For what it’s worth, I often wonder whether, when a given post has no comments or votes, it’s because nobody cared what it said or because it was wrong but nobody could be bothered to point out why. On the other hand, I consider substance-less attempts to refute a post to be weak evidence that it is correct (but makes people uncomfortable for some reason, usually discernible); if that’s the best counterargument the detractor came up with then they probably don’t have a very strong position.
Self reply—With all that said, if you truly believe this would be beneficial to the pursuit of rationalism, you could have expressed it better. The biggest flaw, I think, is repeatedly claiming the personal time investment of “two hours” (that phrase occurs four times in the original post and your initial replies, not counting instances where it’s quoted). Two hours of research is unlikely to produce a significantly better post (in most cases) than a few minutes, although it may result in you personally learning more. If your goal is to convince the other person (as opposed to being to educate yourself and future readers who see your post) then it is almost completely wasted time. This is an irrational behavior, and it sounds like you are encouraging us to join you in it.
Whether or not you actually say so, you imply an expectation that we pay the same cost in time that you pay for the privilege of being right on the Internet. It is possible that you have no such intention, and that your talk of how long you spend is instead meant to either impress us or evoke sympathy for your poor time management skills (or something else entirely), but the way the post was written will lead people to equate “two hours” with “adequate amount of research to be worth of posting a counterargument”.
That, I think, may well be why some people are experiencing such a strong negative reaction to your post. Two hours is not a reasonable amount of time to spend (in most cases), and it is by no means a reasonable amount of time to expect people to spend. If you focus on the core position that unsupported counterarguments are undesirable, I suspect you’d have a more favorable reaction.
If you want help learning to recognize an appropriate amount of time to spend researching a post before making it, that would be a good question to ask in a discussion post. It’s something I’ve battled myself. The temptation to be unassailably right is strong. So is the temptation to have the last word, though, because then you can imagine yourself to be right whether you are or not. Beware of that one.
For what it’s worth, I often wonder whether, when a given post has no comments or votes, it’s because nobody cared what it said or because it was wrong but nobody could be bothered to point out why. On the other hand, I consider substance-less attempts to refute a post to be weak evidence that it is correct (but makes people uncomfortable for some reason, usually discernible); if that’s the best counterargument the detractor came up with then they probably don’t have a very strong position.
Self reply—With all that said, if you truly believe this would be beneficial to the pursuit of rationalism, you could have expressed it better. The biggest flaw, I think, is repeatedly claiming the personal time investment of “two hours” (that phrase occurs four times in the original post and your initial replies, not counting instances where it’s quoted). Two hours of research is unlikely to produce a significantly better post (in most cases) than a few minutes, although it may result in you personally learning more. If your goal is to convince the other person (as opposed to being to educate yourself and future readers who see your post) then it is almost completely wasted time. This is an irrational behavior, and it sounds like you are encouraging us to join you in it.
Whether or not you actually say so, you imply an expectation that we pay the same cost in time that you pay for the privilege of being right on the Internet. It is possible that you have no such intention, and that your talk of how long you spend is instead meant to either impress us or evoke sympathy for your poor time management skills (or something else entirely), but the way the post was written will lead people to equate “two hours” with “adequate amount of research to be worth of posting a counterargument”.
That, I think, may well be why some people are experiencing such a strong negative reaction to your post. Two hours is not a reasonable amount of time to spend (in most cases), and it is by no means a reasonable amount of time to expect people to spend. If you focus on the core position that unsupported counterarguments are undesirable, I suspect you’d have a more favorable reaction.
If you want help learning to recognize an appropriate amount of time to spend researching a post before making it, that would be a good question to ask in a discussion post. It’s something I’ve battled myself. The temptation to be unassailably right is strong. So is the temptation to have the last word, though, because then you can imagine yourself to be right whether you are or not. Beware of that one.