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I agree. I definitely stifle myself online more than I might in a small in-person group, or even a large group, for fear of negative reactions. For me, it's go

I agree. I definitely stifle myself online more than I might in a small in-person group, or even a large group, for fear of negative reactions. For me, it's got nothing to do with anonymity or some possible later repercussion; rather, it's being sensitive to short-term feedback. Effectively, the bandwidth of human communications through the internet is low and error-prone, and hence stressful for me to get my thoughts across. (It doesn't help that long-form replies -- which help me explain my ideas better -- have been grossly devalued.) Sadly, it's gotten worse in the last few years -- perhaps due to Facebook, or perhaps due to societal changes that opened the door to mediums like Facebook. I seem less and less capable of growing that thick skin that people always talk about...

mwfunk 10y ago
Agreed. IMO the biggest problem with online communication is that people don't realize how much ambiguity there is in language, or how easy it is to misread what people type into little boxes on web pages. Every tweet is like an underdetermined system of equations with infinitely many solutions (solution == what they really meant when they typed up the tweet, and everything else that readers project onto posters). Everyone has to choose how to interpret ambiguous statements all the time, and by nature our brains are more likely to choose interpretations that conform to our own expectations. We can create our own private echo chambers if we aren't careful, where we always interpret what people who are on "our side" say in the most charitable way possible, and we always interpret statements from opponents in terms of the biggest strawmen our brains can come up with. This is a pitfall of any sort of communication, but it seems to be a vastly greater danger with online communication. People tend to blame the lousiness of online communication on other people, and there's some truth to that, but I think it's just inherent in both the medium and human nature. In the long term I hope that digital mediums can evolve to support better communication and provide more fertile ground for more constructive discussions.

mwfunk 10y ago

Agreed. IMO the biggest problem with online communication is that people don't realize how much ambiguity there is in language, or how easy it is to misread what people type into little boxes on web pages. Every tweet is like an underdetermined system of equations with infinitely many solutions (solution == what they really meant when they typed up the tweet, and everything else that readers project onto posters). Everyone has to choose how to interpret ambiguous statements all the time, and by nature our brains are more likely to choose interpretations that conform to our own expectations. We can create our own private echo chambers if we aren't careful, where we always interpret what people who are on "our side" say in the most charitable way possible, and we always interpret statements from opponents in terms of the biggest strawmen our brains can come up with. This is a pitfall of any sort of communication, but it seems to be a vastly greater danger with online communication. People tend to blame the lousiness of online communication on other people, and there's some truth to that, but I think it's just inherent in both the medium and human nature. In the long term I hope that digital mediums can evolve to support better communication and provide more fertile ground for more constructive discussions.