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I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpret

I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question? Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are there.

MereInterest 5y ago
What you are calling direct clarification can instead be deliberate misinformation. Should we consider North Korea to be a democracy because their official name includes "democratic"?
- forgingahead 5y ago
  The opposite can also be true - if I said I met MereInterest in real life and you were behaving badly (shouting at wait staff and so on), and you claimed you were not, who should be believed? If I wanted to slander someone, believing me, the accuser, over you, the accused, is a good way to break societal trust since nothing can be believed any more.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Well, besides the well-known fact that all countries with $adjective in the name aren't really $adjective... ... then yes, as a general principle, we should take people at face value on the Internet, unless there's a clear reason to do otherwise - which could be a reason to confront the person about their statements. Quite a lot of dysfunction in Internet (and increasingly, offline too) discourse comes from "they say X, but what they really mean is Y" pattern of thinking.
jacquesm 5y ago
> I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. I see this kind of remark every now and then and I interpret it as 'when we agree I like what you write but when we don't you must be wrong'.
- forgingahead 5y ago
  So let me be crystal clear then: You post good comments generally, usually with articulation on your position and reasoning behind it. In this case, you handwave the question away with "it's not that simple" but don't make any attempt to engage with the reason behind it. You certainly don't need to engage with every comment made online, but my surprise comes from the lack of articulation on this issue. I am happy to learn and expand my own knowledge where possible. I won't however take certain assertions at face value, especially those that cast aspersions (esp. accusations of Nazism) in an environment whereby it's easy to throw people into a Kakfa trap, accusing them of being racist, sexist, misogynist, or some other piece of slander, without any proper evidence behind it other than personal opinion and interpretation.

MereInterest 5y ago

What you are calling direct clarification can instead be deliberate misinformation. Should we consider North Korea to be a democracy because their official name includes "democratic"?

forgingahead 5y ago
The opposite can also be true - if I said I met MereInterest in real life and you were behaving badly (shouting at wait staff and so on), and you claimed you were not, who should be believed? If I wanted to slander someone, believing me, the accuser, over you, the accused, is a good way to break societal trust since nothing can be believed any more.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Well, besides the well-known fact that all countries with $adjective in the name aren't really $adjective... ... then yes, as a general principle, we should take people at face value on the Internet, unless there's a clear reason to do otherwise - which could be a reason to confront the person about their statements. Quite a lot of dysfunction in Internet (and increasingly, offline too) discourse comes from "they say X, but what they really mean is Y" pattern of thinking.

jacquesm 5y ago

> I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. I see this kind of remark every now and then and I interpret it as 'when we agree I like what you write but when we don't you must be wrong'.

forgingahead 5y ago
So let me be crystal clear then: You post good comments generally, usually with articulation on your position and reasoning behind it. In this case, you handwave the question away with "it's not that simple" but don't make any attempt to engage with the reason behind it. You certainly don't need to engage with every comment made online, but my surprise comes from the lack of articulation on this issue. I am happy to learn and expand my own knowledge where possible. I won't however take certain assertions at face value, especially those that cast aspersions (esp. accusations of Nazism) in an environment whereby it's easy to throw people into a Kakfa trap, accusing them of being racist, sexist, misogynist, or some other piece of slander, without any proper evidence behind it other than personal opinion and interpretation.