distracting noise and added no value.
Then, after that I can rigorously filter what I see - on Reddit I have multireddits that I care about, and set those to Home using Apollo to browse, and I keep only generally positive sub-reddits in there.
I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk. Same reason I deleted Facebook - don't invite in the noise, and don't engage with trolls.
It's the same old strategy - the only way to win is not to play.
I'll go on a tweet made by a Twitter user with a large follower count and just start blocking people. AOC and Ilhan Omar are great because I can very easily pick out the crap comments being made just to try and troll them, I've started reading George Takei's tweets recently to block the trolling homophobes that respond to him.
Or at least that was the way in the past, haven't used twitter since a long while.
And the main purpose is to filter out all the pointless noise which existence has in the end absolutely no meaning for you. Keeping some of the clever expertised subtle manipulator in your timeline can be useful to better understand what is going on. You know like the people which aren't just misguided or afraid but are instead misguiding and outright deeply rooted evil knowing exactly how much pain and suffering their manipulative spiel will create.
Really applies to somewhere like Facebook too.
I didn't mean to cut off discussion or specific sides in a view point, but more to cut off sources of low-quality discussion. I do realize there's danger in how you categorize low quality too.
It's your choice and it's matter of taste. It's never a hard rule.
I also like the comments on HN at least as much as the articles, and I like to contribute.
I have tried this often, while it is really useful, sometimes it isn't enough. What I found more useful a good chunk of the time (on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit..) is to start blocking people. There are some people that are so far off the mark that what they say not only gets in the way, it actively erodes the quality of what's out there. I've found it far more beneficial than just shrugging and moving on.
I feel like this is close to another point that has been hard to learn for me too: often, when talking about something, people care more about the talking than the something, or at least they care more about the talking and less about the something than me. This is not a value judgement, I don't think one way is "better" than the other, it's just one of those things that can cause a lot of trouble when you don't know about it.
It also helps not engaging with people. What usually attracts me when I engage with people that I don't know very well is that they're talking about something that I know, and thus I feel in a way involved in the conversation, I can contribute something. But when I see it through the lens of a group of people that know each others and just happen to talk about something that I know, it's easier to let it go.
As a more general comment, I really appreciate this blog. There's some variety in the subjects, the writing is engaging, sometimes there are cool technical tricks, sometimes interesting insights.