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I've been reading the writings of stoic philosophers each morning and journaling about what I read and I think this fits in well with that philosophy. We're all

• cogman10 4mo ago
  > What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable? For me the goal is twofold. I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I know it's nearly impossible to convince someone you are arguing with. But also I do try and have an open mind. It's not common that I change my position, but it does happen. For example, I was once a climate change denier. It was debating with people online which caused me to reflect and change that position.
  • malfist 4mo ago
    > I'm arguing for the people reading the comment chain, not necessarily the commenter's sake. I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. All too often these days, folks are just engaging in point scoring type arguments and readers just agree with their tribe. Not saying it doesn't happen, nor that it's a good goal taken with care. But me personally the ROI just isn't there (your calculus is different, and that's okay!) A lot of times when I engage in arguments online, I think of it more as showing nuance to a person. I'm not trying to persuade them, I'm not trying to win, I'm just trying to show them that the problem space is a bit more complicated than their view is showing them. At least that's how I justify it to myself when I do engage. And of course, I'm no where close to perfect, I engage in petty point scoring arguments because it feels good at the time but isn't fruitful or healthy in the long run.
    • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online I do, and I have. I’ve also argued something with someone and come out the other side convinced of their position. (Sometimes immediately. More often down the road. Nevertheless, a valuable exchange.)
      • EvanAnderson 4mo ago
        A very similar experience here. Reading comment threads over the years has absolutely turned me on to perspectives I never even conceived of previously. I've reconsidered my positions (on political and technical matters, mainly) by reading the discourse in comment threads.
        • TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
          Sometimes I post to clarify my own position. Writing helps with that. There's a whole field of street epistemology which is about persuading people. Arguing with them is one of the least effective ways to do that. Socratic dialogue sometimes works, although for any belief that has an emotional root you're likely to hit a crash out point. It turns out the most effective techniques are manipulative. The best persuasion doesn't look like argument or persuasion, it looks like something self-evident you can't help agree with.
    • firesteelrain 4mo ago
      The only times it has helped is when I am researching something like say gardening or researching a product. I find the back and forth between people helpful in making my decision on what to do.
    • datsci_est_2015 4mo ago
      > I'm not sure people are reading comment chains deeply enough to be swayed by two strangers arguing online. Counterpoint, literally doing that right now in this thread as I’m considering the merits of online discourse in the context of stoicism.
  • juleiie 4mo ago
    Honestly if you change your opinion under effect of some online strangers then it wasn't a strong conviction in the first place
    • cogman10 4mo ago
      The online stranger's argument was convincing because they brought a lot of evidence from research papers to general climatologist opinions which completely debunked a lot of the talking points I'd used (without me exposing those in the conversation). It also made me go back on my own sources and question where they were coming from. Let's just say the anti climate change positions become a lot less convincing when you dig into their sourcing and find a large number of them literally funded by the likes of Koch industries or Glenn Beck's personal companies.
      • juleiie 4mo ago
        Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data. Data won’t help it at all. It’s available two clicks away, there is no shortage of it. People want to believe otherwise and you will never actually convince anyone on the internet using data on anything in 99% of the cases. Persuasion is an art and most of the people on the internet have no clue how to manipulate human mind to instil beliefs. I can give a short rundown on persuasion as non autistic individual actually having those skills: 1. Always say that you understand somebody point of view. Appear interested in what they have to say and respect their beliefs. 2. Intertwine few uncomfortable questions in their point of view, very gently and non argumentative. These are the seeds of doubt. You are a farmer it’s like gardening and watering a flower. You must be gentle with new sprouts of doubt. Tend to the garden of new beliefs and one day they will bear fruit.
        • cogman10 4mo ago
          > Climate change being anthropogenic is so easy to verify nowadays that when someone has contrary conviction it isn’t because they don’t know the data. I agree and this is true. But my opinion and position there shifted around 2010 or so. It's true the data was there and available in a few clicks. But I wasn't seeking it out and instead was relying on trusted sources that were lying to me. Now-a-days, though, even my parents are on board with climate change being real. It's just too apparent for anyone that can remember what the world was like 10 or 20 years ago.
• win311fwg 4mo ago
  > You don't better yourself by engaging in pointless squabbling Not always, but it is at least always entertainment. If the alternative you would have chosen is watching a mindless movie then you're no worse off. > and you don't enrich the other person or those around you by doing so. It is inherently a solitary activity. You are right that the likelihood of a bystander gaining anything from it is nearly zero, but there was never any reason to think they would. It was never about them. Squabbling, as you call it, happens so you can learn about yourself.
  • threethirtytwo 4mo ago
    Engage in arguments that decide the direction of a project.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
• mathieuh 4mo ago
  Check out the sceptic Sextus Empiricus. Hackett has a collection of his writings. Admittedly he was strongly opposed to the stoics as he considered them dogmatists, but at its heart scepticism is the idea that we should hold all arguments about non-evident things in suspension of judgement, because against any argument put forward we can balance an equally plausible argument. Instead, we should "turn our back upon the whole dispute and go back to talking and acting like a civilised, common-sensical man instead of a pedantic dogmatist". I personally wasn't too convinced by scepticism but it was an interesting read nevertheless and I did take some bits away from it.
  • malfist 4mo ago
    I will do that, thanks for the recommendation. Stoics are a mixed bag for me, I definitely had a better opinion of them before I actually read their works. Most of my journalling is about how blatantly obvious and non-helpful their writings often are, or how they miss the point. But there are certainly value in the general guidelines and they certainly have nuggets of value. I find they add flavor to my personal philosophy, but don't dictate it. After I get through my book of writings, I was planning on moving on to humanists and Camus.
• threethirtytwo 4mo ago
  The value is in the feeling of euphoria you get when dominating the other person by being unequivocally right. This isn’t philosophy. It’s biology. Every human feels good when this happens and millions of years of evolution has made most humans have feelings of euphoria when being right. The fact that this thread even exists speaks to the fact of the extremely high survival benefit this behavior confers onto a human. So the question is why is there a survival benefit to humans almost universally having these emotions after taking the action of arguing (and winning)? I think it’s more than just winning. You win in front of a crowd. And going in the technological direction you set and being more right then another heightens your value in the hierarchy. Your reputation in the crowd confers survival benefit to you and that is why arguing is in our genetics. No philosophical analysis can beat one from a scientific and logical perspective. But this begs the question why does this thread even exist? Why are there so many people against their own “programmed” nature of arguing? Because almost everyone who has “evolved” this trait also evolved the opposing trait of “agreeing” with that stoic philosophy. If you lose an argument your survival benefit goes down because your reputation goes down. Being wrong all the time makes you look like an idiot. So humans have dual opposing traits. We love to argue and we want to avoid it either. The push and pull between these two conflicts ultimately ends up in a singular decision that can go either way. That’s the ultimate meaning and reasoning behind all of this. What is the best strategy? Find a system that wins arguments. Engage in arguments where you can win and dominate. It’s not as attractive as the stoic philosophy but I came to this analysis via raw logic using the biological universal mechanism that affects us all and I believe that makes my view point much stronger then stoicism which was arrived at via a less comprehensive mode of reasoning. Boom.
  • jknoepfler 4mo ago
    Ease off the adderall bud. There's a lot of sloppy thinking in that post, starting with the pseudo-scientific framing in terms of evolutionary psychology... which is ironic given then ScIeNcE-bro tone... couched against an artificial and incorrect taxonomy of reason into "philosophical, logical and scientific"... in reality those are intersecting at times, orthogonal at others, and the devil is generally in the details... but it certainly doesn't make sense to impose some kind of juvenile "batman vs superman" power scaling hierarchy on top of them... The reduction of the results of an argument to a binary win/loss between two people is probably the most humorously absurd bit. There are many outcomes of an argument. Sometimes it pivots research in a fruitful direction. Sometimes it leads to compromise. Sometimes parties talk past one another. Sometimes it serves to create an artifact for later analysis/reflection. Sometimes it causes us to pause and re-evaluate before acting. Sometimes it plants a seed that bears fruit later. Sometimes it strengthens both parties by refining their respective views. Sometimes it wastes everyone's time and nothing valuable comes of it. Pursuit of knowledge or aligning action to truth isn't an arm-wrestling contest with winner-takes-all outcomes. That's just a silly framing that doesn't reflect reality, it's the kind of way you see the world of you aren't actually part of knowledge production and consume "debates" as influencer-slop from Ben Shapiro types. I argue with people all the time. At work, with friends. It's generally a form of productive commerce. I see things one way and have knowledge/strengths that I bring to bear through my perspective. Others have their own knowledge/strengths. Working together, we might build a scalable data system, prioritize a road map, design a better game, make food decisions at a restaurant, have an enlightening political conversation, improve a speedrun. Whatever, the ends are various. The means are often spirited debate, in which, generally, everybody wins. That's just kind of the first principal of macro economic theory, if you need a bro-system to cash things out into.
• lotsofpulp 4mo ago
  >They probably won't change their mind, and you're probably not going to either. If the outcome is foretold, what's the value produced from the effort? The outcome is not foretold. I have learned a lot from being corrected by someone who knows more than me or points out a fault in my assumptions/logic. I have also learned from seeing subject matter experts arguing with each other.
• mattw2121 4mo ago
  Do you have a recommendation to start reading about stoicism, but potentially not the early philosophers? A more modern text?
  • malfist 4mo ago
    Check out Ryan Holiday's books! There's the Daily Stoic that is a daily meditation on a stoic writing, one page to read and think about each day, and then there's also a journaling prompt one. I use the meditation book, and then often find Ryan Holiday's curation useful, but his trimming of context a bit too aggressive to give him the ability to put it all on one page, so I might read the source along with what is written there. Most of the stoic writings are letters and aren't super long. They're very approachable!
    • mattw2121 4mo ago
      Thank you!
• ikidd 4mo ago
  I waver between "I'm not going to convince anyone anyway, and they'll retreat to their echo chamber and be right back where they were" and "The world would be better if we fight for what's right, and speech is the only ethical way to do that". I'm tired, Boss...
• satvikpendem 4mo ago
  The goal is karma farming and the feeling of smug superiority over others, especially when they get downvoted or flagged and you don't.
• throw4847285 4mo ago
  Put me in the Nietzsche camp: stoicism is self-tyranny. It's a denial of feeling disguised as overcoming it.
• Aunche 4mo ago
  > What is the goal when you start arguing with someone online? Is that goal achievable? I'm sure this is some sort of confirmation bias, I've noticed fewer stupid talking points for topics where I argue about online. I doubt it has any impact in people's political beliefs, but people end up being slightly less ideological and more hedgey. IMO, establishment figures are too dismissive about engaging with the public because they think they're above it, but this is how you end up with DOGE laying off departments only to beg for them back. Also, honestly, I just enjoy the feeling of putting a dumb person in their place. Occasionally, I'm the dumb person, but I don't really mind that since I'm not really tied to any viewpoint. Being more informed also satisfies my mild superiority complex. Also, even if I don't learn from others, generally learn from the process of defining my arguments.