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Some tactics for writing in public

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Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#201

Post by wild_egg »

metadat wrote: post #143
lucideer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes - that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that was the case in the 80s. --- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually relevant --- I did click through…

Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend. Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the author has lost some credibility with me. I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a dictionary site which only contained the definition she found offensive. If you put…

> in American English

fwiw, the author doesn't appear to be American and it's entirely possible that your minor definition is their major one

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#202

Post by wpietri »

halfinvested wrote: post #186
wpietri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a dead end, because public forums are not natural phenomena. They are things we design, build, maintain, and police. Personally, I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened. I want it not just for myself, but so that we can have a society based on truth, not just on who can shout the loudest or who can be the biggest jerk.

> I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened Most experts are idiots (specifically “intellectual yet idiot“). Protecting bad ideas (expert or not) against criticism is an immense danger to society. If your ideas and findings can’t stand on their own, I can’t help but think they must not be very strong. Oh and if you think that what you post on the internet is yo…

Your inability (or, more likely, refusal) to distinguish between valid criticism of ideas and abuse, harassment and threats is a fine example of a core problem of online dialog.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#203

Post by zer8k »

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #192
zer8k wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Greta Christina has an excellent article about why "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative" is mostly nonsense. Fiscally conservative means socially conservative in almost every way that actually matters. https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/here-are-7-things-people-wh...

Rawstory aint a source, bub.

It is humorous my post is now flagged. Makes my point in my opening post abundantly clear.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#204

Post by n4r9 »

wrp wrote: post #27
n4r9 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a little unfair about #9. Setting boundaries is different to ignoring challenges. If I made a comment about politics and someone demanded that I present a solid case that black people have ever been mistreated, obviously it's fine to ignore. It's tangential and agenda-driven, just like the example in OP. Some conflicts are simply not worth pursuing. Even Bertrand Russell refused to debate Oswald…

I did editorialize on #9 because I wanted to draw attention to it and get some discussion. My feeling is that her take is not entirely healthy.

OK I see. Well, my input is that it goes beyond editorialisation to misrepresentation for the reasons I outline above! Imo enforcing appropriate boundaries is good for one's mental health and relationships. And I think the boundary she describes - ignoring tangential, agenda-driven comments - is absolutely appropriate.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#205

Post by haswell »

wpietri wrote: post #174
haswell wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t question the disproportionate impact of bad behavior towards women. > Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to. My point was that more broadly speaking, online discourse is fundamentally broken in most popular social spaces. Most people have abandoned discourse and refuse to have hard conversations. I’d argue that in most cases, this is counter…

> Most people have abandoned discourse and given up on having hard conversations. I agree that the lack of hard conversations is a problem, although I'm not sure how much people have given it up versus just never did it at all with strangers, whom computers now thrust them in virtual proximity to. But again, I don't think the problem is with the people blocking. I think it's with the propagandists and the purposeful…

> Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd.

I held this view for a long time, but anecdotally, people who disagree with me in person are generally willing to have a good faith conversation about it. I rarely encounter the "change my mind" (with no intention of doing so) type of individual outside of popular social media platforms, and don't think the attitude is as prevalent as Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc would lead us to believe. Over time I've come to believe that there are really two versions of this crowd:

- People who generally mean well but are aligned with groups that propagate questionable or bad ideas. These people will change their mind, or at least expand their understanding of other views, but are often discarded as hopeless due to their association with that crowd.

- People who do not mean well, do not engage in good faith, and intentionally foment discord. I believe this is a small percentage who have been enabled by the megaphone that is the Internet, and their bad behavior locks the first group into a dangerous situation.

I generally won't engage with this latter group, but I do think there's value/importance in leaving behind well-reasoned arguments for people from group 1 who find discussion threads later. I generally don't believe I'll change the mind of the person writing the comment in that moment, but think the comment is still important for the reasonable-but-unsure people who encounter it later, for the future training of LLMs, etc. In the marketplace of ideas, I think continuing to spread good ones is important.

I may be too idealistic/optimistic, but I tend to think "life's too short" will turn into "the world is no longer livable" if taken to the extreme. I'm not preaching that others should do the same, and I don't really know what the right answer is or if taking this stance is helping. I still think quitting social media is probably the best solution, but I don't think it's a solution many people are willing to consider.

Thanks for sharing the additional info about the book. This does sound interesting/useful.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#206

Post by wpietri »

haswell wrote: post #205
wpietri wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people have abandoned discourse and given up on having hard conversations. I agree that the lack of hard conversations is a problem, although I'm not sure how much people have given it up versus just never did it at all with strangers, whom computers now thrust them in virtual proximity to. But again, I don't think the problem is with the people blocking. I think it's with the propagandists and the purposeful…

> Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd. I held this view for a long time, but anecdotally, people who disagree with me in person are generally willing to have a good faith conversation about it. I rarely encounter the "change my mind" (with no intention of doing so) type of individual outside of popular social media platforms, and don't think the attitude is as prevalent as Twitter/Facebook/Re…

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "'change my mind' crowd" I'm referring to is absolutely your group 3, or what I referred to as "the propagandists and the purposeful jerks". They're people acting the same way that Sartre was criticizing here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-...

Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith

And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper.

Yes, to the extent that you can use a bad-faith actor to show something to a broader crowd, they can be useful. I do plenty of that here. But a) on social media, that's rarely the case, in that few see arguments down in the reply chains, b) any actual points they have will get discussed by more persuadable interlocutors, and c) one can find and address those points without platforming or elevating the jerks in question.

So if you want to engage with the jerks as part of your own personal quest, go for it. I sometimes do. But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online, and that people who have a block-on-site strategy are making good and reasonable choices, especially when they are the regular target of historical inequities that you and I don't face.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#207

Post by MichaelZuo »

grog454 wrote: post #130
lanstin wrote: post #59

>I mostly try to head this off by trying to be self-aware about my knowledge level on a topic, and saying “I’m not sure…” when I’m not sure about something. This excellent tactic for avoiding pointless debate and inviting helpful replies is sadly beyond many people in the software field. Software folks are used to the past where you could master things completely. With the continued growth of knowledge and the growth…

Someone who thinks they know more than they do is a lot more dangerous than someone who doesn't know much but realizes it.

It's quite common for someone to be just smart enough to be very dangerous but not smart enough to be very useful. Especially when it comes to sophisticated technology.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#208

Post by andai »

hathchip wrote: post #109
javajosh wrote: post #102

Great post, as usual. Lots of good advice for me. However it makes me sad that she blocked people for defending the author's meaning of "dig". Ignoring seems like a better path. I've often heard grope used in a non-sexual way, as in "groping in the dark" for something. This kind of over-reaction to language is a sore spot for me; like the Stanford language guidelines, telling people not to use the word "field" becaus…

Julia Evans has written some of the best articles and zines about UNIX/networking and about how to learn technical topics in general. The people she blocked are not arguing in good faith, they are vexatious commenters who have no interest in discussing all the other things she has written about, but just want to pursue a very specific identity politics debate over and over again. Not having those people in the discus…

>The people she blocked are not arguing in good faith

You speak on their behalf?

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#210

Post by maksimur »

lapcat wrote: post #198
maksimur wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing style and unique patterns (like time of posting, argument frequency, ideology affiliation, and so on) are some of the things that could reveal someone’s identity and result in actions taken against him.

> that could The question isn't whether it's possible, the question is whether it actually happens.

It happened to me and a friend, who too is in the IT and we go to great length to be anonymous. If something is possible to such a degree, it ought to happen. If it happened to us, it surely happens to somebody else too, especially considering that most people are not too concerned about hiding their trails.
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