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> Anyone who has spent time arguing on social media has heard of the straw man fallacy. I think the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media. It is a

> Anyone who has spent time arguing on social media has heard of the straw man fallacy. I think the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media. It is a setup for dehumanizing and vilifying the other. I think most arguments on social media are about snark and signaling to your own tribe how smart you are more than actually trying to understand the truth or convince people holding a different view. Conversations among friends over a beer are much more likely to enlightening and possibly persuasive.

teddyh 4y ago
The lines between real life and social media are blurring. You hear more and more commonly about people cutting all ties with old friends or even family members about relatively simple things. It’s a more accepted thing to do now – complete ostracism of those who we disagree with – instead of trying to find common ground.
- Kye 4y ago
  It often turns out the person who got cut off was a giant asshole who 100% deserved it. You might not have sufficient visibility into the experience of the person who cut someone off to judge their actions fairly. You see this a lot in people whose kids have cut off contact. From their perspective, the cutting off was sudden and shocking. From their kid's perspective, it was the last-ditch effort to reclaim autonomy and preserve sanity after a lifetime of abuse and endless attempts to set boundaries and seek change. An outside observer is missing key details.
  - teddyh 4y ago
    I believe that the percieved threshold of “giant asshole who 100% deserved it” is lowering.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Perhaps dependencies are being reduced. “Cutting off” is harder when you depend, or might need to depend on someone, assuming they have something of use for you.
      - teddyh 4y ago
        But did something happen to make people vastly less dependent in, say, the last five years?
    - Kye 4y ago
      Whether the social stability that came with people putting up with or excusing more abuse and general toxicity was worth more than the dynamism that comes from more people feeling free to build supportive circles is something society is likely to wrestle with over the coming decades. Anecdotally, every person I know who's cut off people who were harmful to them has found more fulfillment even if things are harder for them. Like chosen family, chosen struggle seems to be easier to live with than a struggle that thrives on disempowerment. The threshold was high because people didn't believe they had a choice before.
      - teddyh 4y ago
        Of course, you could be right. However, an alternative explanation is: 1. The threshold of what constitutes “abuse and general toxicity” has lowered significantly, giving people social tacit permission to ostracize others for lesser and lesser perceived offenses. 2. People always think that discarding something is good, and that they are better off without it, immediately after having discarded it. People naturally want to be able to blame all their problems on a single source, and after they have gotten rid of it, they quite obviously believe their lives to be better in every way. Of course, the worse the thing they discarded was, the more correct they are in their belief, but if they are entirely correct can not be known until much later.
        Kye 4y ago
        1 is fine if the threshold was too high. People are ultimately free to associate with whoever consents to that association without justifying it to outside observers, or to the confused newly disassociated. 2 might be the case, but people can certainly have a sense that something is wrong. It could turn out they made the wrong call in trying to resolve that feeling, but my ancedata tells me this is vanishingly rare. I get the feeling my anecdata samples a larger portion of the people who pruned their connections to make room for growth, while your anecdata samples a larger portion of people who were cut off. I've already heard quite a bit from the latter and don't find their defenses compelling, so I'm still not convinced this is a serious problem.
        4y ago
rendall 4y ago
> the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media This approach could be used in meatspace, too. And, like it or not, our lives are increasingly being spent online.
heresie-dabord 4y ago
> most arguments on social media are... ... detached from any real trust system. "Social media" is not social. As a business, it is the monetisation of strife. As an exchange of ideas, social media is (as you say) mostly people flinging words at one another. To be "social", participants in social media would need to manifest commitment to real solutions and people would be accountable for their words and deeds. This is how human society works. There are social consequences in real social exchange. It is a trust system. I propose that the reason why we hear of people's long-time friendships and family ties collapsing is because those social ties have simply become weak. The pretext for the rupture doesn't much matter. > To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable version of your opponent’s argument, but also with the most charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their good intentions and your shared desires despite your disagreements. This is an excellent approach. But it depends on the trust system of real society.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  It's also the case that that social trust and those social ties have been weakened, intentionally over the last four or five decades, to produce a "post-political" system of governance. Margaret Thatcher famously said, "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." It wasn't true when she said it, but thanks to her and the other architects of neoliberalism, it is true now.
  - heresie-dabord 4y ago
    "There is no such thing as society. There are the plutocrats, and a large human economic sacrifice zone for the plutocrats to exploit." It's a grim, reductionist view of society as a construct for wealth, and general happiness only if the latter does not impede the acculumation of the former.
jimkleiber 4y ago
I think an underlying mega conflict in online communication is sharing more than we want to share, or at least it has been one plaguing me over the years. I don't think social media communication has to be dehumanizing, I think it comes into how much do I share about how I'm actually feeling and my actual identity on the internet where hundreds if not thousands or millions of people might see it? And yet it can be soooo easy to share on the internet, from our phone or computer, just talking/typing into the screen, at almost any time and any place? So then I do think it can come into "how do I pretend to be cool and superhuman...so that people don't know too much about me?" In a conversation with a friend over a beer, one might open up about why they hate inflation because they think they might lose their job and they're afraid if they lose their job, their wive and kids might leave them. I bet that's the real underlying reason for that person, yet on the internet, that same person might say that evil bankers are trying to destroy us with inflation because who admits to being afraid they're going to lose their life on the internet, with their name attached?

teddyh 4y ago

The lines between real life and social media are blurring. You hear more and more commonly about people cutting all ties with old friends or even family members about relatively simple things. It’s a more accepted thing to do now – complete ostracism of those who we disagree with – instead of trying to find common ground.

Kye 4y ago
It often turns out the person who got cut off was a giant asshole who 100% deserved it. You might not have sufficient visibility into the experience of the person who cut someone off to judge their actions fairly. You see this a lot in people whose kids have cut off contact. From their perspective, the cutting off was sudden and shocking. From their kid's perspective, it was the last-ditch effort to reclaim autonomy and preserve sanity after a lifetime of abuse and endless attempts to set boundaries and seek change. An outside observer is missing key details.
- teddyh 4y ago
  I believe that the percieved threshold of “giant asshole who 100% deserved it” is lowering.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Perhaps dependencies are being reduced. “Cutting off” is harder when you depend, or might need to depend on someone, assuming they have something of use for you.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      But did something happen to make people vastly less dependent in, say, the last five years?
  - Kye 4y ago
    Whether the social stability that came with people putting up with or excusing more abuse and general toxicity was worth more than the dynamism that comes from more people feeling free to build supportive circles is something society is likely to wrestle with over the coming decades. Anecdotally, every person I know who's cut off people who were harmful to them has found more fulfillment even if things are harder for them. Like chosen family, chosen struggle seems to be easier to live with than a struggle that thrives on disempowerment. The threshold was high because people didn't believe they had a choice before.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Of course, you could be right. However, an alternative explanation is: 1. The threshold of what constitutes “abuse and general toxicity” has lowered significantly, giving people social tacit permission to ostracize others for lesser and lesser perceived offenses. 2. People always think that discarding something is good, and that they are better off without it, immediately after having discarded it. People naturally want to be able to blame all their problems on a single source, and after they have gotten rid of it, they quite obviously believe their lives to be better in every way. Of course, the worse the thing they discarded was, the more correct they are in their belief, but if they are entirely correct can not be known until much later.
      - Kye 4y ago
        1 is fine if the threshold was too high. People are ultimately free to associate with whoever consents to that association without justifying it to outside observers, or to the confused newly disassociated. 2 might be the case, but people can certainly have a sense that something is wrong. It could turn out they made the wrong call in trying to resolve that feeling, but my ancedata tells me this is vanishingly rare. I get the feeling my anecdata samples a larger portion of the people who pruned their connections to make room for growth, while your anecdata samples a larger portion of people who were cut off. I've already heard quite a bit from the latter and don't find their defenses compelling, so I'm still not convinced this is a serious problem.
        4y ago

rendall 4y ago

> the main issue is the folly of arguing on social media This approach could be used in meatspace, too. And, like it or not, our lives are increasingly being spent online.

heresie-dabord 4y ago

> most arguments on social media are... ... detached from any real trust system. "Social media" is not social. As a business, it is the monetisation of strife. As an exchange of ideas, social media is (as you say) mostly people flinging words at one another. To be "social", participants in social media would need to manifest commitment to real solutions and people would be accountable for their words and deeds. This is how human society works. There are social consequences in real social exchange. It is a trust system. I propose that the reason why we hear of people's long-time friendships and family ties collapsing is because those social ties have simply become weak. The pretext for the rupture doesn't much matter. > To star-man is to not only engage with the most charitable version of your opponent’s argument, but also with the most charitable version of your opponent, by acknowledging their good intentions and your shared desires despite your disagreements. This is an excellent approach. But it depends on the trust system of real society.

NoGravitas 4y ago
It's also the case that that social trust and those social ties have been weakened, intentionally over the last four or five decades, to produce a "post-political" system of governance. Margaret Thatcher famously said, "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." It wasn't true when she said it, but thanks to her and the other architects of neoliberalism, it is true now.
- heresie-dabord 4y ago
  "There is no such thing as society. There are the plutocrats, and a large human economic sacrifice zone for the plutocrats to exploit." It's a grim, reductionist view of society as a construct for wealth, and general happiness only if the latter does not impede the acculumation of the former.

jimkleiber 4y ago

I think an underlying mega conflict in online communication is sharing more than we want to share, or at least it has been one plaguing me over the years. I don't think social media communication has to be dehumanizing, I think it comes into how much do I share about how I'm actually feeling and my actual identity on the internet where hundreds if not thousands or millions of people might see it? And yet it can be soooo easy to share on the internet, from our phone or computer, just talking/typing into the screen, at almost any time and any place? So then I do think it can come into "how do I pretend to be cool and superhuman...so that people don't know too much about me?" In a conversation with a friend over a beer, one might open up about why they hate inflation because they think they might lose their job and they're afraid if they lose their job, their wive and kids might leave them. I bet that's the real underlying reason for that person, yet on the internet, that same person might say that evil bankers are trying to destroy us with inflation because who admits to being afraid they're going to lose their life on the internet, with their name attached?