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When you are responding to a ridiculous take on something you are familiar with, you aren't necessarily engaging with the author. I think you are 1) providing r
by cm2187 4y ago
When you are responding to a ridiculous take on something you are familiar with, you aren't necessarily engaging with the author. I think you are 1) providing readers with a more useful angle, and 2) not giving the wrong impression to a candid reader that this take is somehow a consensus.
If it was in a 1:1 online conversation, I agree, it would be mostly pointless. But a forum is more like a public debate (provided the audience is an audience you vaguely care about).
- fullmoon 4y agoYou’re also most likely doing it because you’re getting something out of it: You’re exhibiting your own knowledge, you’re looking for validation, or want to demonstrate your own superior morals. I don’t mean you in particular, but sentences with “one most likely…” are rather hard to read IMO.
- johnisgood 4y agoDo you think most users here post comments for those reasons?
- guerrilla 4y agoImproving the world is getting something out of it. That's in one's own interest by itself.
- bityard 4y agoI would like to hear more about your thesis that arguing with people you don't know on the internet improves the world. :)
- guerrilla 4y agoI don't appreciate the sarcasm but I think it's obvious that you improve the world by, for example, correcting falsehoods and criticizing bad behavior, not because it effects the target (although I suppose there's a tiny chance it might), but for the rest of the audience, some of who may not know better or just may not have even considered it beforehand. Every little bit counts.
- LastTrain 4y agoDo you think a tight election could be swayed by the actions of people online? Do you not think what people do online influences the decisions of politicians and policymakers? Unfortunately, engaging online is intertwined with the political process at this point.
- dTal 4y agoWe already did this bit. From the top of this chain: >I think you are 1) providing readers with a more useful angle, and 2) not giving the wrong impression to a candid reader that this take is somehow a consensus.
- lisper 4y agoOr, somewhat less pejoratively, you want to advance a hypothesis to see if it will stand up to public scrutiny.
- raattgift 4y agoIf the intent to advance a hypothesis for public scrutiny was declared explicitly, indicating the basis for forming the hypothesis (or where it was found, if not originated by the hypothesis-advancer), then I think there would be interactions with experts rather than an avalanche of non-experts repeating slogans (with no indication of how or where they found the adage). That sort of transparency may make the difference among a set of choices including "that's so ridiculous it's not worth replying", "that's ridiculous but maybe both parties (and other readers) might learn something from the discussion of why it's ridiculous", and "we can take this seemingly-ridiculous hypothesis somewhat seriously and determine where and how it goes wrong, and whether a more formal exploration (in the sense of 'write it up as something approaching a draft paper') might be fruitful". Experts can learn in a good faith ELI5/ELI12/ELI25 discussion, sometimes about their own field (e.g. the expert might arrive at some personally-useful intuition while explaining some technical procedure), but more often about how to communicate more effectively with nonexperts. More pejoratively, advancing an unusual hypothesis in a field that one does not understand, leaning on a third-party idea that one does not disclose, and treating the unusual hypothesis as requiring disproof is unlikely to be fairly described as "good faith".
- lisper 4y agoBut the scientific method applies to all aspects of life, not just science-y things. When I wrote "Or... you [might] want to advance a hypothesis to see if it will stand up to public scrutiny" I was actually doing just that: advancing a hypothesis to see if it would stand up to scrutiny, specifically, the hypothesis that one reason one might engage in a discussion on the internet is to advance a hypothesis to see if it will stand up to scrutiny. (So far, so good.)
- escapedmoose 4y ago
- ETH_start 4y ago[flagged]
- null_object 4y ago[dead]
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoI had to chuckle and then felt sad that you wrote one of the few meaningful comments - one that wasn't some sort of joke or the 10000th repost of an xkcd - and promptly got downvotes for it. That's definitely also why some of us comment. Why we have to even though we might not feel like it. https://i.imgur.com/yE6kV9y.jpg https://i.imgur.com/yE6kV9y.jpg
- isitmadeofglass 4y ago[dead]
- goodpoint 4y ago> exhibiting your own knowledge, you’re looking for validation, or want to demonstrate your own superior morals. Speak for yourself please. On most forums nobody is going to praise another for their knowledge. Additionally most people are anonymous.
- e1g 4y agoAll popular internet discussion places are built on likes, upvotes, and other superfluous praise signals.
- k__ 4y agoYes, if the internet of today is about anything, it's about people getting praise for something.
- sneak 4y agoMost, sure. But I have learned more from astoundingly good HN comments over the last dozen years than any other site on the internet. I love that our local celebrities, as such, are such not for battle but for their euclididation.
- bumby 4y agoThere seems to be quite a bit of behavioral and evolutionary psychology that claims all actions are initiated by emotions. So the emotional payoff is the real driver, even when people pretend to be above the non-virtuous fray (which is itself a status signaling mechanism with an emotionally validating payoff)
- zahrc 4y agoThat’s a very… nihilistic view. I don’t get anything from this comment, apart from killing 2 minutes while on the loo.
- dTal 4y agoResponding to this cynical take will quickly devolve into an argument about whether altruism is "real", so let's skip to the end where we agree that however this tendency evolved, people do in fact do things with no intrinsic motivation beyond making the world a better place.
- spacemadness 4y agoMaybe this is a good use of AI for auto moderation. Save everyone time rehashing the same argument path for recognized arguments by providing the conclusion that the discussion is ultimately leading to. Seems like a good fit for a Black Mirror episode.
- dTal 4y agoHumans are perfectly good at recognizing rehashed arguments without the need for AI. The difficulty is that the current crop of social media platforms focus on ephemeral discussion and provide poor tools for "linking" a discussion to an isomorphic one that happened earlier. The incentive structure is such that they would rather you go ahead and rehash the argument. Yay, engagement!
- miguelgrinberg 4y agoWhat few people understand is that by responding you are also elevating the engagement score of the ridiculous take and ensuring it gets in front of many more eyes.
- wellanyway 4y agoYep. Especially if the reply is a video reaction. Like, congratulations, you are giving platform to the worst things you could find out there.
- pohl 4y agoThis heavily depends on which forum one is on, and is therefore not true in general.
- watwut 4y agoWe used to have "don't feed the trolls" mantra and the things indeed were more peaceful. The people opposing what trolls said were blamed more then trolls themselves. And what they said was minimized with "he is just edgy". What we got in exchange is that trolls convinced fair amount of people. They opinions were th Those who opposed them were consistently blamed.
- antifa 4y agoI'm pretty sure the reason not to feed the trolls was because the moderators were around the corner and would be inconvenienced by having to moderate a large flamewar rather than ban a single ignored troll.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoAsch's Conformity Study proved the effect of having just one extra voice stand for the truth. This effect is stronger than most people think, which is why totalitarian governments, and those aspiring to get there, employ botnets and resort to shadowbanning etc. Keep standing up for the truth, you help others overcome peer pressure!
- ruszki 4y agoI think the main problem is currently, that this works also the other way around.
- jrm4 4y ago100% I'd say the primary reason to post on a forum is so that other people see it. It's funny when I get spicy somewhere and then the person tries to lecture me on "maybe I should say my point nicer so the person I'm arguing against is more likely to change their mind," as if that were the primary goal.
- starkd 4y agoWhat if the primary reason is not about your own visibility, but what you can learn from other commentators. Not accusing you of egomania, but expecting your voice to matter in such forums might unnecessarily feed your ego.
- jrm4 4y agoSure, that's part of it. I'm not saying I'm posting then running away in victory. Always appreciate challenges too.
- ecf 4y ago> 1) providing readers with a more useful angle, and 2) not giving the wrong impression to a candid reader that this take is somehow a consensus. Too bad Reddit is an echo chamber these days where you’ll be downvoted into auto-deletion in all but the smallest subreddits.
- spacemadness 4y agoIt’s always been an echo chamber. It’s just a louder one now that it has finally hit mass appeal. That said, HN definitely has its own echo chamber like qualities depending on the topic. I don’t know that you can avoid that on a site using an upvote/downvote system.
- synu 4y agoI used to think this, but I am almost certain I was wrong. It really just didn't matter at all what I did or didn't do, and there are already so many people grandstanding to each other all the time that it's just more noise on the noise pile. Now I try to avoid it and focus on more interesting things. Anyway, I think people who say dumb things on the internet suffer much more for not getting attention than being corrected.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gruez 4y ago>and there are already so many people grandstanding to each other all the time that it's just more noise on the noise pile. This is true to an extent. If you're in a 500 comment thread, and the point you want to make has already been made by a few other people, there's little point in dogpiling in yourself. However, this isn't always true. If you're adding new information/perspectives, I don't see how that's "just more noise on the noise pile".
- synu 4y agoTo me it just seems like everybody talking past each other, that this supposed silent majority of people passively observing and waiting to be convinced by the most reasonable argument simply doesn't exist, or barely does. Your mileage may vary, but this has been my experience.
- escapedmoose 4y agoHow would you be able to tell whether the silent population is there or not? I can understand how this could be your “theory,” but not your “experience.”
- synu 4y agoMy experience is nobody from the massive silent population has ever jumped in to introduce themselves and say they were convinced, and I've never met anyone in real life who says they use forums but don't post just to be convinced by arguments on the internet to choose one worldview or another. From that experience I developed the theory that they don't actually exist. But anyway, debating the semantic difference between theory and experience seems to be missing the point.
- starkd 4y agoThings change alot when your main objective is not about convincing other people they are wrong, but just appreciating the ability to participate in a conversation. We all want to influence other people's ideas, but their are severe limits to that. Sometimes simply adding your voice to the conversation is enough of a statement in that it lets everyone know that not everyone agrees, and that there are reasonable alternate takes.