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).
Asch'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!
What 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.
We 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.
I'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.
I 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.
>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".
To 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.
How 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.”
My 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.
Not trying to debate semantics. I was hoping you had some data that showed the proportion of lurkers or something. Or maybe some survey where people answered whether they’d been convinced by reading others’ debates online. I’ve personally sought out online debates to help make my own judgments (without commenting), so I’m curious whether that’s really so uncommon.
You’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.
Responding 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.
Maybe 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.
Humans 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!
If 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".
But 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.
We 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.
Do 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.
I 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.
There 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)
I 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
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.
What 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.
Things 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.
It’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.
Eh, I tried to take that view but then I started hearing those wrong pithy responses reflected back at me via my real life friends, which showed that their campaign worked.
Now I don't argue to try to change the person's mind, but rather to plant the seed of critical thinking that may help an onlooker find the truth.
I absolutely understand your strategy and that there is a huge frustration to have such awful pithy ideas continue to spread.
One thing I'd like to offer though is a reminder of the quote "living well is the best revenge."
I deal with a lot of prima donna managers, technical persons, you name it, and it became a lot easier for me to just let things go when I realized the best thing I can do to counter the pithy/ridiculous notions they espouse was just to do my thing and be comfortable in what I do, say, think, and feel (regardless of the feeling).
It has an amazingly convincing effect on many without me having to write/say a single word, I am much less stressed as I don't feel a need to defend my thoughts and ideas, and I find my methods and ways far more simple and effective than those which are espoused by my colleagues. I don't insist that I'm right in every case or my strategies are right for everyone, I just focus on what is right for me. That it sends a strong message is simply a side-effect, albeit a positive one I think.
That only works if you are in a position that isn't negatively impacted (yet) by the permeation of specific ideas.
The conversation has, unsurprisingly, shifted slightly as inflation puts more people from your position into a position where not caring could eventually be life altering.
This is the way. You don't even have to argue, it's usually enough to confidently note that you disagree with the points being made. In a group setting, that's all it takes to prevent a false impression of consensus from emerging. In private settings, it can plant that seed of doubt.
Very rarely will anyone push you to justify your disagreement, and you absolutely don't need to engage if they do. In a friendly context you can say it's not worth arguing about, in a more adversarial context you can let the other person know you have no obligation to engage.
Take a note from the people who deprogram extremists or cult members. You won't get far if you argue with the person all the time, nor if you pretend they're right. You confidently tell them they're wrong on this one, make it clear this doesn't affect your opinion of them as a human being, and change the topic to something friendly. They have enough self-doubt to do the rest for you.
> They have enough self-doubt to do the rest for you
Realizing this works wonders. Often it’s enough to politely point out one or two factual errors. “I’m not invested enough in the topic to argue on it, but I do know that X is factually incorrect.” It’s non-confrontational, so it doesn’t put people on the defense. Plus it gives them a thread to pick at to unravel the inconsistencies with their own reasoning.
“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.
> “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.
It’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.
That 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.
The 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.
I 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?
You’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
Being 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.
This 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.
I was fortunate to learn this from pointless internet flamewars early in my life. Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument. On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy.
I think applying this has generally made me more successful outside of the Internet, too, by being more conscious about how I approach conflict. Unfortunately, in the less pseudonymous world where preconceptions and reputation have more weight, the advice also holds, but the calculus is a big mess. Arguments can have only downside risk, but you don't have the option to disengage.
> On the internet, it is usually very clear that you will accomplish nothing except maybe introduce receptive onlookers to a new idea, so the choice to minimize engagement is easy.
I'm going to disagree here. I've learned quite a lot from internet arguments. Admittedly, the majority of it was from attempting to argue positions I don't hold.
You're taking it as a given that the only goal of an argument is to convince someone, and if you can't do that, then there is no point. But there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point.
With all that said, I will admit that some random news site's comments probably aren't the best place to do that.
You're not wrong. You can think of internet arguments as a method of developing a thought and collecting counterarguments in a real environment to refine it. The choice of forum affects the quality of the counterargument though, and developing a thought can be done with a crowd more likely to give constructive feedback. If some random website works for you, that's fine.
My statement is more that if you're interested in external impact, exposing someone to a new idea should be treated as the most likely outcome, so assess your effort spent accordingly. I've gotten a lot of value out of reading the different sides of other people's arguments, but I know I personally wouldn't have wanted to spend time being part of it.
I can't remember the exact origins of it, but I think it was a tweet that was essentially:
No one will remember who won an argument on the internet, they'll just remember that everyone involved is the kind of person who gets in arguments on the internet.
I'm not even sure that's really limited to just the internet either - outside of very niche cases, you don't win any argument, you just become known as someone who likes to argue, and thus you need to decide if this is a venue you want to become known as someone who argues about things. There's venues that may be good, wholesome, and useful, but it's been an axiom that's definitely stopped me from contributing to a lot of arguments.
> I've gotten a lot of value out of reading the different sides of other people's arguments, but I know I personally wouldn't have wanted to spend time being part of it.
The problem with discussions on the internet is that there's a lot of ignorance and ideology out there and a lack of interest in applying a modicum of thought, research and critical thinking. People know what they know because they know what they know, and that's the end of it. This can be incredibly frustrating to those of us who make an attempt to live in some kind of an objective realty, where arguments from reason and facts are considered and respected.
On the internet, the earth can be flat and there is no amount of math and science you can deploy that will convince a certain audience otherwise.
The only exception to this rule are narrowly focused professional discussion groups. HN fits this description ONLY when the topic at hand tends to be in the realm of specific engineering disciplines. In a wide range of other areas, including technical areas, discussions on HN can be just as dumb and pointless as almost anywhere else.
I've been using online forums of various kinds of four decades. You could find good, bad and ugly on USENET and the same is true today in various forms. The only thing that has changed is that the size of the audience and the reach of the nonsense have expanded.
How is this any different from arguing in person? You state 'on the internet' as if it is some kind of exception and makes "People know what they know because they know what they know" a fact that exists only there.
What you neglect totally are these:
1. this can be fact of arguments anywhere, and the key to having a decent one is for all members to act in good faith
2. the internet affords the ability to find sources quickly and quote them, unlike non-internet (especially before smart phones) where it is 'who can say things most convincingly or plead to already existing biases' (which of course does happen, but at least opposition has a chance)
3. on the internet you are not arguing with one person, you are holding a public debate which is forever etched into history for anyone to read
Simple. Most people do not behave as they do online when in person. Or, put a different way, the online physical gap enables behaviors and interactions not often seen in person.
And, yes, in real life you better know what you are talking about. You can’t google yourself out of it, particularly in professional settings.
> there can be value in making an argument specifically in bettering your own understanding of a point
If you want someone to educate you, the polite thing to do is ask. This kind of "stealth learning" where you say things you don't believe, expecting to learn via corrections, is inconsiderate and inefficient. I know people who have lost practically all of their friends because they couldn't bring themselves to acknowledge anyone else's expertise in either the subject itself or how to explain it. Don't be that guy.
ETA: Even if what you want is a spirited debate, mutual consent and respect matter. A voluntary debate can be a lot of fun for everyone, contrarian provocation out of the blue much less so.
There are different forms of argumentation and they have a different tone that maybe doesn't come through so well on the internet without context. I dislike the debate club mentality where arguments are more like a spectator sport than a deliberation most of all, but there are less combatative forms of arguments that are really more like questions with extra scaffolding. I think all people are weakly informed and weakly opinionated about a different subset of most things and it's not always clear when you are in an environment with people who aren't also weakly informed and weakly opinionated. Arguments of the form "I believe this" and "here are my (maybe not so great) reasons" can be a reasonable starting point for laying out your prior knowledge and biases. Making it clear that it is only a weakly held belief is an art form, though, and I can understand why someone might omit that step in an (assumed to be) hostile environment. It's one of the reasons why I think the choice of forum matters. It can be easier to be more open about what you don't know if you aren't subconsciously worried about being attacked for it.
As you said, (I'm paraphrasing) there are often better ways to go about things.
I think that's really depends on what you're trying to learn. If you want to learn about someone's position it may be better to ask them than play Devil's Advocate. If you want to learn about the devil's position, the other person won't be able to help you.
As you mentioned, time, place, and consent are important. You see this a lot in forums dedicated to debate. What consent means in general forms like this one is a little bit more ambiguous. Some people are looking to debate and some people are looking to just talk.
Or, if you just want get practice (internet) arguing, its always a good idea.
OFC, the other people need to be interested in arguing. Random debate is a valuable skill, and I don't know that I 100% agree that "consent" is important. There's a difference between harassing someone and letting them know you don't agree (we call that discourse), if they're not interested in continuing the conversation a lot of people will just stop talking. Otherwise, you don't get to say things and then have some shield that nobody will disagree with you, putting it in the public forum itself is the only consent needed.
The only major danger is when someone doesn't reply at all. The OP's article ignores the fact that argument is often not just about being right, but about winning the perception. I think it is probably better (with someone who is not being disingenuous or harassing) to state if you don't have time or interest to reply, rather than letting the other argument hang -
- the last, simplest thing said usually sticks out in onlookers brains, not the 5 paragraphs of well (or not well) thought out response.
>I don't know that I 100% agree that "consent" is important.
That's why I said it is ambiguous what consent means. Engaging is always discretionary as nobody is forced to respond. That said, I think there is value in people being more clear about their intent, so that people have more information when deciding to engage.
This leads to higher quality debate and discussion than when two people have different notions of what the topic and purpose of the conversation is.
> If you want someone to educate you, the polite thing to do is ask. This kind of "stealth learning" where you say things you don't believe, expecting to learn via corrections, is inconsiderate and inefficient.
Unfortunately, it is also unreasonably effective. I mean, learning by being wrong is how learning works. It's how science works.
Often the fastest way to find the right answer to a problem is to loudly and confidently proclaim the wrong answer.
As the ancient advice goes: want to know how to do something in Linux? Tell a bunch of Linux users Linux can't do that.
Sometimes I argue things I hope aren't true, but just don't have a good argument against in the hopes someone better equipped will come along and convince me I'm wrong.
I think as long as you're civil and willing to admit defeat then it isn't really a problem.
I'm okay with people trying out different viewpoints—I do think it's a good way to explore new ideas—but I'd prefer the post be prefaced with "to play devil's advocate" or something to that effect.
The thrust of their point is that the time spent engaging isn’t worth it for the person debating, not whether it does or doesn’t impact the perspectives on those that view the debate.
> Understand why you're in an argument and what you hope to accomplish by being in an argument.
There's a spectrum here, but I've noticed that a lot of people like to debate things online because they're genuinely trying to understand the problem set, or want to play around with ideas. They're not looking to "argue" necessarily. However, on the other end, some people do interpret any disagreement as an argument and will then turn the discussion into one that they will try to "win".
It can be frustrating if you're coming at it from a "discovery" perspective and the other person wants to fight, or you're coming at it from a fight perspective and the other one wants to discover. This happens in real life as well, but it's a little bit easier to communicate what your intent is based on your tone and expression.
Like you I learned this early on. But I somehow manage to forget the lesson every time I engage on a significantly new platform. I had to re-learn it again on Twitter and on Hacker News.
It’s weird because it makes no sense rationally, but there you go.
I really struggle with this; to this day I haven't found a good resolution.
I'd say by analogy you could also say: "You don't have to pursue people romantically." It's really, really true: you don't. No one will blame you for keeping to yourself. In many settings it may even be better (example: a club, where the club organizers find the drama caused by romantic entanglements annoying).
But there's a problem behind this problem, which is: while it's not necessary, if I act is if I don't 'need' to do it all (again: strictly true), that also causes problems.
Basically I have an impulse towards sex, and towards being social, which exists in a hard to measure but much-more-than-zero state. The social impulse in particular needs attention daily.
So - put that way - I kind of do have to engage. Because I work remotely I spend too long away from other people in my opinion to not engage socially whatsoever, during work hours.
Like I said, I struggle with this. But my middle-of-the-road position is that, while any individual act of engagement (like a comment) is expendable, the general behavior of seeking community on the Internet is something which I can accurately treat like a need (especially in the sense that, if I haven't done it in hours, it's time to do it).
Oh, but this isn't even about that kind of engagement. It's just saying you don't need to comment in threads about your employer. I'll go one step further and say you shouldn't. Better not to find out you said the wrong thing as a company representative. And maybe it's good practice for seeing threads and not saying anything.
because that's the place where i can find people who actually share my interests.
as nice as the neighbors are, i really don't care to discuss weather or local politics or whatever. on the other hand, i made a number of friends online over shared interests.
of course, one doesn't preclude the other, but both forms can be fulfilling if done well. but finding local friends is just so much harder, especially in the last three years.
My online social interaction is mostly with people I've talked to daily for years, sometimes decades. Most of them I've had close personal talks with. While I haven't met most of them face to face, they're certainly not strangers.
> almost always in text form (no subtext, no facial expression, no body language)
While most of my online social interactions is via text, some is via speech. TeamSpeak was common before but more niche, Discord is making it very convenient so more general these days. That said, I'd say you can express a lot through text, but it's a different art perhaps.
I sorta grew up on newsgroups and IRC. While it's nice meeting people in person, I can certainly fill most of my social quota via Discord or similar these days.
Thinking more about it, I think the key difference is that what I enjoy is the content of the talk, not how it's performed (ie body language etc).
It's mostly because on the Internet you can self-select (sort of) your topic of discussion and your "social" circles.
In real life it would be difficult to have a "fight" and a discussion over public transportation or some random history subject, because, presumably, your friends from real life are not that interested in those subjects. But if you are interested in those subjects you most probably frequent places on the internet that discuss them, hence the fights and the discussions.
On the other hand, the interaction is mostly with total strangers and is almost always in text form. Most of the time you don't even have to see their faces!
(also I don't understand why there wouldn't be subtext)
Do you mean this one? Please explain, I don’t understand what you’ve meant with the first part of your response.
The subtext that’s missing is how something is said: The sarcastic tone, sing-song intonation, the short pause, the smirk, the small sentence that turns into a little rant, curtness, an abrupt ending, the barely suppressed yawns, crossed arms, smiling eyes.
I think most importantly, a direct, face-to-face, breathed air-to-breathed air conversation is vulnerable, you’re communicating much more than you ever could in textual form, and you immediately get feedback how what you’ve said is perceived, you might try a different approach, and say something you’ve never intended to do whilst in the flow.
But you don't have to engage on every topic, for example about your employer (as Xe mentions).
If something topic is not pleasant -- walk by, and satisfy your social impulse in some other way. Go to Hacker News and leave some comments under topics you find interesting. Go to your local Reddit and discuss how badly your town services work. Find a forum for your favorite series and start a --flamewar-- heated discussion about motivations of one of the main characters. In the age of internet, the possibilities for communications are endless.
(In-person/private communications is harder, but that's not what the post was about)
I think the whole point of this is about maximizing your own enjoyment of things or as the article somewhat oddly puts it, avoiding "psychic damage." In online "discussions" some people get extremely riled up when they can't convince the other guy they're wrong.
Many seem to lack the empathy/introspection to understand that you'll never be able to convince him that he's wrong anymore than he'll be able to convince you that you're wrong. Those sort of folks would generally make their lives a whole lot more enjoyable if they didn't get involved in the first place.
But if you enjoy it and it's not interfering with other things you view as more relevant? Then obviously there's no reason to avoid it. And that extrapolates to more or less everything in life.
> I really struggle with this; to this day I haven't found a good resolution.
For me, if somebody has posted something that's factually wrong and it's not much trouble I'll try to post a correction. There's little harm in that and maybe my correction gets corrected and I learn something new!
The trick is knowing when to walk away so you're not caught up in bad faith arguments against facts, and you're not letting people who are just argumentative or 'fact/reality resistant' rope you into an emotional investment over internet bickering. Especially when it comes to "attacks" on your work or your employer. Don't take anything personally.
I know you can't always change people's minds with evidence (although I think sometimes too much is made of the backfire effect), but even if you fail to convince the person you respond to it's nice to not leave actually false information uncorrected for everyone else who comes across the discussion. Leaving lies and disinformation around unchallenged seems like a bad idea too. I just try not to let it eat up too much time or emotional energy.
Reddit is great because someone can says 1 + 1 = 3, get fifty upvotes, you can point out that it's actually 2, get downvoted into oblivion, and then some other idiot will come along and say it's 4
And worth keeping in mind that every sub, every comment section, including this place, is a self-selected narrow group that is very much not representative of public opinion in general.
And this goes far beyond politics (though it's the obvious one). People say they only can use reddit to find organic recommendations, but the representation is still very narrow.
Take podcasts or books for example: if you use reddit to source recommendations, you'll get the same ones coming up over and over. Many of my favorite podcasts I've found have been stumbled across by chance and have rarely even been mentioned on reddit.
Hobby subreddits in hobbies I’m more versed in are incredibly frustrating as it converges to people trying to fit the same rehashed suggestions onto whatever is being asked without any real thought about the context of the question. I get the feeling its just people trying to fit in by repeating authoritative recommendations while having next to no experience with what they’re suggesting.
I’ve experienced this same thing. Very frustrating when you get downvoted for pointing out the flaws of commonly held misconceptions which only novices would fall for. I hate to gatekeep hobbies, but the bar for entry to speaking with authority on Reddit is too low.
I have frequented r/de for a long time (German subreddit) and it's very much on the student life / left-leaning site of political opinions as a community. It is fascinating how repeated reality checks with the rest of society regarding political and the social landscape (e.g. national polls, elections) seemingly violate the moralist self-image of this community over and over again which is represented in flabbergasted comments. How can all of these people be against my opinion?
I happen to share many of the popular ideas on r/de - disagreement and mud-slinging is not my point. Just this notable lack of self awareness and the, frankly, authoritarian mods that enforce their political ideas on others in a de facto public forum. I really understand moderation is a hard problem but deleting entire comment sections and putting threads into contest mode if the left-leaning political opinion is in danger is painful to watch since the essence of democracy suffers: pluralistic (but respectful) discussions and arguments. The main points of debate here seem to be nuclear power, COVID and migration. Very divisive topics.
There has been a very interesting example of this in the case of the Bavarian lockdown which enforced an actual curfew of citizens in March 2020 when COVID was new and entirely unpredictable. This law was later taken to the Verfassungsgericht ("Supreme Court") and the discussion did a complete 180 degree turn strictly for political reasons and social media dynamics.
First, there was massive support (against COVID deniers) [1] where top commenters complain about the lockdown being too soft (!) and users even threatened others with violence (pepper spray to cite a specific comment) if they dont wear masks in public or take walks doing the curfew. But later, when the law was challenged in court, COVID became politically irrelvant and it was an opportunity to undermine the conservative leader of Bavaria, Markus Söder. Suddenly the curfew was a sign of a police state [2].
As long as the own agenda is propagated in a specific moment, you can collect upvotes with fitting comments. Facts and consistency just don't matter.
>I really understand moderation is a hard problem but deleting entire comment sections and putting threads into contest mode if the left-leaning political opinion is in danger is painful to watch since the essence of democracy suffers: pluralistic (but respectful) discussions and arguments.
If there is a better term for this someone let me know, otherwise I'm going to coin this kind of moderation "bush sculpture" moderation. That's how subreddit moderation works.
If a person saw a bush sculpture for the first time ever they would probably think how it's really curious the bush has this well defined shape, and happily conclude that the bush is just like that. "Pretty cool how there is a bush with the shape of a dog's face" they'll think.
In the same way, visiting a subreddit you would think that that's just the community and content. But once you see how moderation works you realize that in reality, the community is pulling to all sorts of places at the same time, and by pruning the content here and there with the shears of moderation, using the chainsaw that is automod and by motivating growth with precision via shadowbanning and choosing what becomes popular, you can perfectly shape a subreddit into the content you want.
That depends. In math, you can say a function f(x) has “one zero” if there exists some element z in the relevant domain such that f(x) = 0 iff x = z. Since z is arbitrary, you can even have the value of z be nonzero. So, “a zero,” in fact, need not actually be 0, and, one can speak of “the zeros of f, so there may be more than “one zero,” none of which are actually 0.
In a parallel reality, four out of the three are trolls who know that it equals two, but pretend it doesn't just to trigger those who're outraged by it.
Some of that, sure, but I'd imagine more often it's just "realized they're wrong (consciously or subconsciously), try to save face by derailing conversation".
There is of course flipside of it, "is actually right but can't explain it properly, either by own ineptitude or target audience's ignorance".
I have the "hide comments section" turned on my ad blocker. Makes the internet a much nicer place in general on a lot of general news/info type sites that aren't explicitly for discussion (eg. HN, Reddit).
I was pretty excited a couple of years back when some bigger news sites explicitly turned off their comments saying they only generated distracting noise and added no value.
Then, after that I can rigorously filter what I see - on Reddit I have multireddits that I care about, and set those to Home using Apollo to browse, and I keep only generally positive sub-reddits in there.
I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk. Same reason I deleted Facebook - don't invite in the noise, and don't engage with trolls.
It's the same old strategy - the only way to win is not to play.
>I think there's huge value in going out of you way to block negative noise in bulk.
I'll go on a tweet made by a Twitter user with a large follower count and just start blocking people. AOC and Ilhan Omar are great because I can very easily pick out the crap comments being made just to try and troll them, I've started reading George Takei's tweets recently to block the trolling homophobes that respond to him.
How many monthly active users does Twitter have? I mean, blocking trolls individually is certainly a way to keep busy, but ultimately useless as there are too many, and the craftier and more dangerous trolls (i.e. government sponsored) might have a blue checkmark next to their name and already in your follows list.
It also affects what the what algorithm recommends for you and which comments on highly commented threads will be at the top and being verified doesn't protect you from being blocked by me.
Or at least that was the way in the past, haven't used twitter since a long while.
And the main purpose is to filter out all the pointless noise which existence has in the end absolutely no meaning for you. Keeping some of the clever expertised subtle manipulator in your timeline can be useful to better understand what is going on. You know like the people which aren't just misguided or afraid but are instead misguiding and outright deeply rooted evil knowing exactly how much pain and suffering their manipulative spiel will create.
Creating an echo chamber where you assume any criticism of members of a certain political faction are motivated by bigotry and are seeking to troll and deceive, and block the critics accordingly, is going to leave you woefully under-informed.
As original poster I meant more that if you know somewhere like 4Chan is generally a highly negative place, I'd stay away from it, and in bulk (ie, the whole site), cut off that source of noise.
Really applies to somewhere like Facebook too.
I didn't mean to cut off discussion or specific sides in a view point, but more to cut off sources of low-quality discussion. I do realize there's danger in how you categorize low quality too.
My current theory about influencing people is that, for people already convinced of a position, small, indirect, and constant statements are more influential than large, direct, and infrequent (or frequent, for that matter) statements. eg, a bunch of people mentioning offhand over the course of a few years that they're recycling is more influential than a big recycling lecture directed at a single audience. In that regard, small inaccuracies are important to counter in order to preserve a particular narrative. The current meme war around Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is a great case study
I really like to debate issues. This leads to many problems on the modern internet.
I won’t go into all of them, but the biggest by far is when the real world and online world collide, and you encounter stakeholders not willing to work on a good-faith basis.
I live in a small town of around 6,000 people in NJ. Very rural, you have to drive 30+ minutes to get most anywhere. Yet our bucolic town is a hot bed of intrigue because a small but very vocal group of people have come to dominate online conversations. The local Facebook pages have become toxic. A regular stream of lies, false accusations, made up “threats” to the community, false narratives on school referendums, etc are propagated online in an effort to change the actual fiber of our towns.
Attempts to engage in good faith leads to the predictable results - name calling, doxxing, character assassination, fake posters. It escalates into stalking, obscene graffiti spray painted on driveways, etc. Facebook is far and away the biggest problem here.
The end result is many of the saner people have exited all the local Facebook groups. For me it’s sad that I am now less connected with what’s going on. But it is worth it for getting rid of the drama and stress.
Neighbors IRL can disagree (even radically) and still be neighbors. Neighbors on the Internet rapidly devolves into the unhinged and depraved and frankly immoral people (from a golden rule perspective) dominating every conversation.
Moderation would seem to be the answer, but hasn’t worked.
That’s insane! I’ve generally been of the opinion that one can escape the negative effects of social media by simply walking away, so I’m awed to hear that it’s had such a physical, real-world effect on your town.
Can I ask if you have any theories as to why it’s spiraled so far out of control? What are the particularly divisive issues? Does your town have an interesting demographic makeup that would exacerbate flamewars? This is really intriguing.
> Even if you are a formal spokesperson for a company, you don't have to engage.
This is key! At a lower level, if you're modding a Discord server or whatever, you can ignore people, and if they become a real problem you can just ban them. You don't need to engage with their drama, you don't owe them anything.
In my experience this leads to accusations about "power tripping mods" who "silence different opinions". Ditto on subreddits.
Not engaging in those cases means stepping down as a moderator or even quitting the community. It will be worse off - moderating aside, it will lose some institutional knowledge. But in the long run you will feel better.
You're right that you don't owe them anything. It's the same in the open source projects.
There is no option but to engage with people on the internet. Its a new domain in which a new form of social life unfolds.
We are horrible at it because the rules of "real" life engagement, honed over millenia of civilization building don't apply, but unless we figure out the new rules we miss out on something important.
The reason that after several decades of 'online' we dont converge on something agreeable has much to do with the ever changing technical platforms, outside of the control of users, which seldom have this aspect as one of their driving concern.
From their perspective the cynical "any engagement is good engagement" reigns supreme
There’s no damage if you don’t take it or don’t look at it (in case of a toxic auditory).
My rule of thumb is: I’m not lazy to write a constructive-ish comment and there’s a good chance it could change, extend or represent some opinions and there’s still something left unsaid either itt or in general.
E.g. if I’m lazy, or it’s unlikely someone could benefit from reading it, or everything was already said in that thread or is assumed to be well-known, then I don’t engage.
The Serenity Prayer could easily be adapted to serve as a guide here: Grant me the serenity to accept the minds I cannot change, the courage to change the minds I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I see it as some kind of mental training, puzzle or fun game. Find and engage in an opposing view, no matter the topic. Of course, do that without being negative, sarcastic but positive and solution oriented. Try to expand the space of options and opinions. And for extremist left/right politics, push it that far until nothing makes sense anymore, while confusing the author. And sometimes I learn something new from it. I think this does not work if you think you can't be wrong. I'm wrong all the time and I accept it without hurting my ego.
> Sometimes people will engage in performative angst in comments about companies as a way to signal they are part of the "in-crowd" that totally hates everything corporations have "ruined". These views are not representative of the larger world. It is just them trying to get upvoted because they care about the internet point number.
I feel like this is close to another point that has been hard to learn for me too: often, when talking about something, people care more about the talking than the something, or at least they care more about the talking and less about the something than me. This is not a value judgement, I don't think one way is "better" than the other, it's just one of those things that can cause a lot of trouble when you don't know about it.
It also helps not engaging with people. What usually attracts me when I engage with people that I don't know very well is that they're talking about something that I know, and thus I feel in a way involved in the conversation, I can contribute something. But when I see it through the lens of a group of people that know each others and just happen to talk about something that I know, it's easier to let it go.
As a more general comment, I really appreciate this blog. There's some variety in the subjects, the writing is engaging, sometimes there are cool technical tricks, sometimes interesting insights.
> You can just sit back and let people be wrong. Especially when it's about your employer.
Here's a better rule: don't argue about, comment on, criticize or even defend your employer in public at all. No good can come of it. You're almost never going to convince someone otherwise and the worst case is you find yourself quoted in the New York Times as "employee of X" (yes, I've seen this happen). Your employer isn't your family. You're not invested in how they're perceived. Your relationship is transactional if they're not paying you to represent them, don't. They will pick you rname on a spreadsheet and fire you tomorrow to slightly improve their bottom line.
As for arguing with randoms you generally want to quickly identify which bucket someone falls into:
1. People who reasonably disagree; or
2. The "my feelings matter more than your facts" crowd. You cannot reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
IME you can quickly separate the two and as soon as someone is clearly in the second camp, just block them (on platforms you can) or stop responding (where you can't). No good can come of it.
Furhter engagement can actually turn someone into a "hater". They will follow you around, comment on everything you say and do and may go as far as mass reporting you. Don't let them get that invested.
Yeah that part of this felt highly avoidant. It's one thing to engage in nonsense with random strangers - that is likely useless (irony ensues). But to feel attacked by coworkers who are upset about their jobs is probably just toxic. I assume the author's situation has more nuance than that, but they didn't provide that in their writing.
I made no such assumptions. Doing this in any workplace, tech or no, is toxic to people who are justifiably upset with their workplace. The vibe I was getting was that rather than admit there could be toxic elements at play, the author chooses to blame those complaining instead.
Really? Don’t you think that motivation to defend one’s employer would correlate with taking pride in one’s work? If someone was spreading false shit about my employer, I would feel the need to set them straight, because I care about the impact my employer has on my community.
Never argue with a hacker news user because they will strut around the chess board and then declare they have won, after some ad hominem attack of course.
I have tried this often, while it is really useful, sometimes it isn't enough. What I found more useful a good chunk of the time (on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit..) is to start blocking people. There are some people that are so far off the mark that what they say not only gets in the way, it actively erodes the quality of what's out there. I've found it far more beneficial than just shrugging and moving on.
This is the main excuse for companies when they get flak for their anti-consumer behaviour, that the comments on the internet don't matter. It is somehow rooted in emotions and/or irrational status seeking through imagined Internet points. If people show up in the comments they could have something to say! I know that this is a place of terminally online people and we have seen sooo much bullshit in comments but we can't turn a blind eye to some of the bullshit that big corporations pull and not tell people why we think it is wrong. One of the best examples is that I had to fight Intel fanbois defending software unlocks for CPU performance. It is anti-consumer behaviour where they are artificially segmenting the market to build fewer models. The car manufacturers are doing similar things now where they always put in heated seats in the car and tries to sell the ass heating as a software subscription... when I buy the car I'm paying for the heating coils in the seat and I should be able to turn them on at any time since I bought them.
Reddit is best known for terminally online people. The place where one person leaves a boilerplate comment for another person that they will never interact with again.
Yes, I feel so much better after quitting reddit. Erased all my users after I cleaned out my comments. I don't engage so often in comments anymore except for the occasional HN comment I drop! Best move for my mental wellbeing recently.
Absolutely. It's like a journal I can get feedback on in a low stakes environment. It lets me practice my writing and formulate my thoughts on the outside of my head. I find that simply expressing some thoughts in writing and getting feedback on them helps with developing clarity and even changing my own mind. One does not necessarily have to believe every thought that they've ever written out on the internet. In fact, I'd argue it's a sign of a dull and stagnant intellect if it is the case.
If there are T's & C's I need to read before being permitted to talk to someone, I'll probably just skip the whole thing. Which I guess lines up with the title of the article.
You definitely don't have to engage with anyone on anything, but if you want to see a change in the world, you have an opportunity to influence the bystanders with your knowledge.
I remember being at a party where two people got into an argument about abortion. It was exactly what you would imagine, a completely pointless exchange of rehashed ideas that the 10 people watching the conversation have heard a million times.
Then someone chimed in - not to argue but just to drop a fact they possessed that nobody else in the room knew. It didn't change the arguers' minds but it took the other ten people aback like "how come we heard this debate a 1000 times but this very important fact never gets mentioned?"
So that random quip influenced 10 people on a very polarizing issue. That's powerful.
It had to do with the number of abortions that take place in the US every year - over 600,000 per year.
This number shocked us because everyone in the room thought we had heard everything about this issue, but tacitly assumed a much smaller scale. In my head Bill Clinton's quote about it being "safe, legal and rare" still ring out.
It kind of smacked us in the face to realize we were talking about an issue for years without even realizing how often it happens. Maybe you had to be there but it really adjusted a lot of people's views.
Maybe it was especially powerful because the fact was dropped on us by someone who wasn't part of the debate, they weren't a prolifer but someone who "could see both sides"
I found this out recently after being perm banned from Reddit for making too many dirty jokes. It was merely a creative writing exercise for me that I didn't take seriously. Not being able to comment made me realize though I was subconsciously always looking for the worst most absurd filthy angle to setup the joke. So I probably enjoy using the site more now though I'm still annoyed at being targeted by moderators because most of my silly jokes were very well received and upvoted by actual users.
>"in-crowd" that totally hates everything corporations have "ruined". These views are not representative of the larger world.
Is it though? Agree with overall sentiment expressed on not needing to engage but this part seems off.The mega corps ruined everything sentiment strikes me as quite pervasive throughout society.
FWIW: For people not reading tfa, note that while the title is wide and general, the actual concern expressed in the text is much more specific: It's about not needing to argue in favour of your employer in public.
Sadly (?), in some cultures lying, libel and profanity is not something normally expected even from anonymous strangers, so they basically believe most things on Twitter and Facebook. And applying critical thinking to every piece of info online is too much effort and time-consuming, so that is not practical for the unsophisticated.
May be there should be at least some effort to address "realistic looking" misinfo, so that the lack thereof could not be interpreted as avoiding to engage out of fear.
I sometimes notice my nervous system relax a bit when I log out of this website, because I know I won't get sucked into anything (he writes on this website)
I think some of this boils down to people who are lonely and want some form of connection. -And, there be a good percentage of people in tech, especially in 'visionary' companies that feel some for of identity fusion between they life they spend in their startups and the product the produced. It's unhealthy.
If you hold things inside, in the long run it erodes your soul. Better to speak your mind and relieve the pressure. Often, by voicing opinions, our opinions change. We think, “oh gosh, cringe at what I said,” and then evolve. As Hemingway put it, “continence is the greatest foe to heresy.”
Not expressing an opinion is the missing skill many people need to learn, particularly on social media where the medium is doing all it can to encourage people to get involved.
Being able to say “I just don’t know” or “I don’t have the necessary facts” or “this isn't my area of expertise” or, better, to simply say nothing at all is something many “influencers” would do well to learn.
Just because you have 50million followers on some platform doesn’t mean you have the expertise to talk about vaccines or whatever the hot topic of the day happens to be.
Of course saying you don’t know requires a level of humility that many people simple don’t seem to have but hey, there you go.
One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people who engage a lot on the internet turn from reasonable to argumentative and often outright mean. Examples I can think of right now are Jordan Peterson and Elon musk. I also have some friends that seem to have lost their minds and become zealots that like to score quick points by putting other people down.
It seems that engaging in social media, especially Twitter, is very unhealthy for people.
I do it primarily because I get a kick out of it. But it's true, LLMs have obsoleted the average HN commenter. Though, to be honest, I think we could have done it much earlier.
Google => cancel products, spy, don't update OS, no human support
I think it would be cool, once we have speed to LLM inference high enough, for each person to receive a "your comment was generated x times in 100 seeds by LLMs that were prompted by this headline".
This is the anti-Turing ratio: how botlike are you?
not knowing when to engage is as important as knowing when to do so. some people learn from their mistakes. some people don't, they look for reasons that make them feel vindicated.
A/K/A: "You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to." (Sometimes seen as "fight".) I'd run into this via Noah Friedman on the late, little-lamented Google+.
Discussion, online or off, is ultimately serving some goal. Online mass discussion is often some mix of tactical and strategic.
A late realisation of mine, having been engaged in online discussion since Usenet in the 1980s, is that there are two major divisions of online discussion: dialectical, which is aimed at understanding some greater truth, and rhetorical, which is typically engaged in partisan or ideological promotion. This is a tradition dating to at least the time of the Greeks, see Plato and his tirades against the Sophists, as well as Aristotle's "Sophistical Refutations", or as I prefer to describe it: "Bullshit Arguments Which Must Die".
(There are of course numerous other modes of communication and their study is also of interest: narrative, phatic, persuasive, performative (where the speech act itself executes some function, as in swearing an oath or declaring "I do" in a marriage ceremony), descriptive, entertaining, distraction (as with much stage patter in legerdemain, or financial marketing), etc.)
It's helpful to realise what type of discussion you're entering into, as well as what audiences exist (there are often multiple). The audience is often not merely your interlocutor.
For a domain which has come to dominate media, I've found that people in the tech world are often highly dismissive of the field of communications study (and its antecedents in rhetoric and philosophy). "Communications" whilst a popular field of study when I was at uni was not seen as an especially robust or challenging one, a perception of my own I've somewhat come to regret.
Harold Lasswell proposed a five-element model of communications in the 1940s: 1) who 2) says what 3) in what channel 4) to whom 5) with what effect.
I'd add a sixth element: with what intent, though in practice intent is often subordinate to effect for numerous reasons, e.g., ascribing a single intent to a collective entity, unintended and unforeseen consequences, etc.
There's also the matter of understanding mass vs. personal communications, which can be particularly challenging to keep in mind on platforms in which personal exchanges between two parties are also (or can rapidly become) mass or at least public exchanges. (Failure to recognise this seems a frequently recurring source of friction on the Fediverse in particular, with various people asserting the right to speak publicly without others joining in on the discussion.) Simple human psychology makes coping with responses from multiple people, even where that number is relatively low in comparison to a the larger community from which it emerges is challenging. See for example many cases of performers and creators who don't pay attention to general critics and criticism, which is to say, even amongst people whose milieu is the field of mass communications, this can be hard. No wonder it's a challenge to mere mortals....
In a world of hot takes, memetic warfare, and frequently-encountered low-effort, low-comprehension responses, one tactic I've seen (and occasionally used) with some effect is to have and refine over time countermeasures which can be deployed with little effort or cognitive drain, but which effectively communicate a rebutting or countering message. A good example close at hand would be HN's own moderation responses within threads, where many admonitions are frequently recycled, e.g., "Please don't post in the flamewar style".
While I'll often write dedicated responses to comments or posts (as here), I've also over time developed a few of my own specific rebuttals to commonly-encountered fallacies and myths, though I try not to post those so frequently that they become an annoyance. I'll also refine thoughts on a specific topic over time (universal content syndication comes to mind) which would be an example of why engaging in specific arguments can prove useful in those instances.
I'm happy to do my part commit denial-of-attention attacks on tired takes as well though, and pay attention to what's living rent-free in my consciousness.
I don't think about them at all. For all the noise people make about stating pronouns, I yet have to encounter it in real life. I'll wait until that happens.
It's less so for those who were exposed to this early in life.
I had a great conversation about this the other day with a Swiss person in poverty who was upset about Ukrainian refugees driving expensive cars - sometimes people have features that may appear contradictory to you.
In any case they do seem to address a certain subset of people - I for one stopped taking any stance on my employer years ago, because why would I?
Many HN posters have been pointing this out, yes. It’s getting a bit tiring, but I will once again repeat my multi-decade observational summary:
This aesthetic is the norm for the tiny (but rapidly growing) sliver of humanity who, like the author, favors their constructed Internet identities instead of the less-mutable shared reality that we all inhabit together.
Such persons tend to be impressively talented with respect to the tiniest minutiae of information systems, somewhat emotionally volatile, obnoxiously socialist in political alignment, and somewhere on the autism spectrum.
(Source: am a trans woman who is perfectly content with her identity and form here in our shared reality as a human male. There are more of us than you might think, because it really isn’t a difficult thing to reconcile.)
You should write about this. Clearly you've thought about this a fair bit.
> This aesthetic is the norm for the tiny (but rapidly growing) sliver of humanity who, like the author, favors their constructed Internet identities instead of the less-mutable shared reality that we all inhabit together.
This isn't a jab at you; I don't know you at all and don't judge. But what you said would explain why it seems that the overused of furries and anime avatars is overrepresented in the LGBT community.
Side note - yesterday I got my account banned for pointing out something along these lines. Dang sucks.
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).