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Haters are, as far as history has taught us so far, gonna hate.
Facebook is over the years become more and more political for me. I don't know if it's a reflection on society, the usage of public media's or the people I hang out with. Everyday someone links a political article of some nature, some cultural person's political blog(which supposedly carries alot of weight considering these are always the ones with most likes and comments) and other things of that nature.
I make a habit of reading everyone of them, sometimes scanning through to see what people are mad about, but sometimes reading the whole thing thoroughly when I think they are interesting/stupid enough. What really gets me every single time is the art of implication that is ALWAYS used.
Person A says: I think we should take care of our elderly.
Person B replies: So we should just ignore the imigrants?!
That one isn't really an exagerated example either, people are doing this over and over again. Educated, smart people are reduced to stuttering teenagers within paragraphs of their opening derrogatory statement to the OP. Godwin's law is law, even with the upper crust of swedish debators.
The nature of hater's, and by extension the nature of argumentation is really interesting to me, because there doesn't seem to be correlation between being educated and being able to formulate arguments that could even pass on a high school level. Opinions are so loaded with falacies, ad hominems and logical leaps that it get's nearly impossible to keep track through most of the replies.
I spoke about this with some friends a few day's back and one of them said that political issues are always rooted in deeply felt values regarding human nature, so it's logical that discussions about it spin out of control. I for one can name several times where this has happened to me. Politics and rage are like punch and pie in my home. My dad, being on very different parts of the political football court, can duke it out quite brutally(not literally) when we have family dinners.
Why isn't this behavior more frowned upon, though? I can't remember anyone in school telling me not to base my opinions on emotions and to state clearly my arguments so they could be better understood, no, all I was told was that it wasn't ok to use inapropriate language to mock my classmates. So already there this viscious art of verbal violence takes hold. "Society"(or whatever medium this thing comes from) tells us it's ok to say what the fuck we want, as long as we can put it in a nice enough wrapping.
I guess it all boils down to noone really having the deciding vote on what is and isn't emotional. In that case my entire query is moot, I guess. I just sincerely wish that I could discuss more openly with everyone my ideas of the world, without in turn having to sit through a barrage of rage and implications before we can get to the interesting questions.
Do you guys and gals think that we, as in the human race, can sometime get better at discussing? Or are we already there and I'm just missing something? Is it a problem with education or just people in general?
(In any case I know that it all has to start with me. So from now on, I am totally not going to rage at my father when he calls me an egotistical asshole when we discuss politics next time! :D)
  
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Humanity won't ever be better at discussing, as our society is more and more moving towards egoism and selfishness and not empathy, which would be required to get better discussions.
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Can't we change the way society works and moves though? I mean, if it's getting worse it has to have been better some time, what did we do right then that we are doing wrong now?
Also: 1 rating, right out of the gate, ouch! XD
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People nowadays feel entitled to everything, especially in the 'first world.' Freedom of speech, freedom of belief, blablabla... combine that with the illusion of security from immediate repercussions (your monitor does not punch your face for making a terrible post), we have what you described above.
*edit: 4/5
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Yeah, I guess it has a lot to do with it. What is a good remedy for this behavior then?
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Facebook did something similar for me as well. Which is one of the reasons I stopped using it.
I think OpticalShot is on to something. The fact that we are protected from immediate repercussions by the anonymous nature of the internet and the idea that not only do we have a "right" to say what we want, but we as individuals are important produces the most useless dribble in 90% of the things I read online.
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Good discussions are hard to come by because most of the times we just want to be "right" instead of trying to find the best solution to a problem.
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1. Don't bother listening to a discussion unless you have an open mind and care what someone is going to say.
2. Think before you speak.
3. Think some more before you speak.
4. Make sure you understand what logical fallacies are before you speak.
5. Think a tiny bit more before you speak.
6. Then you can speak.
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Society can change--it always changes--but it will take time.
Right now, so many factors lean in the wrong direction. People are generally rewarded for saying the exact same thing that others think, and doing so succinctly. So basically people from different sides of an argument have messages tailored to their own side, but there is no real room in the whole scenario for anyone to seriously consider another viewpoint, much less change their minds. In fact, the more intellectual arguments that are more extensive and less polarized just tend to be ignored completely, because why take the time to read a long stupid post instead of a short stupider one that you can react to and react the way you wanted to react all along instead of writing your own less polarized response?
I do believe at some point that the balance will tip over, kneejerk reactions etc will be equivalent to a very public nosepicking and those kinds of people will be shunned and ignored. But we will only get to that point when the average person intuitively recognizes the futility and idiocy of discussions as they are. Twenty years is my guess, give or take three or so. Possibly the process can actually speed up with the enormous amount of communication we have these days, but I don't want to underestimate how long people can cling to futile discussion.
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On February 11 2012 01:15 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:1. Don't bother listening to a discussion unless you have an open mind and care what someone is going to say. 2. Think before you speak. 3. Think some more before you speak. 4. Make sure you understand what logical fallacies are before you speak. 5. Think a tiny bit more before you speak. 6. Then you can speak.
I was going to post something like this.
I subscribe fully to this -- also, the philosophy thread had something in the OP about the principle of charity (or something similar, I just skimmed) the basic idea being that you should assume that the person making an argument is a reasonable person and you should argue against the "best version" of their argument -- if they make a small mistake that weakens the argument, you respond as if they presented the argument correctly.
The problem with this is in the application -- it is frustrating, especially in real life. If you are serious about listening to arguments about politics with an open mind, and you give them the benefit of the doubt, you will often find that this courtesy is not returned to you when you begin to express a counterpoint. Most of the people who discuss politics don't really want to hear a new or opposing idea, they just want to rattle off their talking points. And this often applies to otherwise very courteous, nice people.
I simply avoid political conversations most of the time, because I get so tired of being the only person in a conversation willing to change his mind.
And lawyers are the worst -- they (well, I am a lawyer, so I guess 'we') tend to either get angry or condescending if you don't agree with everything they say. Getting paid to fight all day makes us think of all conversations as word wars. I hate that about my profession.
EDIT:
And Zaragon, I hope you are right, but I cannot share your optimism. To me, all indications point to shortening of attention spans and "soundbitizing" of arguments. In the 1600s people used to sit still and listen to a symphony (or a politician) for hours. Now the most popular videos on YouTube are mainly around 30 seconds long.
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EPT
