I disagree -- or, I did. See, in real life, courtesy and avoiding criticism is the most effective way to start a discussion without resulting in an argument. H

I disagree -- or, I did. See, in real life, courtesy and avoiding criticism is the most effective way to start a discussion without resulting in an argument. However, I've concluded that on the Internet there is no such thing as a good discussion (oh no, a universal statement! Well, let's say there aren't very many good discussions). Perhaps this is due to the vast amount of research material easily accessible to online debaters -- there is no incentive to work together with another individual to come to a conclusion, since the conclusions can be more easily found elsewhere. Instead, people write things like my diatribe here to "correct" perceived mistakes in others' statements but in the end someone is right and the other is wrong and compromise basically never occurs. In such a situation, the best thing you can do is make sure that you're the person who is right. Whether you couch your opinion in pandering terms or you state it harshly, the only thing that seems to matter is correctness. It's no longer worth my time to continually attempt to be polite and kind in internet discussion. tl;dr you're right about that.