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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Jun 29, 2023 6:17:46 GMT
Have you ever tried it?
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Post by Orac on Jun 29, 2023 6:52:58 GMT
The evil of man is that he loves to act as the teacher of others . Mencius 372- 289 bc There is much truth in that |
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Post by oracle75 on Jun 29, 2023 7:34:35 GMT
Here is a perfect example of the adolescent aggressive comment that ruins any responsible discussion. Back in the day there used to be a commonly accepted rule that one attacks the argument, not the one who wrote it. It is depressing that standards always fall until something happens to raise them again. If you take a step backwards, the generally accepted standard of social behaviour has clearly diminished over time. In another 20 years, polite conversation will be rare. |
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Post by dappy on Jun 29, 2023 7:51:29 GMT
We are a complex species. At heart we are tribal but we have overlaid that with agreed standards for how we relate to each other when we come into contact with each other. In person we tend to avoid conflict and look for consensus and generally get on. The world of the internet and the anonymity it offers has allowed us to circumvent those social norms. Read online newspaper comments or read comments on twitter or facebook and it is not hard to see just how vile humans can be when social standards are stripped away
Steve Bannon was perhaps the first to see how the internet could be used for power. People are driven in to silos and live in an echo chamber where they can be taught that all other news sources are biased against them and all society structures are designed to do them down. Only the gods of that silo can protect their adherents from this conspiracy. It is plain to see for example that Trump is psychologically utterly unfit for any public office yet he remains popular amongst his silo who can be made to believe that all efforts to hold him to account are part of a conspiracy. Bannon techniques have to date largely been used by the "populist" right with the left and centre left perhaps surprisingly slow to adopt similar techniques. No doubt sadly they will eventually catch up and we will go further down the rabbithole where truth is not the actual truth but a distorted version of what each silo wants the truth to be.
So for forums we have people in a silo not looking for compromise and agreement but to find conflict and compounded by anonymity stripping away social norms allowing some posters to adopt quite staggering levels of playground abuse idiocy. Faced with that reality posters looking for more considered reasoned amicable debate tend to get frozen out and rarely post. While free speech principles are laudable, forum moderators have a choice between a free for all but the reality is that reasoned posters will walk away in disgust or a more regulated approach to ensure a reasonable level of quality debate survives. Finding the line is a difficult judgement to make.
In truth I don't think this board has got the balance right. There are posters whose output is nothing more than a regular tirade of abuse that would be frowned on in the playground. The mind zone is better but its standards need policing or it will rapidly go similarly downhill. It does beg the question why moderators tolerate the worst posters (lets be honest we could all name them) on the forum at all and why the board doesn't flip with mind zone rules adopted on all (or most) subsections with if necessary one sub section ("the mindless zone") where those who want to abuse and call each other names can work off there insecurities. Perhaps a moderator or the god of gods Tinculin could comment
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Post by Orac on Jun 29, 2023 7:55:07 GMT
Dappy, as long as you are mentally consigning half the population to 'a silo' or pretending some handy bogeyman invented internet politics in 2016, you are actually making the problem slightly worse by refusing to engage using reason. Your absurd, counterfactual positions make polarisation unavoidable
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Post by sheepy on Jun 29, 2023 7:56:32 GMT
We are a complex species. At heart we are tribal but we have overlaid that with agreed standards for how we relate to each other when we come into contact with each other. In person we tend to avoid conflict and look for consensus and generally get on. The world of the internet and the anonymity it offers has allowed us to circumvent those social norms. Read online newspaper comments or read comments on twitter or facebook and it is not hard to see just how vile humans can be when social standards are stripped away Steve Bannon was perhaps the first to see how the internet could be used for power. People are driven in to silos and live in an echo chamber where they can be taught that all other news sources are biased against them and all society structures are designed to do them down. Only the gods of that silo can protect their adherents from this conspiracy. It is plain to see for example that Trump is psychologically utterly unfit for any public office yet he remains popular amongst his silo who can be made to believe that all efforts to hold him to account are part of a conspiracy. Bannon techniques have to date largely been used by the "populist" right with the left and centre left perhaps surprisingly slow to adopt similar techniques. No doubt sadly they will eventually catch up and we will go further down the rabbithole where truth is not the actual truth but a distorted version of what each silo wants the truth to be. So for forums we have people in a silo not looking for compromise and agreement but to find conflict and compounded by anonymity stripping away social norms allowing some posters to adopt quite staggering levels of playground abuse idiocy. Faced with that reality posters looking for more considered reasoned amicable debate tend to get frozen out and rarely post. While free speech principles are laudable, forum moderators have a choice between a free for all but the reality is that reasoned posters will walk away in disgust or a more regulated approach to ensure a reasonable level of quality debate survives. Finding the line is a difficult judgement to make. In truth I don't think this board has got the balance right. There are posters whose output is nothing more than a regular tirade of abuse that would be frowned on in the playground. The mind zone is better but its standards need policing or it will rapidly go similarly downhill. It does beg the question why moderators tolerate the worst posters (lets be honest we could all name them) on the forum at all and why the board doesn't flip with mind zone rules adopted on all (or most) subsections with if necessary one sub section ("the mindless zone") where those who want to abuse and call each other names can work off there insecurities. Perhaps a moderator or the god of gods Tinculin could comment In all honesty Dappy, that doesn't sound very complex, but a rant on behalf of your own political beliefs. While hoping Tinculin who incidentally cannot even question his own propaganda will follow you. |
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Post by oracle75 on Jun 29, 2023 8:04:06 GMT
Dappy, as long as you are mentally consigning half the population to 'a silo' or pretending some handy bogeyman invented internet politics in 2016, you are actually making the problem slightly worse by refusing to engage using reason. Your absurd, counterfactual positions make polarisation unavoidable Once again, à provocative personal attack finishing with an unsupported general accusation of creating the very problems under discussion here. Are those who post personal attacks not aware of what they are saying? |
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Post by Orac on Jun 29, 2023 8:06:30 GMT
It wasn't a personal attack. Please read again.
However, I may well have a hit a nerve somewhere.
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Post by oracle75 on Jun 29, 2023 8:12:22 GMT
It wasn't a personal attack. Please read again. However, I may well have a hit a nerve somewhere. Since when is accusing someone of generally acting without reason and at the same time, habitually posting counterfactual information, not a personal attack? |
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Post by sheepy on Jun 29, 2023 8:19:32 GMT
It wasn't a personal attack. Please read again. However, I may well have a hit a nerve somewhere. You are fine Orac, they will let you know when you have touched a nerve. |
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Post by Orac on Jun 29, 2023 8:38:02 GMT
It wasn't a personal attack. Please read again. However, I may well have a hit a nerve somewhere. Since when is accusing someone of generally acting without reason and at the same time, habitually posting counterfactual information, not a personal attack? I didn't. You are imagining things " as long as you are mentally consigning half the population to 'a silo' or pretending some handy bogeyman invented internet politics in 2016" |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2023 9:18:35 GMT
Reflecting on fifteen years of participation in online politics discussion (pofo.org; pofoUK and this place), I have been endlessly both fascinated and horrified at the psychology behind so many exchanges one can read. The polarity and binary thought on display is staggering, in an arena wherein the object should be to find solutions to society's problems. There are structural factors, too, such as our adversarial, 'debating society' model of parliament, which subliminally entrenches that polarity and partisanship, but it is the deeper psychology I find interesting. Here is something lifted from Twitter, by Prof Jonathan Shedler, a psychology professor from UCSF. Severe personality problems find camouflage. No one thinks "I'm a sadist" or "I'm a malignant narcissist." They find a belief system/social group that validates their most hateful, destructive impulses and construes them as virtues. The most toxic and hateful people in the world are 100% convinced they fight for what is true and right. They find a way to give free rein to their cruelty, to attack, to treat others cruelly and viciously. And they find allies to cheer them on, who also believe they are on the side of all that is true and good.
For colleagues looking for more theoretical explanation, the psychological processes are splitting, projection and projective identification. Splitting means not recognizing one's own capacity for hate, cruelty, and destructiveness. The person is blind to the bad in themselves. Instead, they project the badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defence of projection, is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil and necessary to destroy. That's the projection.
The person now feels fully justified in unleashing their viciousness and hate on the other person, who is now seen (via projection) as someone monstrous who must be destroyed. If the person who is projected on responds to the provocation with anger, this is now seen as further confirmation of how hateful and destructive they are (this is what is called is "projective identification.") The end result is that the person can deny their own sadism, cruelty, and hate—while simultaneously acting it out without restraint. And feel themselves to be 100% on the side of truth and right as they do it.
In more everyday language, what it boils down to for me is two factors: First, people on all sides of politics allow themselves to believe that only they and their allies speak the truth. Ergo, everyone else is deluded. Second, having convinced themselves of the 'truth' of their position, they feel justified in simply not caring about the impact their 'truth' might have on others. You'll notice I have not made any party references. This phenomenon knows no party boundaries and can be traced back to Greece and Rome. What has potentiated and accelerated it in the last decade or so has been social media. Prior to Twitter et al, one's only option was the apocryphal letter to the (broadsheet) paper from the eponymous 'Outraged of Tonbridge Wells'. Now anyone and everyone can, if they wish, comment in real time on the opinion of anyone else and, let's be frank, most of those comments tend to be aggressively ad hominem and without substance. Taking this place as an example, few threads last more than half a dozen posts before they descend into aggressive, ad hominem attacks that add nothing to the discussion. I hardly post these days, precisely because of that phenomenon. When I see a topic of interest, unless it's only recently been posted it will have degenerated into a slanging match between polarised groups and any comment I might make in relation to the OP gets lost in the bar fight. Unfortunately, a vocal minority only log in for those bar fights. The same has become true of the political world upon which we come here to comment. 'Personality politics' and populism have wrought a political landscape in which little meaningful discussion can take place, thanks to the entrenchment of polarised thinking and the consolidation of notions of righteousness in those polarised positions. It is good to see you, and with an intelligent and thought provoking post as well. All that you say about our innate tendency to polarisation and assuming that we are right and anyone who disagrees is an idiot is something we are all prone to. I do not exempt myself from that in any way. There are differences of degree though. Some people make more of an effort to be open minded than others and attempt to engage with and respond to any logical argument they are presented with. Others seem incapable of this and quickly go for the ad hominem. But none of us are immune to provocation. Whilst I tend to engage intelligently with those willing to reciprocate - which is why most of my posting activity since it was put here has been in the mind zone - one of my biggest personal failings is my tendency to reciprocate in kind and not to walk away from a bar fight. I can be as guilty of ad hominems as anyone when I get dragged down to that level. It is to avoid that happening as much as possible that I post in the mind zone. Nevertheless, when I see something that appears to me to be an example of utter stupidity, instead of ignoring it I tend to express my disdain. But I am mindful that my ability to do that is constrained in the mind zone which is a good thing. Nevertheless, I know I have still crossed a line sometimes and would accept any such post of mine being edited or deleted. When others break mind zone rules I report them and would expect others to report me whenever I do. But I am just as convinced in the rightness of my cause as everyone else is. Though I have always noticed that some seem to have a greater tendency to emote against things rather than actually think more deeply about them, as if doing this satisfies some need. I would be interested in your take on what drives this from a psychological point of view. And I would be interested in any thoughts you might have about my own conduct and what you think lies behind it psychologically. I know one of my problems is some need I feel to respond to something aimed at me, including direct ad hominems. If I am honest the reason I find it so difficult to just ignore and walk away from an argument is that I feel an intense desire to have the last word, which is hard to logically explain or justify but obviously has something deep seated driving it. This is what sucks me into verbal bar fights. Only when physically wrenched away by for example the need to go to work, do I get enough time away to regain some perspective and let it drop. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2023 9:30:45 GMT
Online forums are the easiest but probably not the best places for serious debate and discussion. The OP seems to suggest that the problem comes from the poster . I suspect that the environment is just as much of a problem . I think it is partly due to we posters expressing human nature. But you are I think right to say that the environment plays a part too. For one thing we are all anonymous here and physically far removed from each other. This means people know they can be as aggressive, obnoxious, rude, or insulting as they wish with no fear of consequences, in a way that few of us would ever do in face to face meetings through fear of getting a smack in the mouth. Anonymity also gives us the freedom to express more extreme views than we might otherwise, or respond to the views of others in more extreme ways. I almost guarantee that the way many of us have insulted each other from time to time here would never happen in a real life meetings in most cases unless perhaps we were all drunk, in which case some kind of punch up would have a good chance of ensuing. I know I have called people idiots on this forum. I also know that were I speaking to them face to face I would never have said that even if I thought it. We all have a tendency to be less constrained and to express all our thoughts more freely, including the destructive ones, in an environment such as this where no one can challenge us other than by responding via the medium of more anonymous pixels on a screen. |
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Post by Hutchyns on Jun 29, 2023 9:41:47 GMT
Hello Cartertonian,
And as someone who is relatively new to the Forum and still figuring out how some of it works, congratulations on becoming a Global Moderator after only about 70 posts .... there's hope for us all.
I'd like to ask you, in light of the opinions you expressed in your opening post, such as:
if you expressed concerns when the idea of a 'Conspiracy Theories' section was mooted ? If I'm understanding you correctly each person believes that they and those like minded, have a monopoly on the truth. On this basis who is going to start threads in such a section, unless to attack other views which they wish to discredit as a conspiracy ? No one's going to brand themselves or those who hold views like them as Conspiracy Theorists, are they ?
We're told that: 'We've discussed and decided to rename Fringe Meetings to Conspiracy Theories', and I'm presuming that would be a discussion involving moderators as they'd be the one's needing to identify and make judgements, but is there not the additional factor of moderators having total conviction that those with opposing views are uttering 'deluded' conspiracies, and those who hold similar views to themselves are the truth speakers in every instant ?
It looks like the perfect recipe for the same people and their views being consigned to the Conspiracy bin time after time. Did you initially or since, have concerns as to whether the impact of the moderators 'truth' on others, might manifest itself in 'justified' decisions that are predisposed to target those speaking a differing truth to the one approved of ?
While I'm sure there was a full and frank discussion among all those involved before the change , the reason why the change was seen as bringing an improvement etc, I might not be the only person curious as to the motives, and disappointed at the lack of information/consultation with the forum users. Then again it might have been discussed widely and at length before I joined or in a section I rarely look at. However, given your particular views, and your status, I would most welcome any thoughts you'd be willing to share.
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Jun 29, 2023 9:44:49 GMT
Well, anyway... The OP was a good post, it's just a shame that so many subsequent ones have proved it correct.
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