I second cousin_it here. If your goal is to persuade (and especially if you care about persuading third parties), then your methods may be counterproductive even if they seem more effective to you.
(For a classical example, take the dialogues of Socrates: polite and deferential to a fault, never directly convincing the antagonist, but winning points in the eyes of observers until the antagonist is too shamed to continue. I don’t find this to be the ideal of Internet argument, but it would be an improvement.)
It certainly feels better to berate a fool on the Internet than to be more detached, and you might indeed generate success stories from time to time; but you may actually be less effective at swaying the bulk of opinion. I find that I’m often hesitant to even read your long comments in the first place, due to their usual tone. It’s your call how to behave on Less Wrong, but it’s my call whether to downvote your comments, based on whether they represent the sort of discourse I want to see here.
I second cousin_it here. If your goal is to persuade (and especially if you care about persuading third parties), then your methods may be counterproductive even if they seem more effective to you.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. The dykes that maintain the sanity water level are damaged. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.
It’s more complicated than “courtesy = status”. It’s easiest for me to observe status online, and it seems to me that I’ve seen more high status people who flame occasionally than those who never do.
I second cousin_it here. If your goal is to persuade (and especially if you care about persuading third parties), then your methods may be counterproductive even if they seem more effective to you.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.
I second cousin_it here. If your goal is to persuade (and especially if you care about persuading third parties), then your methods may be counterproductive even if they seem more effective to you.
(For a classical example, take the dialogues of Socrates: polite and deferential to a fault, never directly convincing the antagonist, but winning points in the eyes of observers until the antagonist is too shamed to continue. I don’t find this to be the ideal of Internet argument, but it would be an improvement.)
It certainly feels better to berate a fool on the Internet than to be more detached, and you might indeed generate success stories from time to time; but you may actually be less effective at swaying the bulk of opinion. I find that I’m often hesitant to even read your long comments in the first place, due to their usual tone. It’s your call how to behave on Less Wrong, but it’s my call whether to downvote your comments, based on whether they represent the sort of discourse I want to see here.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. The dykes that maintain the sanity water level are damaged. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.
It’s more complicated than “courtesy = status”. It’s easiest for me to observe status online, and it seems to me that I’ve seen more high status people who flame occasionally than those who never do.
I agree, and my observations match yours.
Thirded. At times such methods give people an excuse to use even worse arguments and engage in more detrimental social-political gambits than they would otherwise have gotten away with. Observers are hesitant to intervene to penalise bullshit when to do so will affiliate them with a low status display. Even when others wish to intervene on the side of reason in such cases it is extremely hard work. You have to be ten times more careful, unambiguous and polite than normal in order to achieve the same effect.