“I want to make a world where purposeful ignorance is treated as the
problem of the purposefully ignorant, rather than the problem of those
their purposeful ignorance is meant to harm.” This. 👍
Imagine living in 2021 and believing that any kind of public
discourse is useful for changing the mind of the person you’re debating
rather than those of the onlookers.
There is another common sense justification to why not to argue with
tendentious assholes. Part of what makes them assholes is that they
don’t value the time or effort of the people they want to ‘debate’ or
whatever. If it takes hours to even get to square one then that is time
better spent with someone else. It’s unsurprising that the more
productive conversations/resources get ignored by these people even if
they are freely available and on the same topic they claim to be
interested in.
I think it’s propably due to everyone on the internet being a
compulsively replying dopamine addict, but the idea that someone is by
default owed a response is Insane to me, yet I see it constantly.
Yeah learning that isnt true was really important to me in getting a healthier approach to social media. To be fair though in my experience this expectation isnt ideologically polarized at all, you see it everywhere.
You don’t have to engage with them seriously, but I’m pretty sure
that showing off how much you hate someone and then getting kudos from a
circlejerking twitter crowd is how you end up with political movements
whose only underlying principle is trying to “own the libs”. You can
play into the stereotype of being a self-righteous asshole who doesn’t
need to explain anything and gets big kudos from teenagers, or you can
reject the stereotype, but I guess it’s a moral victory to be the
stereotype, right?
You are making the common SSC mistake of overvaluing form over substance. Being an asshole to someone aggressively spreading bullshit is not comparable to being an asshole to people with reasonable positions or arguments.
I'm not concerned about the targets but all the people who are not targets of ridicule who see people acting like self-righteous stereotypes and then says "I guess both sides are the same, huh :)", and to them, form does matter
> people who are not targets of ridicule who see people acting like self-righteous stereotypes and then says "I guess both sides are the same, huh :)"
is
>someone aggressively spreading bullshit
person A: man I'm not racist but does anyone think this set of people is genetically inferior?
person B: delete your account, numbskull
person C: *hmm, these people are both equally stupid. I will side with person A.*
person C is not a nice person. if they are so easily swayed by mean words then I question their 'unbiased' nature.
Yeah, well, person C is allowed to vote in elections even if you would much rather prefer it that they not be allowed to vote in elections, and if you decided to make it easy for them to justify to themselves why A and B are the same, then you're kind of responsible for that. Nuance is important, and engaging with people whose ideas are so repellent as to not even warrant a rebuttal except for making fun of them just makes them seem like they might have valid points that you can't do anything to respond to except an insult, and even though that logic is flawed, a lot of people believe it. It could be like this:
Person A: I believe a thing that is incorrect, and actively damaging to marginalized people.
Person B: Delete your account!
Person C: Person C's best rebuttal of an incorrect and damaging thing is to tell Person A to be quiet? Looks like this Person A has got a pretty good point.
Yeah, it's wrong logic by Person C, but when you enter the public sphere and trigger the battle phase between you and Person A, you've got a duty to not look like a dipshit stereotype because you're acting as a representative for everyone that disagrees with Person A. Yes, you actually do. Public forums are read by more than one person. If public forums weren't read by more than one person then telling someone to delete their posts would be worthless for the same reason that it would be pointless to throw away their diary. So when you enter into the public sphere, it's kind of on you to do the best job of rebutting shit rather than sounding like a stereotype, or a strawman. Yes, it actually is.
'by not engaging with certain people you show you have no principles and you create empty political movements' what? That makes no sense.
Even less sense in the context of Moxon, [who has written](https://www.armoxon.com) about his political ideas quite a lot.
E: not to say that saying 'twitter sucks, and circle jerks also suck at times' isn't fun. But the one doesn't follow from the other. And even saying that is a stereotype of certain people. So :shrug:.
Sure, but so is the idea that criticizing them makes them act better. Did making fun of "chuds" online work in 2016? Has any Trump Republican ever been shamed into changing their opinion, ever? Nah, not really. It doesn't do anything other than make the person criticizing feel good. It makes silent observers of political discussions think that "hey, well ~both sides~ need to calm down" and yeah, you can paint those dumb enlightened centrists as closeted Republicans, but does that win elections? Does that make anyone change their mind?
Has an online conservative ever - in your entire life - ever changed your mind on anything by making fun of you? No? Then why would it work on them?
“I want to make a world where purposeful ignorance is treated as the problem of the purposefully ignorant, rather than the problem of those their purposeful ignorance is meant to harm.” This. 👍
Imagine living in 2021 and believing that any kind of public discourse is useful for changing the mind of the person you’re debating rather than those of the onlookers.
There is another common sense justification to why not to argue with tendentious assholes. Part of what makes them assholes is that they don’t value the time or effort of the people they want to ‘debate’ or whatever. If it takes hours to even get to square one then that is time better spent with someone else. It’s unsurprising that the more productive conversations/resources get ignored by these people even if they are freely available and on the same topic they claim to be interested in.
I think it’s propably due to everyone on the internet being a compulsively replying dopamine addict, but the idea that someone is by default owed a response is Insane to me, yet I see it constantly.
we aren’t trying to be productive, we’re trying to get internet points
I might just buy his book
You don’t have to engage with them seriously, but I’m pretty sure that showing off how much you hate someone and then getting kudos from a circlejerking twitter crowd is how you end up with political movements whose only underlying principle is trying to “own the libs”. You can play into the stereotype of being a self-righteous asshole who doesn’t need to explain anything and gets big kudos from teenagers, or you can reject the stereotype, but I guess it’s a moral victory to be the stereotype, right?