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> Most people have abandoned discourse and given up on having hard conversations. I agree that the lack of hard conversations is a problem, although I'm not su

> Most people have abandoned discourse and given up on having hard conversations. I agree that the lack of hard conversations is a problem, although I'm not sure how much people have given it up versus just never did it at all with strangers, whom computers now thrust them in virtual proximity to. But again, I don't think the problem is with the people blocking. I think it's with the propagandists and the purposeful jerks. I think blocking is a fine response to encountering somebody who is not only uninterested in reason, but will be a pain in the ass as they try to silence any opposition to their views. Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd. [1] > do you have an elevator pitch for the insights in the book? I think the book's value is mainly to people of an analytical bent. Her goal is partly what philosophers call ameliorative, meaning she's trying to sort through the many things that get called "misogyny" and come up with a productive definition for it. As part of that, she gives both a useful theoretical structure (especially valuable to me is her framing of misogyny as the enforcement arm of sexism, as well as her look at who is "owed" what and how people behave when those expectations are violated) and a lot of nuanced examinations of examples. I had no problem spotting open misogyny, but there were a lot of more subtle, stochastic examples that I only saw as a pattern after reading her book. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steven-crowders-change-my-mind-campus-sign https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steven-crowders-change-my-min...

haswell 3y ago
> Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd. I held this view for a long time, but anecdotally, people who disagree with me in person are generally willing to have a good faith conversation about it. I rarely encounter the "change my mind" (with no intention of doing so) type of individual outside of popular social media platforms, and don't think the attitude is as prevalent as Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc would lead us to believe. Over time I've come to believe that there are really two versions of this crowd: - People who generally mean well but are aligned with groups that propagate questionable or bad ideas. These people will change their mind, or at least expand their understanding of other views, but are often discarded as hopeless due to their association with that crowd. - People who do not mean well, do not engage in good faith, and intentionally foment discord. I believe this is a small percentage who have been enabled by the megaphone that is the Internet, and their bad behavior locks the first group into a dangerous situation. I generally won't engage with this latter group, but I do think there's value/importance in leaving behind well-reasoned arguments for people from group 1 who find discussion threads later. I generally don't believe I'll change the mind of the person writing the comment in that moment, but think the comment is still important for the reasonable-but-unsure people who encounter it later, for the future training of LLMs, etc. In the marketplace of ideas, I think continuing to spread good ones is important. I may be too idealistic/optimistic, but I tend to think "life's too short" will turn into "the world is no longer livable" if taken to the extreme. I'm not preaching that others should do the same, and I don't really know what the right answer is or if taking this stance is helping. I still think quitting social media is probably the best solution, but I don't think it's a solution many people are willing to consider. Thanks for sharing the additional info about the book. This does sound interesting/useful.
- wpietri 3y ago
  Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "'change my mind' crowd" I'm referring to is absolutely your group 3, or what I referred to as "the propagandists and the purposeful jerks". They're people acting the same way that Sartre was criticizing here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-anti-semites-are-completely-unaware-of-the-absurdity https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-... Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper. Yes, to the extent that you can use a bad-faith actor to show something to a broader crowd, they can be useful. I do plenty of that here. But a) on social media, that's rarely the case, in that few see arguments down in the reply chains, b) any actual points they have will get discussed by more persuadable interlocutors, and c) one can find and address those points without platforming or elevating the jerks in question. So if you want to engage with the jerks as part of your own personal quest, go for it. I sometimes do. But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online, and that people who have a block-on-site strategy are making good and reasonable choices, especially when they are the regular target of historical inequities that you and I don't face.
  - haswell 3y ago
    > And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper. I don't question that. My point was that the Internet magnifies it. It's far easier to encounter that type of individual now than at any other point in history. > But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online To be clear, this was not my claim, and I should have made that more clear. My point was that the instinct to block and the default assumption of bad faith is at the heart of the problems (and as I acknowledged, it's just one of many). My point was that people block other people without even considering whether the question was in good/bad faith, and assume bad faith based on the existence of any disagreement. You can find this happening from all ideological viewpoints across social media. When it's antisemitism, it's obviously bad behavior. It's why places like HN still have pockets of decent discussion. Assuming good faith is encoded into the rules, which often reveals that disagreements are caused by an incomplete understanding of the other, rather than actual bad behavior. I couldn't have raised the points I raised in this thread on a place like Twitter without getting lambasted by people claiming I hate women, or support groping, or somesuch. I'm all for blocking bad-faith actors and I do my flagging duty here when needed.

haswell 3y ago

> Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd. I held this view for a long time, but anecdotally, people who disagree with me in person are generally willing to have a good faith conversation about it. I rarely encounter the "change my mind" (with no intention of doing so) type of individual outside of popular social media platforms, and don't think the attitude is as prevalent as Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc would lead us to believe. Over time I've come to believe that there are really two versions of this crowd: - People who generally mean well but are aligned with groups that propagate questionable or bad ideas. These people will change their mind, or at least expand their understanding of other views, but are often discarded as hopeless due to their association with that crowd. - People who do not mean well, do not engage in good faith, and intentionally foment discord. I believe this is a small percentage who have been enabled by the megaphone that is the Internet, and their bad behavior locks the first group into a dangerous situation. I generally won't engage with this latter group, but I do think there's value/importance in leaving behind well-reasoned arguments for people from group 1 who find discussion threads later. I generally don't believe I'll change the mind of the person writing the comment in that moment, but think the comment is still important for the reasonable-but-unsure people who encounter it later, for the future training of LLMs, etc. In the marketplace of ideas, I think continuing to spread good ones is important. I may be too idealistic/optimistic, but I tend to think "life's too short" will turn into "the world is no longer livable" if taken to the extreme. I'm not preaching that others should do the same, and I don't really know what the right answer is or if taking this stance is helping. I still think quitting social media is probably the best solution, but I don't think it's a solution many people are willing to consider. Thanks for sharing the additional info about the book. This does sound interesting/useful.

wpietri 3y ago
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "'change my mind' crowd" I'm referring to is absolutely your group 3, or what I referred to as "the propagandists and the purposeful jerks". They're people acting the same way that Sartre was criticizing here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-anti-semites-are-completely-unaware-of-the-absurdity https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-... Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper. Yes, to the extent that you can use a bad-faith actor to show something to a broader crowd, they can be useful. I do plenty of that here. But a) on social media, that's rarely the case, in that few see arguments down in the reply chains, b) any actual points they have will get discussed by more persuadable interlocutors, and c) one can find and address those points without platforming or elevating the jerks in question. So if you want to engage with the jerks as part of your own personal quest, go for it. I sometimes do. But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online, and that people who have a block-on-site strategy are making good and reasonable choices, especially when they are the regular target of historical inequities that you and I don't face.
- haswell 3y ago
  > And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper. I don't question that. My point was that the Internet magnifies it. It's far easier to encounter that type of individual now than at any other point in history. > But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online To be clear, this was not my claim, and I should have made that more clear. My point was that the instinct to block and the default assumption of bad faith is at the heart of the problems (and as I acknowledged, it's just one of many). My point was that people block other people without even considering whether the question was in good/bad faith, and assume bad faith based on the existence of any disagreement. You can find this happening from all ideological viewpoints across social media. When it's antisemitism, it's obviously bad behavior. It's why places like HN still have pockets of decent discussion. Assuming good faith is encoded into the rules, which often reveals that disagreements are caused by an incomplete understanding of the other, rather than actual bad behavior. I couldn't have raised the points I raised in this thread on a place like Twitter without getting lambasted by people claiming I hate women, or support groping, or somesuch. I'm all for blocking bad-faith actors and I do my flagging duty here when needed.