"There's a sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. If a conversation reaches a certain level of incivility, the more thoughtful people start to leave." If ther

"There's a sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. If a conversation reaches a certain level of incivility, the more thoughtful people start to leave." If there are equations that describe the net, since the mid-1980s, this is one of them. A lot of the commentary here is about "shyness" or "introversion," which, I don't know J.L. But I think the point of PG's Gresham comment is it's not only personality. Analogy: What professor of physics is going to wade into the hyper-bullshit environment of a typical online physics "discussion?" As soon as they see the word "photon" or "rest mass" I'm sure they run for the hills. Introvert or extrovert, it's a waste of time. Just get out in one piece before it gets any worse. It's a trap!