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How to have better arguments online

theguardian.com

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Re: How to have better arguments online

#81

Post by anaerobicover »

peruvian wrote: post #35

Anyone who has spent a substantial amount of their free time on internet forums will laugh at this article with cynicism. It's not wrong per se but I've found most people come to online forums to blow off steam or waste time, not to have fair conversations or arguments. Also, you see the exact same debates over and over. It becomes tiring. My solution has been to just post less responses on forums, and to suppress th…

Completely agree that willingness to walk away is crucial.

I'd suggest, too, that two of your points combine: people rationalize to themselves that they're on forums to have fair, intellectual conversations, but actually unconsciously are looking for that opportunity to blow off steam.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#82

Post by _qulr »

bulleyashah wrote: post #78
_qulr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it. This seems like a rarity. The vast majority of HN discussions don't have this situation, and it seems odd if the only purpose of HN voting is to upvote "celebrity" comments. There are much better places to follow the comments of celebrities than on HN. > the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems. I strongly believe this is…

I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people. A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form. It's not important however, because I agree it's unlikely and I do see where you're coming from (I also share your sense of cynicism about democracy). I don't use Twitter that much but I hear that twitter is really toxic. Assuming some part of twitter tweet section…

> I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people.

That's my point though. A celebrity like Torvalds will likely get upvoted, but in my experience, non-celebrity knowledgeable commenters often get downvoted by people who are much less knowledgeable.

> A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form.

I don't think any system guarantees betterness. :-) But random seems to be at least pretty fair and least subject to abuse.

> Assuming some part of twitter tweet section is random, does that inspire confidence that such a system might work.

There are different parts of Twitter. The Twitter timeline is definitely not random. It's either reverse chronological or "algorithmic", depending on your settings. But any given tweet can have any number of replies, and I don't know how Twitter determines the order of display of replies to a tweet. But it's overall a very different format from HN, so comparisons are difficult.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#83

Post by _qulr »

shawnz wrote: post #77
_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

> Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience. In fact I fully expect the same (non-)outcome in any replies to my comment. Consider that it might be to the benefit of the reader to hear all the different possible ways of expressing the different arguments and counter-arguments, even when the participants themselves don't budge. Also, I often find that while I don't usually change my opinion in the middle of an ar…

> During an argument I think it actually benefits all participants to stick to a consistent viewpoint and defend it as strongly as possible to make sure that its strengths and weaknesses are fairly represented.

My feeling is that a "debate" format — under which we can include online comments and replies — is actually one of the worst ways of informing people, and vastly inferior to other educational methods. I was serious when I said "go offline and read a good book".

Debates almost invariably become a show. It's about entertainment, about "scoring points", winning and losing. But the biggest loser is always the truth, which becomes lost in the back and forth. Debates encourage taking sides. They encourage the mistaken view that there are only 2 sides to every subject.

You can try very hard to avoid these pitfalls, but it's important to note that they come with the territory. Debates inevitably fall into these pits without very hard work. It's just not a great format for information and education. But a lot of people enjoy them immensely, which is why they happen, regardless of value.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#84

Post by bserge »

How to have better arguments online: Don't.

Not worth it. Waste of time. Useless. Do anything else.

Just my experience of over 10 years having heated arguments about a lot of stuff. Nothing came out of anything.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#85

Post by throwawayboise »

jhardy54 wrote: post #70
jancsika wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree. You've crossed the digital divide here and misused the word "bubble" in the process. It's not anything like a "self-selected" group of like-minded people in a room. It's more like a group of people snookered into working for a pyramid scheme. At worst-- as with Qanon-- it's like a cult. And even cult de-programmers-- pe…

> Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone. Where did you learn about this? I'd love to be better informed.

I would guess it's an evolved survival strategy. You need to go along with the tribe you're in. It's just part of our nature to do this.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#86

Post by throwawayboise »

disabled wrote: post #79
solipsism wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the video has greater than or equal to 10% of the comments containing negative sentiment (whether it be mildly or strongly negative), then I don't watch the video This seems a rather arbitrary limiter of the content you're willing to expose yourself to. What makes you think a high negative sentiment percentage in comments indicates a video that will make you unhappy? A specific video's commenter base is nothing like…

> This seems a rather arbitrary limiter of the content you're willing to expose yourself to. What makes you think a high negative sentiment percentage in comments indicates a video that will make you unhappy? That is the point: clearly it is a very arbitrary limit. I do that on purpose. If I want to expose myself to negative feelings and emotions, I do that in real life with real, actual people. This is the definitio…

Am I unusual in that I find that the "suggestions" on all these media platforms are boringly predictable and rarely offering anything really interesting? I watch a video about "A" and I get 10 suggestions of other videos about "A". Big deal. They aren't very compelling.

Or, on shopping sites, I buy a chair. You'd think maybe I'm outfitting an office and get suggestions for a table, a desk, or stuff like that? No, I get 10 suggestions for different chairs.

Maybe it's because I use ad blockers and clear cookies frequently, so they don't have anything to really work with. But it seems that even the first guesses they take are pretty devoid of context.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#87

Post by chordalkeyboard »

_qulr wrote: post #59
hooande wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing gets resolved in offline arguments either. That isn't the point. The idea of a non-factual disagreement is that both sides get to make a case and state their perspective, and everyone learns from it. You self-selected to be here on hn, just like the rest of us did. In a sense, this is a bubble of a certain kind of thought and perspective. But it's a really big bubble that has some diversity. I think the key i…

> and everyone learns from it Do they? > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again Funny, I would describe HN as the same. I'm on HN because the topics interest me as a computer programmer. But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that. Some of those within the HN bubble think very highly of themselves,…

> But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere.

I think this is better expressed as “people almost everywhere else are terrible.” Its not that HN is better (although the crowd here is learned, intelligent, and generally aspires to professional behavior), its that most places online with more than 20 average daily users are trash.

> I could share a little CSS to add dark mode support and a few other tweaks to HN, if anyone is interested.

Please

Re: How to have better arguments online

#88

Post by bulleyashah »

disabled wrote: post #74
bulleyashah wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share the plugin?

Not the OP, but I did a search for Firefox extensions and I found this: Hide Comments Everywhere-An anti-social social extension to hide commenting systems like Disqus, Livefyre, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, etc. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-comments... Obviously uBlock Origin is a necessity, too. Another tip: Prior to going to a shopping website (such as Amazon), I go to my Firefox b…

That plugin is for desktop browser. My biggest distraction is the phone actually. And firefox for phone doesn't support it yet. Somebody should really port it. Grease monkey also doesn't work on mobile browsers.

What a great idea. I have myself disabled colors on the screen to avoid those addictive contrasts.

I also try to do a phone fast every Sunday, where I give my phone to my wife and just live without it for a day. It's amazingly rewarding. You should give it a try :)

Re: How to have better arguments online

#89

Post by MikeSchurman »

disabled wrote: post #72
MikeSchurman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very interesting way to use a computer. I'm currently exploring other sorts of novel(?) ways of using computers, so this intrigues me. What tools do you use for sentiment analysis?

I hope this helps, with respect to ideas. While I can technically create my own scripts using AI, I tend to utilize others' scripts, as programming this stuff is not the best use of my time. This sort of stuff is almost always exclusively posted on GitHub. I do not use a ton of packages. I do have to keep this concise (check my profile for my email, which I will keep available for a couple of days). -Video: It should…

Thanks for the detailed response. I too generally feel bad using most social media (doomscrolling, etc..), but there's probably a lot of other things I do on the computer that make me feel bad, I just have not noticed.

I've written a simple script to record most of what I do on my computer (ie what I type, what windows/tabs have focus, etc...). Correlating that info with Emotions monitor seems like it could find patterns I'm not aware of. Not sure if I'll get around to do that but you never now.

You've given me lots to look into, thanks again.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#90

Post by bulleyashah »

_qulr wrote: post #82
bulleyashah wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people. A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form. It's not important however, because I agree it's unlikely and I do see where you're coming from (I also share your sense of cynicism about democracy). I don't use Twitter that much but I hear that twitter is really toxic. Assuming some part of twitter tweet section…

> I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people. That's my point though. A celebrity like Torvalds will likely get upvoted, but in my experience, non-celebrity knowledgeable commenters often get downvoted by people who are much less knowledgeable. > A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form. I don't think any system guarantees betterness. :-) But random…

I see. My only contention would be that abuse is stopped but use is also equally degraded (due to randomness).

But I see what you're saying. Some combination of voting and randomness might br worth it. Also, another thing is maybe some sort of sentiment analysis can help (abuse mainly comes from trolling, virtue signalling etc).

I don't know, if ther was a way to figure out what value a comment adds (or inverse), then that, combined with voting and some sort of randomness might make the system fairer and better?

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