3731: Talk
Maybe you know the [rather offensive] joke: "Arguing on the Internet is like winning the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded."
I've dissected arguments I've gotten into over the years, and almost all of them have been online because I just don't have the wit and patience to do it offline. [Also, I tend to feel like I have better things to do with people in person than argue.] Of the online arguments, I still tend to troll first and avoid talking about anything I don't [think I] know anything about.
Of the arguments I do join, I don't tend to invest much time into forming my argument, because I'm at least subconsciously mindful of the opening statement but also because I end up spending SO MUCH TIME writing something that is no contest [normal post from me summing the day's events] that I don't then want to spend even more on something that's partly out of my hands anyway. The end result is I don't make a thoroughly convincing argument and/or post something with unintended consequences.
For example, the sometimes-alluded-to "If I Ruled the World" thread, re-paraphrased here to bring to top:Way back when I had much more time to kill, I joined a newsgroup [I think] wherein the topic came up, "What would you do if you ruled the world?"
Partly because I didn't know any better than to needlessly provoke people, but partly because I had read Piers Anthony's Triple Detente and had no idea why the story didn't hold up in real life [systematically killing off sick/less productive people to better the lives of the survivors as a cruel but effective means of population control] and wanted a counterargument to show me why not, I posted that I would do pretty much what the conquerors in the book did.
The backlash was TREMENDOUS, and I got VERY REAL DEATH THREATS [well, for the Internet] over theoretical genocide. And yet, no one could tell me WHY it was terrible, except that I would be Hitler.
I ended up having to ask on another forum what the problem with my plan was [they at least applauded my honesty, despite scolding my lack of wisdom], which was that it wouldn't work--killing weaker/"less productive" people is something akin to not taking antibiotics, that removing the disease just means the survivors lack the ability to combat the disease and doesn't make society any stronger. A better population control would be to put more effort into space exploration--realistically, humanity cannot take over even a fraction of the whole universe any aeon soon, so keeping it free of our touch is a ludicrous, self-defeating sentiment.
On the whole, though, my mistake was not that I posted what I did, but perhaps that I answered a completely fatuous question with a serious, painfully honest answer [effectively: "I would be a bad person undeserving of the post"]. I did follow up with as much, explaining that no one would ever put me in a position of such abusable power, and from then on I guarded against ever deliberately starting fires.
...except the once, but maybe I'll get into that later =p
Moral: "You WILL be misunderstood on the Internet" 9_9
or, I dunno. I figure the reason writing is so "hard" is that so much of its success depends on other people correctly interpreting what's written. If I can't pick and choose words that precisely describe what I want to describe, I fail, even if I'm technically correct. This is most likely where I get the sense that I haven't gotten my point across, which is why I avoid spending too much time writing, which is why I don't get my point across... =' Hmm.
anyway, feet
I've dissected arguments I've gotten into over the years, and almost all of them have been online because I just don't have the wit and patience to do it offline. [Also, I tend to feel like I have better things to do with people in person than argue.] Of the online arguments, I still tend to troll first and avoid talking about anything I don't [think I] know anything about.
Of the arguments I do join, I don't tend to invest much time into forming my argument, because I'm at least subconsciously mindful of the opening statement but also because I end up spending SO MUCH TIME writing something that is no contest [normal post from me summing the day's events] that I don't then want to spend even more on something that's partly out of my hands anyway. The end result is I don't make a thoroughly convincing argument and/or post something with unintended consequences.
For example, the sometimes-alluded-to "If I Ruled the World" thread, re-paraphrased here to bring to top:Way back when I had much more time to kill, I joined a newsgroup [I think] wherein the topic came up, "What would you do if you ruled the world?"
Partly because I didn't know any better than to needlessly provoke people, but partly because I had read Piers Anthony's Triple Detente and had no idea why the story didn't hold up in real life [systematically killing off sick/less productive people to better the lives of the survivors as a cruel but effective means of population control] and wanted a counterargument to show me why not, I posted that I would do pretty much what the conquerors in the book did.
The backlash was TREMENDOUS, and I got VERY REAL DEATH THREATS [well, for the Internet] over theoretical genocide. And yet, no one could tell me WHY it was terrible, except that I would be Hitler.
I ended up having to ask on another forum what the problem with my plan was [they at least applauded my honesty, despite scolding my lack of wisdom], which was that it wouldn't work--killing weaker/"less productive" people is something akin to not taking antibiotics, that removing the disease just means the survivors lack the ability to combat the disease and doesn't make society any stronger. A better population control would be to put more effort into space exploration--realistically, humanity cannot take over even a fraction of the whole universe any aeon soon, so keeping it free of our touch is a ludicrous, self-defeating sentiment.
On the whole, though, my mistake was not that I posted what I did, but perhaps that I answered a completely fatuous question with a serious, painfully honest answer [effectively: "I would be a bad person undeserving of the post"]. I did follow up with as much, explaining that no one would ever put me in a position of such abusable power, and from then on I guarded against ever deliberately starting fires.
...except the once, but maybe I'll get into that later =p
Moral: "You WILL be misunderstood on the Internet" 9_9
or, I dunno. I figure the reason writing is so "hard" is that so much of its success depends on other people correctly interpreting what's written. If I can't pick and choose words that precisely describe what I want to describe, I fail, even if I'm technically correct. This is most likely where I get the sense that I haven't gotten my point across, which is why I avoid spending too much time writing, which is why I don't get my point across... =' Hmm.
anyway, feet