There were a few people I inspired to flame me. I know I provoked them. I didn’t actually do anything that deserves being flamed. But I broke etiquette some. It’s not a surprising result. Flaming me for some of the things I did is pretty normal. (Btw a few of the flames were deleted or edited a bit after being posted.)
This reliably decreases your chance of changing minds and having your own mind changed. It creates an adversarial Us vs. Them mentality which limits limits the degree to which either of you is open to the other’s arguments. Perhaps it doesn’t feel to you like you’re closing yourself off and making yourself less inclined to change your mind, but this happens to people quite reliably, and you strongly appear to be exhibiting it in your debates. You try to kick holes in the arguments of others, and not just reject the arguments but behave insultingly towards others for making them, when you could be asking “is there any reasonable way I could modify this argument so that it would retain the same point and not have this flaw?”
This behavior will tend to drive away people who’re concerned with civility for its own sake, and people who’re interested in fruitful debates that share meaningful ideas and change people’s minds.
I have a record of online debates of comparable magnitude to your own, and one flaw that I have had to address in myself is the tendency to persist in hammering disagreements out ad nauseam. If you had visited the forum I frequented four years ago, the debate could have drawn out for days, and would almost certainly have been wasted, because we would both have walked away convinced that we won the argument having not changed our minds at all. The point of arguments is not to convince yourself you argued better, it’s to see to it that people learn something and someone changes their mind, and if this doesn’t happen, everyone involved loses. I have learned that arguing with people who demonstrate your conduct overwhelmingly tends to be a waste, which is why I’m no longer going to bother discussing Popper with you, but I am going to suggest that if you want to engage in fruitful debates, you should reconsider this approach.
Style complaints are a red herring; they are a way to complain and criticize independent of what the issues actually are. Downvotes happen across multiple styles. Respect the evidence.
I haven’t followed mlionson’s comments, but Brian Scurfield was similarly downvoted for making erroneous arguments and not following up on requests to inform himself so he would be equipped to meaningfully participate in the discussions, and for unnecessarily promoting an Us vs. Them mentality, which has been explicitly noted in the responses to his comments as well as yours. There are other ways than rudeness to be downvoted, but this does not mean that rudeness does not encourage downvotes.
I and others have been quite willing to criticize your contributions on the basis of content, but your conduct has been such that people are increasingly deciding that it’s not worthwhile. If you want your content to be addressed, signal that you are prepared to participate in a fruitful conversation.
Do you know of any published work by a Bayesian criticizing Popper, which you think is correct?
No one here posted any rigorous criticisms of Popper. They just complained about my summaries, being unaware of the published details they didn’t yet understand. And I know how much you guys claim to like rigor, so there should be one, right?
And yet I acted as I did anyway. For what I deem to be rational reasons. Which I knew in advance, and did not create afterwards as an excuse. And I also knew in advance that I could use other styles if I wanted—I have done so and am in fact currently doing so at other places.
I wonder, how do you explain that? Do you think I might know something you don’t? Do you think you might be wrong about some aspect of this?
This reliably decreases your chance of changing minds and having your own mind changed. It creates an adversarial Us vs. Them mentality which limits limits the degree to which either of you is open to the other’s arguments. Perhaps it doesn’t feel to you like you’re closing yourself off and making yourself less inclined to change your mind, but this happens to people quite reliably, and you strongly appear to be exhibiting it in your debates. You try to kick holes in the arguments of others, and not just reject the arguments but behave insultingly towards others for making them, when you could be asking “is there any reasonable way I could modify this argument so that it would retain the same point and not have this flaw?”
This behavior will tend to drive away people who’re concerned with civility for its own sake, and people who’re interested in fruitful debates that share meaningful ideas and change people’s minds.
I have a record of online debates of comparable magnitude to your own, and one flaw that I have had to address in myself is the tendency to persist in hammering disagreements out ad nauseam. If you had visited the forum I frequented four years ago, the debate could have drawn out for days, and would almost certainly have been wasted, because we would both have walked away convinced that we won the argument having not changed our minds at all. The point of arguments is not to convince yourself you argued better, it’s to see to it that people learn something and someone changes their mind, and if this doesn’t happen, everyone involved loses. I have learned that arguing with people who demonstrate your conduct overwhelmingly tends to be a waste, which is why I’m no longer going to bother discussing Popper with you, but I am going to suggest that if you want to engage in fruitful debates, you should reconsider this approach.
Two people I know, who do not write in the same style I used here lately, also have 0 karma.
http://lesswrong.com/user/mlionson/
http://lesswrong.com/user/brianScurfield/
Style complaints are a red herring; they are a way to complain and criticize independent of what the issues actually are. Downvotes happen across multiple styles. Respect the evidence.
I haven’t followed mlionson’s comments, but Brian Scurfield was similarly downvoted for making erroneous arguments and not following up on requests to inform himself so he would be equipped to meaningfully participate in the discussions, and for unnecessarily promoting an Us vs. Them mentality, which has been explicitly noted in the responses to his comments as well as yours. There are other ways than rudeness to be downvoted, but this does not mean that rudeness does not encourage downvotes.
I and others have been quite willing to criticize your contributions on the basis of content, but your conduct has been such that people are increasingly deciding that it’s not worthwhile. If you want your content to be addressed, signal that you are prepared to participate in a fruitful conversation.
Do you know of any published work by a Bayesian criticizing Popper, which you think is correct?
No one here posted any rigorous criticisms of Popper. They just complained about my summaries, being unaware of the published details they didn’t yet understand. And I know how much you guys claim to like rigor, so there should be one, right?
FWIW I already knew everything you said here.
And yet I acted as I did anyway. For what I deem to be rational reasons. Which I knew in advance, and did not create afterwards as an excuse. And I also knew in advance that I could use other styles if I wanted—I have done so and am in fact currently doing so at other places.
I wonder, how do you explain that? Do you think I might know something you don’t? Do you think you might be wrong about some aspect of this?