Meta comment: I think it says something interesting about our community that the debate over “is it acceptable to lie in social situations?” is by far the nastiest, most emotional debate I’ve ever seen on this site.
A thread about social justice a while back, which grew at about the same rate and encompassed rape, eugenics, and unrepentant racism, was significantly more civil. Go figure.
We care about truth, which is, overall, more important than those other things, since knowing what things are true is necessary in order to hold any kind of intelligible or useful conversation about said other things.
I think this speaks well of us.
Edit: It also speaks well of us that this “nastiest, most emotional” debate is, on the grand scale of internet debates, still not really very nasty or emotional.
Meta comment: I think it says something interesting about our community that the debate over “is it acceptable to lie in social situations?” is by far the nastiest, most emotional debate I’ve ever seen on this site.
A thread about social justice a while back, which grew at about the same rate and encompassed rape, eugenics, and unrepentant racism, was significantly more civil. Go figure.
We care about truth, which is, overall, more important than those other things, since knowing what things are true is necessary in order to hold any kind of intelligible or useful conversation about said other things.
I think this speaks well of us.
Edit: It also speaks well of us that this “nastiest, most emotional” debate is, on the grand scale of internet debates, still not really very nasty or emotional.