[hakunin]

One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.

On a more personal level, the reason people are frustrated about arguing is because they can’t fully articulate their reasons. They don’t realize it themselves. The older you get and the more practiced you get at arguing, the less contentious it becomes, as you can simply say what underpins what you’re saying in an easily understandable way, and then if that didn’t convince the other side, you did all you could.

[snarf21]

This is indeed part of the problem. Life today is just too complicated. Take a simple topic like wind turbines: there is so so much to truly understand about materials, net lifetime carbon offset, environmental issues, recycling, capacity, placement, etc. that is is all but impossible to become a true subject matter expert on this one issue alone. Even gaining a cursory understanding of the issues at hand requires many many hours of reading and research from all positions. And this just makes you knowledgeable on this one small subject.

So what we do in practice is this: Pick the issue I care most about, then assume that any group that agrees with me on that position is a safe source to trust for ALL issues. This is our human need to belong (and tribalism). The problem is that the groups pushing these positions leverage this other'ing to create divisiveness for the sole purpose of making more and more money.

[hakunin]

Yeah. We love the comfort of "getting it", but most of the easy problems have been solved, and we're only left with the hard ones.

People are pleasure-seekers, not truth-seekers. People demand what they can understand and feel good about, even if wrong. There's plenty of supply too. Radical free speech allows anyone to spread lies for huge financial upside, and we don't have any check on this particular type of weapon which is mass-destroying society.

[paulryanrogers]

Is life too complex or do we fail to teach and learn enough about it to have an educated perspective?

I don't have to be a wind turbine expert to know that they're overall better than coal plants. Because at a minimum their source is not finite and their output hasn't been linked to increases in cancer and breathing problems.

[jodrellblank]

but you don't need to be a subject matter expert on wind turbine material strength and recycling options to accept that President Trump's claims that they kill whales is nonsense: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66928305

"I want to be a whale psychiatrist" - President of the United States of America Donald Trump, interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience, October 2024.

And you don't need to be an expert on wind turbine placement to have an opinion on whether putting one in view of Donald Trump's golf course, and then having President Trump scupper them for revenge, is a sensible way to govern the world's most powerful country's energy economy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo

From that article: "Before making the transatlantic crossing for his Scottish summer jaunt, the US president urged the UK to "get rid of the windmills and bring back the oil".". The Conservative government under David Cameron made a change to planning policy in 2015 where a single objection could block a whole wind farm - and those planning changes only applied to wind turbines and no other structures - a situation described as a "de facto ban" of on-shore wind farms in England (not Scotland), which lead to a 96% drop in on-shore wind development compared to previous years 2011 to 2015. It continued until Rishi Sunak eased it in 2023 and Labour removed it in 2024.

You don't need to be an expert on wind farm placement or capacity to have a valid opinion on that.

[jadbox]

Since it seems like you may have research this, how do you feel about wind turbines?

[snarf21]

Honestly, I have barely looked into it. The main thing I know is that there is currently about ~7 year payoff in terms of carbon. My general sense is that we should be investing in solar and batteries and not doing wind except in specific isolated situations but I don't have the knowledge to back that up right now.

I'd also argue that people above are making my point for me. It isn't enough to say that wind is better than coal. Lots of things are better than coal. That still doesn't mean that it is the right choice or best use of our time and resources to help combat climate change. The switch to EV is going to be long and slow but attacking electricity generation carbon is something we can do more directly more quickly (assuming the political will). The calculus on the quickest and biggest bang for our buck is insanely complicated.

[Johanx64]

The frustrating part about arguing - on the internet:

1. Infinite supply of people.

2. 90%+ of times before you get anywhere, you find out the person doesn't have "what it takes".

At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started. All this just takes energy and there's just no benifit.

Its like imagine you're trying to playing chess, but

1. Most of the people don't even know rules.

2. Even if they know (some of the) rules. Some people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing and telling a difference between valid or invalid chess move. Some moves - like castling - are fundamentally too challenging for them to grasp. They simply don't have what it takes to participate.

3. And then you find out whole bunch of people aren't there to play chess to begin with, but rather discuss how the moves they use in their house is all different.

It's just such a waste of energy.

[post-it]

> At minimum you have to filter out 90%+ of people that simply don't have the mental faculties to evaluate what is and isn't a valid argument, before you even get started.

I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.

Text is a hard medium to have a back-and-forth in. The features that make it useful for explaining also make it easy to feel ignored and insulted.

I think a lot of people also go online and write things when they feel argumentative, so comment sections self-select for people who want to argue.

Whenever I feel intellectually superior to someone, I try to remind myself that I can barely change the oil filter in my car, and there's a lot of people out there who can't write a line of Python but who save tens of thousands of dollars doing their own maintenance.

[Johanx64]

The problem, fundamentally, is that unlike a computer program that won't compile if there's syntax errors, or that will crash on null pointer dereference, etc.

There's no such mechanisms in place to ensure logical consistency and coherance of made claims.

Thus the onus is on you to quickly realize that the other party "doesn't have what it takes" and bail out, or you're arguing with a person that doesn't have the mental capacity to recognize syntax errors and subtle bugs, they are simply interested in arriving at their destination and couldn't care less if they arrived there with an unbroken chain of valid chess moves.

> I don't think this is true. There are times when I do think it's true, and when I start feeling that way I know it's time to step back because I can no longer engage constructively.

I love how you don't even care if it's true, merely how you think at any given moment (and this changes with mood) and how those thoughts makes you feel.

If you're unable to entertain the idea significant amount of people don't have "what it takes" (which is a fact, btw), have you ever been able to engage constructively?

One of the hallmarks of a person who isn't interested in playing chess is a person who focuses not on what IS true, but "what they think" or "how they start feeling" about chess moves at any given time, etc. Ie. focus is about vibes.

[win311fwg]

> 1. Infinite supply of people.

Untrue. On the internet there are no people, only computers.

As the great Marshall McLuhan once said: the medium is the message.

[cryptopian]

Most importantly, modern platforms are optimised to maximise your attention and engagement, and nothing's more engaging than fear, anger and superiority. Your comment sorting algorithms find that the statements most reacted to are the most outlandish and direct.

[hakunin]

Agree, mostly. On the internet, I like to be selective about only addressing new substantial claims.

In person, at work, etc, it makes sense to spend more energy, be more patient to get on the same page, and you get more benefit if you succeed.

[hamdingers]

It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties. Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.

This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.

[Johanx64]

If they take the most absurd interpretation or nitpick about irrelevant details that doesn't take away from the crux of the point you're making - and that's the best they can do - are they really intelligent?

Or are you simply dealing with people that "don't have what it takes" to do better?

They simply don't have the faculties to make a better argument or approach from a different angle, it's the best they can do, and the best they can do is just not enough.

[palmotea]

> It's generous to assume all the difficult accounts you encounter are lacking mental faculties.

It's also not uncommon for people who are arrogant to think that most people who disagree with them are stupid. They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect (and helps avoid uncomfortable thoughts like, "could I be wrong?").

> Many are participating with the goal of wasting your energy.

> This site in particular is infested with accounts that seem to have some real intelligence behind them, but they use that intelligence to respond to the most absurd and frustrating interpretation of your comments.

That sounds like software engineers being software engineers. They often think they show off how smart they are by missing the point and nitpicking on some quibble.

[jodrellblank]

> "They assume they're right so disagreement is a sign of a defect"

Take a step back and look at the original linked blog post through this lense, and you'll see an article where the author is a priori correct and other people are only wrong because they are too irrational and emotional to accept the author's flawless logic. There's no mention that author might be wrong about anything, e.g. for the author to argue so that they can learn things and change their mind. There's no room for the author failing to change someone's mind because the author's communication skill, reasoning, logic, isn't strong enough, only because the other person is defective and cannot be reasoned with. (Having taken those positions, the author declares themselves humble).

(Let's quickly address "the moment you insist on standing on the high ground, you’ve created the low ground someone else must stand on" by observing that we can all stand on "murder is bad" and nobody needs to stand on "murder is good"; and wonder how the author managed to miss that. (My answer: because this isn't about logic; if not-arguing is doing other people a favour, then it's a virtue and the author can feel good about it. It's a defense so the author doesn't need to change)).

> [article] "Worse, most people don’t learn from advice at all. They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks"

That this is an example which applies to children. Adults do not have to jump off a cliff to accept that jumping off a cliff is a bad idea. But it's still a weak argument. The experience of being burned by a stove includes the sensation of hot metal, pain, burnt skin, burnt hair smell, lingering pain, blistering, scabbing, healing... to suggest that the words "it will burn you" is the territory, and that the words adequately communicate the lived experience to someone who has not had that experience, is the Detached Lever fallacy[1]; it's something that a person who lives with text would argue.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zY4pic7cwQpa9dnyk/detached-l...

[hexaga]

Many people just don't care about honoring the integrity of the game, if they can gain advantage in the meta game. Of course motivation for the game dissolves under such conditions.

Tying a tangible score number to 'vague social approval' hits very hard. There's a sense in which people care about that by default, but have to make themselves care about the inner game. But appearing to have integrity about the inner game is a good move in the meta game, so of course the default move of those who don't care about the game but want to appear to for the sake of the meta game is to put up a front: the trick is that it's not real. If playing the inner game faithfully, it becomes trivial to disassemble their (fronted) position. But it's not really a game, because they're not playing but pretending to play. You're costing them meta-score! How dare you!

Anyway, I digress. This dynamic falls out of the incentive structure of sites like HN/reddit/etc which embed discussion/argumentation into quasi-anonymous social-approval-point-ranked contexts. Moderation can temper the most egregiously obvious of such behavior, but only that.

A reasonable strategy if you're interested in actually playing the inner game is to carefully check if there's any meta game focused cheesing going on before bothering to enter against someone. Do they make mistakes in rule adherence due to inexperience, or do they make mistakes in rule adherence that conspicuously always puts them in a meta game advantage? Do they adhere to rules even when it's _disadvantageous_? That kind of thing.

To return to the chess analogy... Don't play with people who blatantly return their own downed pieces to the board (or similar hijinks). They're just there to look like they're the kind of person who wins at chess, not to play chess.

[palmotea]

> One of the most cancerous developments of our generation is a bunch of people isolating themselves from everyone else, and having their perfect unchallenged audience captured views spread far and wide.

A takeaway from that: if you think you're right about everything and rarely find yourself in situations where you're forced to doubt your ideas (at least a little), it's possible what's actually going on is you're just too isolated from others.

[hakunin]

That’s if you are trying to learn. Many of these know exactly what they’re doing, on purpose.

[mathgladiator]

Knowing when to stop is a key learning in wisdom.

When I reflect on it, we are in a state of hyper-individualism on every single front. Is it wrong? Well, yes and no. It is a consequence of freedom. What I ultimately see happening is that we solved evolution on a biological level. Now, it is evolution on an ideological level.

What makes me sad is that some people don't have friends that can call them out and argue in good faith. I'm a very disagreeable person, and I have a good friend group that I can argue with without any fear.

[toenail]

Even worse than "a bunch of people" is when the majority behaves like that.

[inglor_cz]

Nowadays, you can even get twenty sycophantic AIs to reinforce your beliefs daily.

[mdnahas]

My definition of a cult is a group where members don’t trust people outside the group. We have a lot of news sources saying that we should not trust other news sources. Especially statements like “that other news source lied once, so you should never trust them.” I think this promoted mistrust has created a lot of cults.

When members of a cult don’t trust outsiders, it allows their beliefs to drift away from reality. They’re not getting the feedback necessary to keep information grounded. And reality is a great mechanism for keeping beliefs unified. The creation of cults has splintered the USA.

I think the Internet has helped foster this. It made it cheaper and easier to create a new news source. It is cheaper and easier to fund that news source through ads or direct payments from customers. And the resulting market incentivizes news sources to keep customers by denigrating the competition, which creates cults.

We need to redesign the market for news sources, to disincentivize that behavior.

[hakunin]

I think this is not quite right.

There are news, and there's entertainment (opinions and punditry).

News actually have journalistic standards. They try to stay truthful and retract errors.

But what most people follow are shows/personalities that aren't even allowed to be officially called news, and independent media online influencers who are much more easily and directly corruptible and audience captured by much less money, with basically zero accountability.

The truth is, mainstream news (the actual news) are still good. But it's so easy nowadays to get on a platform and discredit everyone with almost no evidence, and have thousands of people believe you. And then sell your sponsors to that audience, because you sound trustworthy. It's so much easier to discredit everyone else than to build your own true credibility.

The goal is not to make you believe that "we are better than them". The goal is to make you believe that "everyone is equally bad, everyone is lying to you". It's like when phone scammers tell you that the other phone scammers are real scammers to appear more trustworthy.

I think the problem is with independent media and "opinions" replacing news. If everyone yells bullshit for personal gain at the top of their lungs and creates cults (as I agree these become), that's basically not free speech anymore.

[sensanaty]

I dunno, I think this is only really true online. Once you step out into the real world people are a lot more moderate and reasonable. I'm the Enlightened centrist of my friend group and my friends from both sides of the political centrum give me plenty of shit but are still good buddies, which doesn't happen so much online ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

[toofy]

yep, i just wrote an overly long comment that was trying to get across what you said in a paragraph. if its a random online, dont over think it. i started to pay way more attention to the real world people in my life and im much much much happier for it.

[hakunin]

Be careful what you’re centering yourself between. If one side is trying to build decent policy with a small fringe that has almost no political power, and the other side’s fringe has cemented itself as the new mainstream and fights classic liberalism, institutions, and science, you’re now in a very different center.

[gobdovan]

> isolating themselves & having their [...] views spread far and wide

> most cancerous developments & the less contentious it becomes

Your comment complains that people cannot articulate their reasons, while making a sweeping, emotionally loaded claim whose reasons are themselves barely articulated.

[ricardobeat]

That doesn't read as a complaint, it's a realization, and the argument is articulated enough.

Are you challenging the idea that echo chambers facilited by modern tech are harmful, or that people get better at expressing themselves as they get older? From here it looks like you're doing neither, just taking a stab at the comment's author.

[gobdovan]

Was discussing the content, not the author. Yes, I am challenging vague discourse about echo chambers, since the mechanism behind an echo chamber is selectively listening to some opinions, while dismissing other sources of authority or correction. To see why this is a problem, consider that parent comment is compatible with both:

"Flat Earth is a cancerous echo chamber"

"As I grew older and became better at arguing, I learned to explain why universities teaching that the Earth is spherical are cancerous ideological echo chambers."

[hakunin]

That's how claims work. Why would I argue against nobody? Happy to engage if you disagree with the claim.

I only somewhat disagree with the post in the second part, with reasons enough to start the conversation.