Comment by Folcon

Hi timr

I'm going to engage with you a bit because this situation does read to me like people talking past each other and I personally don't like when I see that happening

I'm going to state some assumptions up front and I appreciate if they seem incredibly simple and or naive but I find it's useful to have a common frame of reference in these situations

Reading what you wrote, I think it's plausible that you don't seem to realise that the disagreement that your getting into with people is one that's deeply emotionally charged and the current zeitgeist of how we engage in disagreement these days being predominantly meta disagreement means the vast majority of people are pattern matching on situation, context and vibes than what's said is the norm

I'm not a fan, but I absolutely can recognise and acknowledge that for a lot of the people who are coming into forums like this looking for civil discussion, this meta argument is very much what they retreat to unless they feel like it's worthwhile engaging with someone else honestly and vulnerably, because the dominant tactics of online disagreement are all about managing and depleting the energy of the person who you disagree with instead of engaging with them, while at times doing so in a way that makes them look unreasonable or foolish to the wider audience or signalling to that wider audience so that they're in on the joke as it were

So given that context, your argument will read to many as engaging in that style, and as a result they really don't want to engage with you on the merits of what your saying

If you want to really get engagement from people now, which I believe you want to on charged topics like this, you usually have to act in a way that falls outside the pattern, which requires some thought and effort

We're really cynical these days and dislike wasting our time and energy, not so much because I think we care about the time or the energy, I've seen a lot of people still just arguing back and forth and can't help thinking to myself that if they were willing to put that energy into arguing so much why didn't they try something else that might have had a higher likelihood of success

But at least in my view, we don't want to be as vulnerable anymore, too many people have put in the time and the energy of disagreeing in good faith sincerely believing that they were speaking with someone and reaching for understanding only to later realise that the other person they were speaking with was just running an algorithm, probably not even a very sophisticated one at that

And I'm not immune to this either, it's not fun, this dominant cynical strategy of our age

It stifles legitimate and interesting discourse and prevents us from working towards better understanding each other in what I don't think anyone will disagree with saying are trying and difficult times

My personal reaction to it is stuff like what I'm doing here, jumping into a discussion when I see people speaking past each other and when I've got the capacity arguing for a pause and a change in approach and then leaving it up to them as to whether they want to do that

I'm directing this at you not because I think you're particularly at fault, just that I think you've got the most capability to shift the conversation by changing how you are responding

I could be wrong, maybe you don't want to, as is your right, or if you do people will still engage with you poorly believing that you aren't speaking in good faith, as is theirs

Thank you for your time if you read this, hopefully it leads to a more productive discourse