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You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent

by joolze 11y ago

You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel enough to reach the front page of HN. This is literally an analysis of how to have a disagreement without reacting like a fourth grader.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Be it as it may, the fact is that quite a lot of people tend to react like a fourth-graders when facing disagreement. Try to ask a random family member about vaccines, GMOs or nuclear power and see how it goes.
state 11y ago
This seems to me to be even more true online, although we like to think that information technology has the opposite effect.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  One of the side effects of the Internet is that you can find pretty much any plausibly sounding justification for any view. Couple that with the modern world being insanely complicated - acknowledging which leads to feelings of helplessness - and there's no surprise people end up believing different things depending on what they happened to read. People want to feel they understand things. Nobody wants to feel stupid.
  - memracom 11y ago
    In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the question itself. In a culture where this type of debate is practiced in the schools, people of all ages will be more open to discussing an issue in a social setting without strapping on revolvers and a bulletproof vest. It is not a question of identifying who is the enemy, it is a question of figuring out which path will lead to a better world 100 moves in the future. Because real life really is like a chess game. The outcome of the next move is not the be all and end all.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I always viewed this kind of debates as potentially harmful though. If you award brownie points for "debate quality", as opposed to "getting it right", you may end up promoting eristic over rationality. But maybe British universities get it right. I don't know, I haven't had the experience. We had debates in my secondary school, and I remember that the best way to win those was to be the cleverest bullshitter in the room.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        I think you're completely correct. It's politically poisonous because it promotes a legal/corporate view of the world where you win by being glib, emotive, and persuasive, over a scientific/rational view of the world where you win by modelling and predicting objective reality more accurately than the other side. It's easy to see how this destroys any possibility of rational policy-making. It doesn't help that most countries suffer from literally industrial levels of PR effort, media spin, and online astroturfing, all designed to persuade, influence, and manipulate, and not to inform. See e.g. http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9?op=1&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movem... for a very incomplete list of examples. The whole point of PR etc is to deny reality. So the idea that the other side might have a point worthy of respect is deeply problematic. It would be true in a world where everyone had access to unbiased information, deliberately misleading the public was banned by law, and public education was a significant policy goal. That isn't the world we live in.
- lostcolony 11y ago
  It is more true online, and for a lot of reasons. I meet someone at a party and we become Facebook friends. I then post some sort of political article or comment to my feed. They see it, disagree with it, and (likely) either comment on it in a non-polite manner, or stay silent, but either way categorize me in their head as a crazy right/left winger. Why? Because these are what is easiest to do for 'crazy' opinions coming from strangers. Compare that with what can happen in real life. I get to know someone over the course of multiple interactions; all my political comments are kept to those I already know and trust. Eventually we get to a point we know and trust each other, and I venture an opinion, one they disagree with. They say "I disagree with that", and we discuss it. Why? Because we already know each other, value each other, trust each other, and are seeking legitimately to understand and/or sway one another, while also preserving the relationship. The internet has essentially made it so the thoughts we used to reserve for those we knew in depth, are becoming aired to strangers, and responded to accordingly. While it means that insular bubbles of thought (the rural family who doesn't know anyone who believes in gun control, say) are encountering people who disagree with them, those people are strangers, and there's no reason to give them any credence. If anything, it just makes one even more vociferous, because now you can preach to people who -aren't- in the choir.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I have a tiny hope that after experiencing this phenomenon from both sides - both seeing and being the lunatic stranger - most people will learn to embrace that their beliefs may not always be correct or universal. It's a tiny hope.
    - lostcolony 11y ago
      I wish I had that hope. I've seen people who in person I've had intelligent, rational discussions with on areas we disagree, then post virulent political posts that tear apart strawmen arguments. I actually quite like this article because it paints this out as why we do it. With someone we disagree with in person, they're still part of our tribe. We know them, we like them, we trust them. With someone on the internet, they're 'the other'.
archagon 11y ago
I don't think it has anything to do with "Western society", but rather the nature of internet discussions. They're impersonal. They're amenable to favoritism and the echo chamber effect. You can't interrupt somebody in the middle of a soapbox lecture to ask for clarification or offer counter-arguments. The atomic unit of discussion is the paragraph, at best, and your audience numbers in the hundreds. Basically, it's Permanent Debate Club. In my experience, people in the real world are far more kind and open even when discussing the most controversial of topics.
- wbillingsley 11y ago
  I disagree. I think it has a great deal to do with part of western society -- particularly, the rhetorical strategies that social movements of the left have deliberately adopted. Sure enough, just about anyone can get caught in the idea "Well, if my opponent thought about it, then surely they'd agree with me. They don't agree with me, so therefore they're not thinking people, and I need to use something other than reason to make them change their mind." But the difference is that the left are currently much more willing then to apply theories of social norms instead of arguments. Terms such as "climate denier", "evolution denier", "free-thinker" (you wouldn't want to disagree with our opinion on religion, and show you're not a free thinker, now would you?), etc, were coined deliberately for rhetorical effect. Similarly, social movements on the left are usually quicker to play the game of rhetorical escalation. Can I find some rhetoric by which to portray my opponent's opinion as "sexist" or "ignorant"? So that regardless of what their reasoning is, the pressure to avoid being socially viewed as ignorant is an incentive for them to change their mind.
  - archagon 11y ago
    The same exact thing happens on the other side with words like "SJW". It's fairly idiomatic of internet rhetoric in general, and it's bad news for reasoned debate. Most of my friends are very liberal, and literally none of them use this kind of rhetoric in real life. I'm convinced it's an emergent property of internet discussion, not an intentional strategy (for the most part).

by joolze 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Be it as it may, the fact is that quite a lot of people tend to react like a fourth-graders when facing disagreement. Try to ask a random family member about vaccines, GMOs or nuclear power and see how it goes.

state 11y ago

This seems to me to be even more true online, although we like to think that information technology has the opposite effect.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
One of the side effects of the Internet is that you can find pretty much any plausibly sounding justification for any view. Couple that with the modern world being insanely complicated - acknowledging which leads to feelings of helplessness - and there's no surprise people end up believing different things depending on what they happened to read. People want to feel they understand things. Nobody wants to feel stupid.
- memracom 11y ago
  In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the question itself. In a culture where this type of debate is practiced in the schools, people of all ages will be more open to discussing an issue in a social setting without strapping on revolvers and a bulletproof vest. It is not a question of identifying who is the enemy, it is a question of figuring out which path will lead to a better world 100 moves in the future. Because real life really is like a chess game. The outcome of the next move is not the be all and end all.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I always viewed this kind of debates as potentially harmful though. If you award brownie points for "debate quality", as opposed to "getting it right", you may end up promoting eristic over rationality. But maybe British universities get it right. I don't know, I haven't had the experience. We had debates in my secondary school, and I remember that the best way to win those was to be the cleverest bullshitter in the room.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      I think you're completely correct. It's politically poisonous because it promotes a legal/corporate view of the world where you win by being glib, emotive, and persuasive, over a scientific/rational view of the world where you win by modelling and predicting objective reality more accurately than the other side. It's easy to see how this destroys any possibility of rational policy-making. It doesn't help that most countries suffer from literally industrial levels of PR effort, media spin, and online astroturfing, all designed to persuade, influence, and manipulate, and not to inform. See e.g. http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movements-2011-9?op=1&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movem... for a very incomplete list of examples. The whole point of PR etc is to deny reality. So the idea that the other side might have a point worthy of respect is deeply problematic. It would be true in a world where everyone had access to unbiased information, deliberately misleading the public was banned by law, and public education was a significant policy goal. That isn't the world we live in.
lostcolony 11y ago
It is more true online, and for a lot of reasons. I meet someone at a party and we become Facebook friends. I then post some sort of political article or comment to my feed. They see it, disagree with it, and (likely) either comment on it in a non-polite manner, or stay silent, but either way categorize me in their head as a crazy right/left winger. Why? Because these are what is easiest to do for 'crazy' opinions coming from strangers. Compare that with what can happen in real life. I get to know someone over the course of multiple interactions; all my political comments are kept to those I already know and trust. Eventually we get to a point we know and trust each other, and I venture an opinion, one they disagree with. They say "I disagree with that", and we discuss it. Why? Because we already know each other, value each other, trust each other, and are seeking legitimately to understand and/or sway one another, while also preserving the relationship. The internet has essentially made it so the thoughts we used to reserve for those we knew in depth, are becoming aired to strangers, and responded to accordingly. While it means that insular bubbles of thought (the rural family who doesn't know anyone who believes in gun control, say) are encountering people who disagree with them, those people are strangers, and there's no reason to give them any credence. If anything, it just makes one even more vociferous, because now you can preach to people who -aren't- in the choir.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I have a tiny hope that after experiencing this phenomenon from both sides - both seeing and being the lunatic stranger - most people will learn to embrace that their beliefs may not always be correct or universal. It's a tiny hope.
  - lostcolony 11y ago
    I wish I had that hope. I've seen people who in person I've had intelligent, rational discussions with on areas we disagree, then post virulent political posts that tear apart strawmen arguments. I actually quite like this article because it paints this out as why we do it. With someone we disagree with in person, they're still part of our tribe. We know them, we like them, we trust them. With someone on the internet, they're 'the other'.

archagon 11y ago

I don't think it has anything to do with "Western society", but rather the nature of internet discussions. They're impersonal. They're amenable to favoritism and the echo chamber effect. You can't interrupt somebody in the middle of a soapbox lecture to ask for clarification or offer counter-arguments. The atomic unit of discussion is the paragraph, at best, and your audience numbers in the hundreds. Basically, it's Permanent Debate Club. In my experience, people in the real world are far more kind and open even when discussing the most controversial of topics.

wbillingsley 11y ago
I disagree. I think it has a great deal to do with part of western society -- particularly, the rhetorical strategies that social movements of the left have deliberately adopted. Sure enough, just about anyone can get caught in the idea "Well, if my opponent thought about it, then surely they'd agree with me. They don't agree with me, so therefore they're not thinking people, and I need to use something other than reason to make them change their mind." But the difference is that the left are currently much more willing then to apply theories of social norms instead of arguments. Terms such as "climate denier", "evolution denier", "free-thinker" (you wouldn't want to disagree with our opinion on religion, and show you're not a free thinker, now would you?), etc, were coined deliberately for rhetorical effect. Similarly, social movements on the left are usually quicker to play the game of rhetorical escalation. Can I find some rhetoric by which to portray my opponent's opinion as "sexist" or "ignorant"? So that regardless of what their reasoning is, the pressure to avoid being socially viewed as ignorant is an incentive for them to change their mind.
- archagon 11y ago
  The same exact thing happens on the other side with words like "SJW". It's fairly idiomatic of internet rhetoric in general, and it's bad news for reasoned debate. Most of my friends are very liberal, and literally none of them use this kind of rhetoric in real life. I'm convinced it's an emergent property of internet discussion, not an intentional strategy (for the most part).