Recently, I went to a meetup for a blog I follow. I was expecting and (in part) hoping for it to be really strange. Similarly to this post "Developers Aren't Nerds", I think a part of me held the expectation that I really would become an adult who sat around with other people who read something intellectually stimulating and joyfully kind of debated it amongst ourselves. Sort of like being on Tildes or any good forum. And being around these people and the environment was fun-- it was mostly casual, but when it wasn't, I felt challenged and like I was talking about things I cared about. And above all, unlike being online, it still felt human-- there wasn't that weird anxiety of saying something and getting piled on.

I'm blessed to have a pretty good life, which includes (now) a fairly diverse and broad social life I worked to grow. I believe there is emotional support too (though I have a smaller circle for that). But it feels like we spend more time talking about (their) travel, music festivals, clubbing, whatever. And I know part of the issue is that I don't "get" it (I am an introvert, I like small groups), or I did enough of those experiences and feel sated for the time. But man, would I like to be a little weird and just randomly talk about the random shit my head puts together after reading. (Today, it was global fertility rate projections, sperm counts, IVF. Other times it was blockchain and other architectures I was learning about. Overall, things that are difficult to bring up randomly.)

Do people have that outlet offline? Where did you find it?

This is a thought I had, and I'm not saying it's necessarily true, or at least cynically true. But I think it brings to the fore an interesting point, and I want to emphasize how it feels like.

I feel like people are mostly interested in politics from a distant and uninvolved point of view. For example, in more progressive spaces, there's all this talk about fear of climate change, deteriorating international politics, rise of right wing authoritarianism, populism, nationalism, etc. However, I feel like people expect others to do something about it. There's this passivity and inaction, and no real effort to combat such changes. I feel like debates, talking, ruminating and such perform a theatrical function that makes you feel as if you've contributed to "doing good", but you actually don't do anything. This is what I mean by performative.

This is not to say talking is unimportant. It's a major component of politics, and it's a core value and function of democratic and egalitarian approaches. However, it feels to me like doomscrolling and dreading or being angry about political things is seen as being politically conscious and active, while political consciousness can't exist without action.

What are your thoughts about this? Have you had similar thoughts, or do you think differently? How do you emotionally handle this?

So, I had this chat with a friend about verious topics. It made me realize how much I love engaging in discussions, but I also noticed that I struggle to articulate my thoughts logically and effectively frame my arguments. I want to improve my reasoning and argument skills so that I can confidently present my ideas in such conversations. So I'm seeking a book recommendation that can help me develop my logical thinking and persuasive abilities. I'm looking for a book that explains things in a straightforward way, with fun examples to practice with, covering diverse topics to make logical thinking enjoyable. If you have any suggestions, I'd be super grateful

I have been wanting to write about this for some time. This happens, in some shape or form, whenever someone reads others on the internet. Especially on sensitive subjects. Many readers are linguistic sleuths. Every fraction of language will be forcefully interpreted and analyzed in order to reveal some hidden truth (which is always assumed to be negative), the user's actual position, his or her sinister agenda. On the one hand, that is a consequence of the very real fact that many individuals do have sinister agendas, and many organizations do employ backhanded tactics to manipulate public opinion. I get that. At the same time, this makes it very hard to communicate sometimes.

This affects the neurodiverse disproportionally and is a common complaint in places like /r/aspergers and /r/autism, among others. Some of us are not highly efficient machines of context evaluation and reproduction of linguistic patterns. Some of us actually do mean precisely what we say. No subtext, no irony, no desire to influence through excuse means.

There are also people for whom English is not the first language, as well as those of varying age, cultures, and circumstances. While it is understandable that English-speaking communities naturally center on the US, the assumption that everyone lives within that context produces all kinds of misunderstandings. This makes me less likely to truly engage with some communities because every once in a while I'm hit in the crossfire. Sometimes I inadvertently use words, expressions, or phrasing patterns which North Americans associate with a certain position they disapprove of, and their "mind-reading" is led askew.

This is not specific to any linguistic community. It happens everywhere. We're all kinda messed up. But it would be nice to be able to comment on complicated issues without feeling like Edward Norton in his first day at the Fight Club.

I don't mean to imply that everyone should just abstain from hermeneutics in regular discourse. But maybe be a little more charitable, give it another chance when someone strikes you the wrong way.

Sometimes people mean exactly what they write.

(A lot of the above is directly transferable to offline interactions)

This will be a noisy thread. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.

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Debate starts ~90 minutes from the time of this posting.

Info from The Washington Post:

Location: Belmont University in Nashville

Moderator: Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent and co-anchor of “Weekend Today”

Details: The debate will be 90 minutes long and have no commercial breaks. It will be divided into six 15-minute segments that the moderator has chosen. They are: fighting covid-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership.

Trump’s campaign has criticized the topics, saying they thought this was supposed to be a foreign policy debate. The head of the Commission on Presidential Debates said that’s not true.

Trump has criticized the moderator, Welker, as being biased, as he has other moderators. The commission and even a Fox News host have defended Welker’s integrity.

The commission also announced days before the debate that in light of Trump’s frequent interruptions during the first one, it will silence the microphone of the candidate who is not speaking during the two-minute opening segment for each candidate. After each candidate has two minutes, there will be an open discussion where both microphones will be on, but the commission urged civility in a statement: “It is the hope of the Commission that the candidates will be respectful of each other’s time.” The Trump campaign said it still will participate, despite the president criticizing a potential virtual debate as a forum where it would be too easy to silence his microphone.

This will be a noisy thread. Please use the ignore feature if you do not want to see it in your feed.

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Debate starts ~10 minutes from the time of this posting.

Info from The Washington Post:

Location: Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. (This was originally scheduled to be held at the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame withdrew, saying the fact that it would have to limit student attendance and volunteer opportunities because of the pandemic erased the reason to host a debate at the university.)

Moderator: Chris Wallace, anchor of “Fox News Sunday”

Details: The debate will be 90 minutes long and have no commercial breaks. There will be no opening statements. Wallace will dive right in with the first question to Trump. It will be divided into six 15-minute segments that Wallace has chosen. They are:

1. the Trump and Biden records
2. the Supreme Court
3. the coronavirus pandemic
4. the economy
5. race and violence in cities
6. the integrity of the election

I think it's clear that all tildes political discussion leads to intractable arguments. Considering tildes was created to foster high quality discussion, I was wondering if it's even possible to have nuanced political discussions online. In person discussions work for me because I have base levels of respect for all the people I talk to, but that's quite difficult to get online. Are we doomed to snark and condescension filled megathreads, or is there a better way to structure the conversations? Are there additional political ground rules that need to be set up?

IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the other they also tend to slowly get more personal as well. I am admittedly guilty of falling into this trap occasionally myself too, which has got me thinking about ways that Tildes (the site and the users here) can potentially help deescalate unproductive arguments and allow people to disengage more effectively from them. To this end I thought it might be a good idea to have a brainstorming session regarding that.

To start things off, here are most of the ideas I could find related to this issue that have previously been proposed and are already on Tildes Gitlab (click ▶ to read the full details):

Feel free to voice your support or criticism regarding the above suggestions, offer up ideas to potentially improve them, or even propose your own brand new ideas related to this issue in the comments here as well.

p.s. Once again, the point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

I see this a lot on the internet these days. The phrase "just because [some agreed-upon statement], it doesn't mean that [contested statement]."

That's fine when used correctly, but I've seen a lot of cases where it's used in a questionable way and people just jump on board with the phrase anyway.

I saw it again today in a conversation about video games, and one game in particular that everybody loves to hate. Someone said "I enjoy this game though," and someone else said "Just because you enjoy a game doesn't mean it's good."

Now, the impulse is to agree with the second statement because agreeing that there might be hidden subtlety in a matter is almost always safe, and nearly everyone involved in the conversation upvoted/reacted positively to that statement.

But the statement was really used to say "your opinion is wrong because there might be hidden subtleties that make me right," which seems like a fallacious position to me, or at least a pretty meaningless one. And when you stop to think about what was said, you realize that in fact, enjoying a video game might indeed be the most important, if not the only, metric in assessing its quality.

But the inclination to agree with anyone using the "just because, doesn't mean" format is definitely there I think. I'm not sure if that falls under the category of some other identifiable fallacy or not, but I thought I'd see what others thought.

Firstly, I'd like to dismiss any claims of pandering or fishing here. I need to say this and I need to write it out.

I was a reddit user for 8 years. I thought it was 5 but another commenter reminded me what it was. It put me into a bit of a reflective mood. I thought about some of the more meaningful insightful interactions I've had, and some of the more bitterly memorable ones where I was at best annoyed but more recently feeling attacked, shot down, rudely treated. It was profound as a sensitive human being to receive these things, to be made to feel through text, written for you by someone else. These weren't friends, people you held at arms length as you got to know them, they were complete strangers. And these people could be brutal. Make you feel so small. And yet I am a grown man, this environment I spent easily 30% of my waking time on for the best part of a decade was interacting with people and how much I enjoyed it. It was more than a website it was a place that I called home during bouts of depression, social drought and personal hardships. I found myself seeking help and for the most part finding it.

I have learned something valuable that I want to share here and I had to learn it the hard way, through hypocrisy, through mistakes, through mis-spoken words and harsh tongue thrashings both ways. I have realised for the first time that the people reading these things, the people writing them, the sentiments involved and the content/context is important. They are real, they are human, they feel, they are like me.

We are seeking some assembly, some community, some lectern from which to state our case. My whole life I looked for togetherness online and thought I found it in the early days of reddit. That is gone now. Even intelligent well thought out research style posts cannot culminate properly, they do not ascend, the public discourse is dead. I see now first hand the destruction of community the facebook exec spoke about. Our actual confident, open, readily invited opinionated perspectives are being replaced by circle jerks and shallow agree/disagree type statements. Upvotes have become likes. Now I see how it is broken.

Someone saw me having a meltdown and invited me here. I was told it was invite only, and that it was made by someone who had the same feelings as me. I don't want to be surrounded by likeminded people, thats not what I joined reddit for. I joined because open and honest perspectives based on experience were readily available; academics, workers, parents, billionaires, could just shoot-the-shit they didn't need to cite sources or write something popular. But upvotes were reserved for contributors, not jesters or people ridiculing/attacking/berating others. The reddit bandwagon has become savagely toxic in many respects. It is (sorry was) frustrating.

So here I am. Fresh off the boats as a reddit refugee. I hope than I can find my place here and contribute to the discussions, help build the site, build something that hopefully cannot be corrupted by growth, investors and advertisers.

We discussed in the hundred or comments attached to my meltdown that the lowering average age of the site population and possible the general dumbing down of internet users happening the past 10 years was largely responsible. I can imagine previously mentioned factors also drove it over the cliff. What is the current hope for Tildes future? I read the announcement post and it mentioned that a baseline level of activity will ensure that topics cycle regularly and user engagement is high enough to stimulate people coming back. Or that is at least what I think the baseline is for.

I hope this topic starts a discussion and doesn't get moderated away. But the lack of real debate, insight, coupled with a responsive and welcoming attitude is something the whole internet is missing right now, this is where we could make a positive change to the current online environment.