:3

  • 10 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • I’ve had to fluff up what I say to explicitly say “I don’t mean [x], I’m not implying [y]”, but I can’t cover everything and so I still get hostility, it’s very frustrating.

    I’ve noticed that people (including me) try to build a mental model of your beliefs very quickly, so without much context to base it on they usually base it on stereotypes (e.g. nitpicking a science claim is the sort of thing a science denier would do, therefore you’re probably that even if you just noticed a tiny incorrect detail and that’s it). It doesn’t help that over text, if you wanted to get that context and not make assumptions about others, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time writing questions and waiting multiple back-and-forths for answers to inform your next questions.

    Another thing I’ve noticed is that most disagreements online are arguments about something where facts are just pawns to be played to win. I’m sure most of us have seen this play out, and usually if someone gets obviously proven wrong they just pull out the next fact and move goalposts, because most people don’t like “losing”. So if you say something like “I think you’re wrong because [x]”, you look exactly like the people arguing who have an implicit agenda. And I can’t blame people for assuming that, because if you give everyone the benefit of the doubt you lose sooo much time to the ~80% of arguers with a hidden agenda.