"Are these just trolls winding me up? Are they projecting onto me their own partisanship/intellectual dishonesty/mental illness?"
I for one am impressed with your engagement. After twenty years of online discourse, I'm personally tired of engaging with people who are belligerent and set in their ways, but I still find your approach honourable and encouraging.
If you have the time and the will to do this, then I would say keep at it! If nothing else, we collectively need people who are willing to demonstrate what civil discourse looks like. I've done my time (mostly on Twitter), and I've chosen to go a different route (this is why my philosophy Substack has paid subscriber comments - to raise the quality of the conversation). But giving people examples of civic discourse matters.
Thank you for demonstrating to the Substack Notes community what it looks like.
I don’t know if you ever taught in the Little Red Schoolhouse program when you were at the U of C, but one of its goals is to get students to write not just to express themselves, but to communicate to readers. Writing this way requires empathy—we have to think about which approach will be most effective for our audience, who may think and feel very differently from us.
I think this election has shown that both sides are lacking in this understanding of and empathy for one another. I hope we can all do better in the future, and the moderate and self-reflective tone of this piece is a good example of what we should be striving for.
Wow, that felt very familiar, like reading a journal entry of mine from years ago that I'd forgotten writing. Talk about a shared experience.
I can offer two insights that you might find relevant, though I confess I don't have the links to the sources handy.
1. A study I read many years ago looked at online debates and attempted to answer the eternal question of "How do I know when it's not work continuing?" IIRC, the finding was that in something like 95%+ of the time, if a debate went three consecutive replies with either party neither shifting position nor offering new evidence or arguments, that debate could continue indefinitely without making progress, much less reaching resolution. In short, use a "Three Strikes" rule. Each reply that wastes your time with insults instead of arguments or evidence gets a strike, after three strikes you can gracefully bow out with reasonably certainly that you're not missing out on anything worthwhile by doing so.
2. A study I recently came across found that people are often so convinced that they're OBVIOUSLY right that when someone else disagrees with them, their initial interpretation is that the other person must not have heard them correctly, so they repeat themselves. I suppose it's less insulting to be presumed misunderstanding or misheard than ignorant, idiotic, or evil, but it does also perhaps partially explain the linkstorm approach: not necessarily so much trying to bury with evidence as attempting to find the way of explaining that will "get through" to the listener.
Anyway, cheers! You're not alone in feeling that way. Stick with it, every once in a while somebody does grudgingly acknowledge "you're pretty smart/educated/reasonable/articulate for a ------" and we erode the negative stereotypes at least a little.
This really resonates with me. About Trump definitely.
The idea that:
Someone reasonable could think this.
This is my thought process.
Not to convince people but just to broaden any willing horizons. I used to converse with someone on Twitter about forever wars. I don’t follow the isolationist or quasi-isolationist worldview. I’m more John Bolton minus the Trump feud. But this guy enlisted after 9/11 and didn’t think soldiers were treated properly. He also felt that though the army is technically a volunteer army, the poor and the ill-connected actually die in the wars; not the children of the people who send the troops to war. I didn’t change my worldview but Im more sympathetic now.
You know the idea that the printing press made people more compassionate because they were able to read the accounts of the lives of people very different and physically far away from each other? I saw it in Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature.
There’s an aspect of that in the best versions of arguing on the internet. A chance to deeply get to know the reasoning of ideas held by strangers-it can be people that you would never meet in real life because geographically, religiously, politically, educationally, socioeconomically -there is no convergence.
Two kinds of statements are these: normative and positive.
Normative statements are about the good, bad, beautiful and ugly. They cannot be either true or false.
Positive statements are statements about reality. The must be either true or false. Science is the search for true positive statements.
Reasonable, rational people can disagree about whether a positive statement is true or false because (1) one or both of them are ignorant, (2) it cannot be known whether the statement is true or false.
People can disagree about normative statements because (1) one or both are ignorant of one or more true positive statements, (2) they have different values, or (3) they have shared values but weight them differently.
People who understand the statements above never offer an ad hominem argument.
Tom, Thanks for posting this. Since the election, I've been holding myself and my feelings apart from the fury going on around me. I refuse to see Trump's election as a disaster, refuse to believe that we are "doomed," and I will stop saying that Trumpers are "stupid." I've been working on that one for a while now, opting to soften my language, but your post has helped me to see that saying Trumpers are "ignorant," is likely just as offensive and/or untrue. Dale and I have been talking and talking and talking, sussing out the wherefores and whatnots of this political/cultural mess. I will have him read this post because you do help to clarify the sanity/wellmeaningness of those with whom we so vehemently disagree on so much, and tepidly agree on so little. And you remind me that there used to be a way to be with other people without it becoming a battleground. I'm not sure how we did that, but we did. I will endeavor to remember. And...I think....perhaps these times call for the kind of openness and imagination we need when we approach and embrace Sci-Fi.
Hey Rebecca, thanks for that thoughtful reply! I sometimes think about you and Dale when I write about the Trumpy stuff and wonder if I'm alienating you. Anyway, I miss the old times. Maybe sometime we can figure a way to get together!
As I said, I am, we are, trying to find a way through what has become an untenable situation. I didn't feel so much alienated as I did deeply perplexed. Confused. I miss the old times, too. Were we different people then? I don't think so, although sometimes I feel as though I am being completely replaced every couple years or so. Time is too swift. And the times are too weird. "Come let us reason together." Have we moved past that notion? I say, no. I must say, no. I simply refuse to be tangled up in the despair that so many of my friends are feeling.
I thought sure you were going to come to the conclusion that expressing your political (or any) opinions is to clarify them to yourself. I am in a text feud with one of my brothers: back and forth and back and forth. The first time we did this I became disappointed in him and a little depressed myself. The next time I was actually having a great time. 1j because I know I’m right (haha, but really), and 2) because I knew I would never convince him, but I enjoyed clarifying my ideas for myself. This time, we finished off as friends. Btw, he is generally one of the sweetest people I know.
You know, that's interesting. Generally that is what my "Perplexed" posts have been, trying to figure things out by writing about them. But these "not-so-perplexed" posts have been more, I guess, about articulating my feelings. I suppose that suggests less flexibility on my part with regard to the politics about which I am, for some reason, less ambivalent than religion. . . . I'm going to have to think about that.
"Are these just trolls winding me up? Are they projecting onto me their own partisanship/intellectual dishonesty/mental illness?"
I for one am impressed with your engagement. After twenty years of online discourse, I'm personally tired of engaging with people who are belligerent and set in their ways, but I still find your approach honourable and encouraging.
If you have the time and the will to do this, then I would say keep at it! If nothing else, we collectively need people who are willing to demonstrate what civil discourse looks like. I've done my time (mostly on Twitter), and I've chosen to go a different route (this is why my philosophy Substack has paid subscriber comments - to raise the quality of the conversation). But giving people examples of civic discourse matters.
Thank you for demonstrating to the Substack Notes community what it looks like.
With unlimited love,
Chris.
I don’t know if you ever taught in the Little Red Schoolhouse program when you were at the U of C, but one of its goals is to get students to write not just to express themselves, but to communicate to readers. Writing this way requires empathy—we have to think about which approach will be most effective for our audience, who may think and feel very differently from us.
I think this election has shown that both sides are lacking in this understanding of and empathy for one another. I hope we can all do better in the future, and the moderate and self-reflective tone of this piece is a good example of what we should be striving for.
Wow, that felt very familiar, like reading a journal entry of mine from years ago that I'd forgotten writing. Talk about a shared experience.
I can offer two insights that you might find relevant, though I confess I don't have the links to the sources handy.
1. A study I read many years ago looked at online debates and attempted to answer the eternal question of "How do I know when it's not work continuing?" IIRC, the finding was that in something like 95%+ of the time, if a debate went three consecutive replies with either party neither shifting position nor offering new evidence or arguments, that debate could continue indefinitely without making progress, much less reaching resolution. In short, use a "Three Strikes" rule. Each reply that wastes your time with insults instead of arguments or evidence gets a strike, after three strikes you can gracefully bow out with reasonably certainly that you're not missing out on anything worthwhile by doing so.
2. A study I recently came across found that people are often so convinced that they're OBVIOUSLY right that when someone else disagrees with them, their initial interpretation is that the other person must not have heard them correctly, so they repeat themselves. I suppose it's less insulting to be presumed misunderstanding or misheard than ignorant, idiotic, or evil, but it does also perhaps partially explain the linkstorm approach: not necessarily so much trying to bury with evidence as attempting to find the way of explaining that will "get through" to the listener.
Anyway, cheers! You're not alone in feeling that way. Stick with it, every once in a while somebody does grudgingly acknowledge "you're pretty smart/educated/reasonable/articulate for a ------" and we erode the negative stereotypes at least a little.
This really resonates with me. About Trump definitely.
The idea that:
Someone reasonable could think this.
This is my thought process.
Not to convince people but just to broaden any willing horizons. I used to converse with someone on Twitter about forever wars. I don’t follow the isolationist or quasi-isolationist worldview. I’m more John Bolton minus the Trump feud. But this guy enlisted after 9/11 and didn’t think soldiers were treated properly. He also felt that though the army is technically a volunteer army, the poor and the ill-connected actually die in the wars; not the children of the people who send the troops to war. I didn’t change my worldview but Im more sympathetic now.
You know the idea that the printing press made people more compassionate because they were able to read the accounts of the lives of people very different and physically far away from each other? I saw it in Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature.
There’s an aspect of that in the best versions of arguing on the internet. A chance to deeply get to know the reasoning of ideas held by strangers-it can be people that you would never meet in real life because geographically, religiously, politically, educationally, socioeconomically -there is no convergence.
Two kinds of statements are these: normative and positive.
Normative statements are about the good, bad, beautiful and ugly. They cannot be either true or false.
Positive statements are statements about reality. The must be either true or false. Science is the search for true positive statements.
Reasonable, rational people can disagree about whether a positive statement is true or false because (1) one or both of them are ignorant, (2) it cannot be known whether the statement is true or false.
People can disagree about normative statements because (1) one or both are ignorant of one or more true positive statements, (2) they have different values, or (3) they have shared values but weight them differently.
People who understand the statements above never offer an ad hominem argument.
Tom, Thanks for posting this. Since the election, I've been holding myself and my feelings apart from the fury going on around me. I refuse to see Trump's election as a disaster, refuse to believe that we are "doomed," and I will stop saying that Trumpers are "stupid." I've been working on that one for a while now, opting to soften my language, but your post has helped me to see that saying Trumpers are "ignorant," is likely just as offensive and/or untrue. Dale and I have been talking and talking and talking, sussing out the wherefores and whatnots of this political/cultural mess. I will have him read this post because you do help to clarify the sanity/wellmeaningness of those with whom we so vehemently disagree on so much, and tepidly agree on so little. And you remind me that there used to be a way to be with other people without it becoming a battleground. I'm not sure how we did that, but we did. I will endeavor to remember. And...I think....perhaps these times call for the kind of openness and imagination we need when we approach and embrace Sci-Fi.
Hey Rebecca, thanks for that thoughtful reply! I sometimes think about you and Dale when I write about the Trumpy stuff and wonder if I'm alienating you. Anyway, I miss the old times. Maybe sometime we can figure a way to get together!
As I said, I am, we are, trying to find a way through what has become an untenable situation. I didn't feel so much alienated as I did deeply perplexed. Confused. I miss the old times, too. Were we different people then? I don't think so, although sometimes I feel as though I am being completely replaced every couple years or so. Time is too swift. And the times are too weird. "Come let us reason together." Have we moved past that notion? I say, no. I must say, no. I simply refuse to be tangled up in the despair that so many of my friends are feeling.
I thought sure you were going to come to the conclusion that expressing your political (or any) opinions is to clarify them to yourself. I am in a text feud with one of my brothers: back and forth and back and forth. The first time we did this I became disappointed in him and a little depressed myself. The next time I was actually having a great time. 1j because I know I’m right (haha, but really), and 2) because I knew I would never convince him, but I enjoyed clarifying my ideas for myself. This time, we finished off as friends. Btw, he is generally one of the sweetest people I know.
You know, that's interesting. Generally that is what my "Perplexed" posts have been, trying to figure things out by writing about them. But these "not-so-perplexed" posts have been more, I guess, about articulating my feelings. I suppose that suggests less flexibility on my part with regard to the politics about which I am, for some reason, less ambivalent than religion. . . . I'm going to have to think about that.
Well I'm glad we got all that out of the way
Exactly!