I think this is true but hardly surprising. The average participant in an argument on the Internet is interested not in the truth but in winning. Who wins an In

I think this is true but hardly surprising. The average participant in an argument on the Internet is interested not in the truth but in winning. Who wins an Internet argument is thought by that participant to be decided by the audience, which is less clever than the debaters and wants quick, emotionally satisfying resolutions. It is therefore a winning strategy for him or her to ignore nuance and instead attack straw men and try to humiliate the opponent. Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreement is inverted on Twitter. Thinking about this long enough makes large-scale democracy very scary because it operates in the same terms on the same media.