My current plan for next time I get into a demon thread (or other drawn-out arguments) is to say something like: “this doesn’t feel like a good discussion to keep having, so unless that changes, I’m going to limit myself to two more posts in this thread”.
It’s hard to just stop outright, for various reasons. Among them: do I reply to their most recent points or not? If not, it looks like I’m giving up as soon as I can’t continue; they might feel like I’ve wasted their time. If I do, I make them choose between “don’t reply, appear to have no response” and “do reply, appear to be attacking someone who can’t defend themself”. I don’t like when people tap out so abruptly on me, whether they reply or not, even if I’m glad the discussion is over.
But if I allow myself a couple more replies, I avoid looking like I’m giving up out of weakness, and I let them choose how much more time they want to invest, and if they have something they want a reply to they can still say it and get a reply. We can work together to bring the thread to a conclusion, if that’s what they want. (And if they don’t, perhaps that fact becomes more obvious to bystanders, who then assign me extra credit.) I think I would prefer to be on the receiving end of this, rather than an abrupt tapping-out.
And “unless that changes” gives me an out, which I mostly intend to make it easier for me to use the strategy, but could plausibly be sometimes actually good to take. There’s a risk that I use it even when that hasn’t changed, but at first I intend to try it with the escape clause.
I don’t know how this’ll work, but it feels worth trying. If when it comes down to it, I find myself super averse to trying, that seems worth discovering too.
Huh—my reaction to your first sentence was “it seems better to just rip the bandaid off”, but by the time I finished reading you had me pretty sold (at least as a useful tool to have in my toolkit)
My current plan for next time I get into a demon thread (or other drawn-out arguments) is to say something like: “this doesn’t feel like a good discussion to keep having, so unless that changes, I’m going to limit myself to two more posts in this thread”.
It’s hard to just stop outright, for various reasons. Among them: do I reply to their most recent points or not? If not, it looks like I’m giving up as soon as I can’t continue; they might feel like I’ve wasted their time. If I do, I make them choose between “don’t reply, appear to have no response” and “do reply, appear to be attacking someone who can’t defend themself”. I don’t like when people tap out so abruptly on me, whether they reply or not, even if I’m glad the discussion is over.
But if I allow myself a couple more replies, I avoid looking like I’m giving up out of weakness, and I let them choose how much more time they want to invest, and if they have something they want a reply to they can still say it and get a reply. We can work together to bring the thread to a conclusion, if that’s what they want. (And if they don’t, perhaps that fact becomes more obvious to bystanders, who then assign me extra credit.) I think I would prefer to be on the receiving end of this, rather than an abrupt tapping-out.
And “unless that changes” gives me an out, which I mostly intend to make it easier for me to use the strategy, but could plausibly be sometimes actually good to take. There’s a risk that I use it even when that hasn’t changed, but at first I intend to try it with the escape clause.
I don’t know how this’ll work, but it feels worth trying. If when it comes down to it, I find myself super averse to trying, that seems worth discovering too.
Huh—my reaction to your first sentence was “it seems better to just rip the bandaid off”, but by the time I finished reading you had me pretty sold (at least as a useful tool to have in my toolkit)