no discussion that starts about whether Donald Trump is 1.88m tall should turn into a demon thread
Trump’s height is definitely not why “Donald Trump” is a common topic in CMV, so I don’t see how that’s relevant. On the other hand, such trivial fact based topics can easily become demonic—consider birtherism. If there was a subset of population that believed “Trump is actually 1.87m tall”, this could easily lead to demon threads. There is nothing inherent about height that prevents it from being a demon topic.
Similarly, the details of climate change itself should start fewer object-level arguments.
Object level disagreements about climate change are definitely a big part of why it’s a common topic and why it might cause demon threads. Of course, the argument eventually involves insulting the outgroup, but that’s hardly a topic.
We could test this by seeing whether strict and immediate moderator action prevents demon threads if it’s done as soon as discussion drifts into inherently-about-status topics
This is based on the assumption that some topics really are inherently about status. My claim is that topic popularity is a decent predictor of demonic threads, and that your status related evaluations add very little to that.
Trump’s height is definitely not why “Donald Trump” is a common topic in CMV, so I don’t see how that’s relevant. On the other hand, such trivial fact based topics can easily become demonic—consider birtherism. If there was a subset of population that believed “Trump is actually 1.87m tall”, this could easily lead to demon threads. There is nothing inherent about height that prevents it from being a demon topic.
Object level disagreements about climate change are definitely a big part of why it’s a common topic and why it might cause demon threads. Of course, the argument eventually involves insulting the outgroup, but that’s hardly a topic.
This is based on the assumption that some topics really are inherently about status. My claim is that topic popularity is a decent predictor of demonic threads, and that your status related evaluations add very little to that.