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from the argument-for-the-sake-of-argument dept.
To Swedish blogger John Nerst, online flame wars reveal a fundamental shift in how people debate public issues. Nerst and a nascent movement of other commentators online believe that the dynamics of today's debates—especially the misunderstandings and bad-faith arguments that lead to the online flame wars—deserve to be studied on their own terms. "More and less sophisticated arguments and argumenters are mixed and with plenty of idea exchange between them," Nerst explained in an email. "Add anonymity, and knowing people's intentions becomes harder, knowing what they mean becomes harder." Treating other people's views with charity becomes harder, too, he said.
Inspired by this rapid disruption to the way disagreement used to work, Nerst, who describes himself as a "thirty-something sociotechnical systems engineer with math, philosophy, history, computer science, economics, law, psychology, geography and social science under a shapeless academic belt," first laid out what he calls "erisology," or the study of disagreement itself. Here's how he defines it:
Erisology is the study of disagreement, specifically the study of unsuccessful disagreement. An unsuccessful disagreement is an exchange where people are no closer in understanding at the end than they were at the beginning, meaning the exchange has been mostly about talking past each other and/or hurling insults. A really unsuccessful one is where people actually push each other apart, and this seems disturbingly common.
[...] political scientists who study disagreement, unsurprisingly, disagree. Though Nerst has claimed that "no one needs to be convinced" of the needlessly adversarial quality of online discourse, Syracuse University political scientist Emily Thorson isn't buying it. "I actually do need to be convinced about this," she said in an email, "or at least about the larger implication that 'uncivil online discourse' is a problem so critical that we need to invent a new discipline to solve it. I'd argue that much of the dysfunction we see in online interactions is just a symptom of much larger and older social problems, including but not limited to racism and misogyny.
So, old political scientists think they've already identified the root cause of "bad behavior" and that online argument isn't a significant factor, or at least that's the argument they put forth in their e-mail vs the younger blogger... Dismissive, much ;-)
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:56PM (2 children)
Sure. People always have disagreements. And different folks address those in different ways.
I can't say whether or not my family is typical or an exception. I don't have enough experience for comparison.
I will say that it's unfortunate that some folks feel the need to censor themselves with the very people who should *always* be in their corner. But again, that attitude is a product of my own experience.
Getting back to your earlier point, one of the things that being online has changed is that otherwise considerate people seem willing to say nasty and obnoxious things to strangers that (not because of external restrictions) they'd never say to a stranger in person. Again, cf. GIFT [penny-arcade.com].
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:13PM (1 child)
In my families (mom and dad were a bit different), lots of stuff was discussed openly, and lots of stuff wasn't - and it was somewhat random.
On sex, my mom had "the talk" with me when I was 5, which apparently absolved her conscious of ever having to discuss it with me again. My dad's mom bought a set of books for me when I was 12 - a bit more age appropriate, but she certainly didn't want to discuss it. Dad's first mention of the topic was when I was 22 and still unmarried, a bit of dating advice from him. Then there was my high school girlfriend who went on to be Pet of the Month when I was 19, first time I talked openly about that with anyone in the family about that was mom when I was about 35.
Politics, religion, and race would surface somewhat randomly - LGBT started becoming a favorite topic of dad's at one point... other times, when they were a source of intra-family disagreement, the topics were actively suppressed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:33PM
Interesting. I was thinking about adult conversations with family groups (I have a large family), rather than parent/child conversations about (sometimes) uncomfortable subjects.
I had exactly one conversation about sex with my father. I was seventeen and my gf at the time had been pregnant and terminated the pregnancy.
I asked my dad what he would tell me if I said I was in that situation and he replied "Well NotSanguine, you got yourself into this. I guess you'll have to get yourself out of it." Thanks, dad!
What's most amazing about that is that he called me 'NotSanguine'. :)
The parent/child "let's have a talk" thing is often pretty fraught for the parents. But I think those are less important in the development of attitudes and world views than the things that parents and other family members say in general conversation, when it isn't about "educating" the kids.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr