3 ms·
“Never debate stupid. Bystanders will not distinguish between your salient words and your own. They’ll just see two seemingly educated people arguing and assume
by ianai 4y ago
“Never debate stupid. Bystanders will not distinguish between your salient words and your own. They’ll just see two seemingly educated people arguing and assume their points are equally valid.“
People respond most often and vehemently to what they disagree with on the internet. It’s a guttural response and not grounded in level headed thinking.
- guerrilla 4y ago> “Never debate stupid. Bystanders will not distinguish between your salient words and your own. They’ll just see two seemingly educated people arguing and assume their points are equally valid.“ This is foolish because if you just let things stand, then they see only one seemingly educated person making an equally valid point, rather than two, which is worse. Like in this example right now, I could have let your point stand and not corrected it, then a lot of people would have taken it to heart rather than reconsidering like some are as they read this.
- jason-phillips 4y agoI think you actually just illustrated and proved his point for him, in fact. However, now I've just made myself a hypocrite and broken my own self-similar rule to never respond to or debate with stupid.
- guerrilla 4y agoThey made two points. One is incorrect and the other is irrelevant, which is my point.
- roncesvalles 4y agoThis is incorrect.
- ianai 4y agoIt’s foolish if taken too far, I think, but useful often. The trouble is even if outright false claims are responded to with a Wikipedia or news article (and possibly nothing further), with a large enough audience, the proponents of the falsehood will eventually try to subvert that Wikipedia or news article.
- QuadmasterXLII 4y agoThe 2016 elections were basically contests between “dont feed the trolls” and “only volume matters, feel free to be shitty and unhinged as long as you’re vocal.” Tragically but understandably, all sides have copied the winning strategy.
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y agoI don’t really agree that democrats have been shitty and unhinged. I mean, Jan 6, mass book banning, and the latest Republican inability to select a speaker of the house all come off as way more unhinged than anything democrats have done in a similar period of time. What’m I missing?
- Levitz 4y agoBeing a usual on Reddit would have allowed you to enjoy several headlines of Trump daring to take two scoops of icecream, concentration camps and mass hysterectomies at the border, several conspiracies about blackmail with a video of prostitutes pissing on Trump and a whole lot of absurd stuff about Russia and social networks I won't even dive in. I will add Rittenhouse being called a white supremacist by Biden though.
- QuadmasterXLII 4y agoYou’re talking about the actions of legislators and leaders, where there is a massive difference in decorum, imho because on the republican side the inmates are running the asylum. I was more talking about the posting strategy of your average redditor or god forbid twitter user
- Joeri 4y agoThat view gives very little credit to bystanders. If people really are unable to see multiple arguments and choose the smarter, we may as well put a cross over democracy, because elections hinge on them doing exactly that.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoDemocracy is about making decision making reflect the self-interest of as big of a group as possible, not making smart decisions.
- Aunche 4y agoThis is only true if you're talking about some sort of fringe view like flat earth theory. Once a stupid view reaches a critical mass of popularity, even people capable of rational thought will start to believe in it unless if they see evidence that contradicts it.