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This is a great way to win battles and lose wars. I came to this realization after getting good at climate science arguments. I could take a denialist "did you consider" argument, go to the IPCC reports, find labs, find papers, and return with summaries and citations in relatively short order, and after delivering them with kid gloves I could move people off one denialist argument... and onto another. If I repeated t…
You are never going to win the war.
This approach seems to presume you're not trying to talk to a programmed bot whose job is to amplify a prepared set of talking points (an approach pioneered by I believe the Edelman PR firm in the 1990s internet era, when all the bots were human). If someone's willing to pay a PR firm to run a bot farm of any kind, this has to be taken into account. Such issues include fossil-fueled global warming, the efficacy of th…
To be fair, though, online debates may have value for the readers even if they never convince the original poster. Since most users in a forum are lurkers[1] it's very hard to measure how effective is an argument and what extent is a particular debate even worth it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And your goal is to win the war instead of having a good faith discussion? I'd hope so? If the war is some subject worth arguing about, anyway. The fetish people have for polite discourse is itself bad-faith.
Whatever war is worth fighting, I sincerely doubt it will be won on an internet forum. In fact you'll just make your enemy more resolved to oppose you. > The fetish people have for polite discourse is itself bad-faith. Ok then, here goes: Your opinion on this is fucking childish. How'd I do?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whatever war is worth fighting, I sincerely doubt it will be won on an internet forum. In fact you'll just make your enemy more resolved to oppose you. > The fetish people have for polite discourse is itself bad-faith. Ok then, here goes: Your opinion on this is fucking childish. How'd I do?
If there’s a point to Internet arguments, convincing the person you’re arguing with isn’t it.
The point of winning internet arguments isn't to convince the person you're arguing with, it's to convince the people who are watching.
It's just ice cream politics.
Why does winning matter? Isn’t it emotionally more work and less gratifying than insulting? I think that’s why things are the way they are. People know this stuff, they just choose to press the insult button.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there’s a point to Internet arguments, convincing the person you’re arguing with isn’t it.
That's absolutely right. The point of winning internet arguments isn't to convince the person you're arguing with, it's to convince the people who are watching. It's just ice cream politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuaHRN7UhRo
If one really did want to change the crowd for some polarizing current topic, I wonder how to go about it. It'd be easy to substitute Vi and Emacs for chocolate and vanilla, but I'm not seeing how to apply it for climate change, guns, abortion, free speech, the middle east, or really anything that people actually fight about.
Why does winning matter? Isn’t it emotionally more work and less gratifying than insulting? I think that’s why things are the way they are. People know this stuff, they just choose to press the insult button.
This is a great way to win battles and lose wars. I came to this realization after getting good at climate science arguments. I could take a denialist "did you consider" argument, go to the IPCC reports, find labs, find papers, and return with summaries and citations in relatively short order, and after delivering them with kid gloves I could move people off one denialist argument... and onto another. If I repeated t…
The article presupposes interpersonal discussions, and assume possibility of good faith. It’s hard to make a case online, which covers all bases.
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To your point = YES!
It is INCREDIBLY frustrating and difficult to talk about this unless you are in some specific circles.
The best analogy currently I have is between Individual recycling vs company scale environmental harm.
Denialist arguments, misinformation campaigns - these are not conversations. These are campaigns. Someone wants to enact political change, influence the Overton window and drive votes or citizen behavior.
It’s absurd - and any intervention to stop this, will be branded as censorship. Then the usual solutions get pulled out; fact-checking, more free speech. All of which buys more space for the malignant campaigns.
Currently, misinformation research is specifically being targeted, which has incredible parallels to environmental research in the 80s/90s. You had cranks brought onto Fox and treated as experts. This created bills to thwart pro environment efforts. When scientists went onto Fox to debate, they were fed to the lions for spectacle.
The facts of online ecosystems end up being loaded - misinfo campaigns focus mostly on right and conservative groups. This leads to emotional responses and dismissals from people who aren’t steeped in this nonsense. You get arguments of both sides, or solutions that assume equal levels of harm and exposure.
Any actual effort to bring light to this is attacked. See what happened with the SIO. Right now the Censorship, and the censorship industrial complex are the terms being used.
It’s.. incredibly frustrating.