Confessions Of A Thread Wrangler

[Carry2]

Hello playground,

Some of you may be wondering (even out loud) what compels me (or others, for that matter,) to address certain topics with such dogged persistence. It's not like the question of 'was Miko a decent human being or not', among others, are particularly significant in the grander scheme of things. Have I, or we, no better use for our time? Do I have some deep-seated sympathy for the character(s) as if they were a real person? Or do I just gain a perverse satisfaction from having the last word?

While I can't say that these unflattering conjectures are wholly untrue, I'm not sure they're an adequate explanation by themselves (and covering those would be a long story.) There are other (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263595) topics (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261635), of far greater practical and real-world importance, that I have more vested emotional reasons to care about, but I haven't, after all, chased them up with quite the same zeal or vigour.

Paprika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paprika_(2006_film)) mentions that the internet and dreams have a lot in common. They're places where the unconscious mind finds channels of expression unavailable to the waking world. Behind the bulwark of anonymity, people, for better or worse, are both more honest and more outspoken. So you can often get to the truth of the matter faster. Besides, I prefer this mode of communication- it plays to my strengths, and a lot of the conversations I have here are, to be blunt, more interesting than I find face-to-face chatting to be (though that may reflect more on my foibles than anyone else's fault.)

I had something of an epiphany on this subject last night. I think the reason why I may have pursued the question of, say, Miko's guilt or innocence so doggedly- trying to eke out the slightest concessions from the most stubborn and seemingly irrational opponents- is precisely related to the unimportance of the point. If I, or we, can't produce agreement on this one, tiny, insignificant, trivial topic- where all the evidence is meticulously documented in the plainest way, that requires little or no specialised technical knowledge to interpret, on a question that doesn't threaten anyone's job or impact global sea levels- then what chance do I, or we, have when it comes to the big questions in life?

I know this sounds preposterously overblown, but I'm serious. I think part of me imagines that if I could wring out concensus on this one measly question- to see the truth of the matter and convince others of it- or allow myself to be convinced by them- in a medium of communication that affords me every advantage, and on a subject that I have a comprehensive factual command of... then maybe I would have a shot at grappling with the complexities of, say, genetic engineering or artificial intelligence, or mortgage foreclosures or climate change. Walk before you run, as the saying goes. Because if we can't settle those questions by talking, they will wind up being settled in other ways. And while you can negotiate with people, you cannot negotiate with facts.

Threads like this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263542) are like a petri dish. The contents aren't important, but what they represent is. They're testing-beds for my species' sanity... and possibly my own.

So... anyhoo. How's that V's gender debate coming along?


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[asphias]

i think that´s a perfectly valid viewpoint to have, even though saying your motivation would be `liking a discussion´ would be enough in my opinion.

on the broader topic, you´re wondering how we can ever come to an agreement on broad topics if we can´t even agree on such trivial things as "is miko guilty". the thing is, and i've been thinking quite a bit about this in a way, is that most of the people you're discussing with - either about the big things or about such a small idea - have had a wildly different life experience, and add importance to completely different things. from having made a mistake yourself and working to fix that mistake, to seeing a bully can get away without consequences. from seeing people can change to figuring out that you're still doing exactly the same thing years down the road, etc.

especially with questions of value: "is that right or wrong to do, is A more important than B? can we forgive someone after doing C?" depending on their experiences in life, people will all grow up attaching different important to different values.

i think the furthest you can come in such a discussion, is finding out why someone disagrees with you, and why you disagree with him, and then agreeing to disagree. even though you don't agree with the others conclusion, you can understand what arguments he uses and why, and understand that he attaches more impotance to those arguments then you may do.

and unfortunately, even things based on "fact" will have the same discussions and problems. is having 95% certainty enough(used in much scientific work)? were the scientists biassed in their work or conclusion(answer: Yes, everybody is biassed in a way, the questions are how much? and is it relevant if they are?), etc.

and even if you agree on the facts, is it more important to have a good economy or more important that everybody has housing and food - even if that means everybody is poorer? is the earth warming because of humans, or only partly because of them? how much are we willing to give up to stop global warming? when does a foetus become human? in what situations is killing someone allowed? etc.

even IF you can agree on all the facts, everybody will have had different experiences in life, and therefore will end up with different arguments and different conclusions.

[Winter]

- trying to eke out the slightest concessions from the most stubborn and seemingly irrational opponents-

Thankyouverymuchforthatcompliment. I'd give it back but that would be rude.

Besides that, I think this thread is totally off-topic for this (sub)forum. Imagine everyone here making a thread that is not related to OotS but why we spend time here.
I don't care why you do what you do and assume you leave (as I will) if a debate is getting boring/pointless.

Just to sum up your post: http://xkcd.com/386/
I think there is not more to it than that.

[lio45]

First... you, "enjoying the satisfaction of having the last word"?!?!? Clearly you haven't clicked on the Miko vs Belkar thread recently (in the last five minutes, that is).

Second... "the most stubborn and seemingly irrational opponents"? I'll join my voice to Winter's to say Thanks. (And stop right there.)

Third, and more important...


If I, or we, can't produce agreement on this one, tiny, insignificant, trivial topic- where all the evidence is meticulously documented in the plainest way, that requires little or no specialised technical knowledge to interpret, on a question that doesn't threaten anyone's job or impact global sea levels- then what chance do I, or we, have when it comes to the big questions in life?


My answer to you here is very simple... the topic's insignificant. Look no further than that.

Say you, I, Winter, Koo Rehtorb, FujinAkari, veti, theNater, and any others who've been arguing in the thread you're talking about all get locked in person in a room and we're not getting out until white smoke coming out the chimney signals we've finally all agreed...

...and we have access to all the info and the expertise we want (we can summon world experts on ethics, world experts on D&D rules to we get a consensus on what kind of in-combat speech is a free action, and so on)...

...we can concentrate on agreeing on smaller sub-points first, and then move on to progressively narrowing the points on which we disagree (for example: we disagree on whether or not Miko's investigation was deep enough to warrant attacking with lethal force considering the importance of surprise as her main tactical advantage, being badly outnumbered), and then we'd pull out the jurisprudence, the case studies, the expert policemen and specialists, and we'd analyse all of that until one side makes concessions...


But this is the internet... we have more important things to do in our real lives, so we don't really debate until one side switches to the other's POV (or, possibly, both sides meet in the middle).

Unlike you though, I say that if it were important, we'd discuss it and eventually agree... mostly because we'd move on to the next debating step and do something we absolutely never do in the argument forum threads: we'd actually bring unbiased people who are authorities on sub-matters within the debate, and then the side whose positions have been the closest to the actual authorities' positions would really have a strong case to persuade the opposite side that they've "won" that sub-point. That's how the "serious" debate would/could move on.

[Tanngrisnir]

First... you, "enjoying the satisfaction of having the last word"?!?!? Clearly you haven't clicked on the Miko vs Belkar thread recently (in the last five minutes, that is).


He is not saying he has had the last word in that thread, he is saying that he continues to argue in it because he wants to attain the satisfaction of eventually having the last word.

[Winter]

We'll, I'm most assuredly are done talking with/to him (here and there), so I think if that is what he wants, he has it now. Which does not say anything about being right or wrong.

Congratulations. You won. Have a cookie.

[Carry2]

He is not saying he has had the last word in that thread, he is saying that he continues to argue in it because he wants to attain the satisfaction of eventually having the last word.
Well, not quite. I am saying that I'm only human, and I do, sometimes, derive satisfaction from having the last or nearly-last word in a given discussion. But there have also been occasions when, much to my annoyance, I've managed to shut down threads completely with a lengthy, thought-out post or two that were actually intended to spark further discussion. So, it's not necessarily that simple.

As for the 'stubborn and seemingly irrational' remark- please bear in mind that I do say 'seemingly', to imply that this is my perspective, and not an irrefutable objective fact. (Now, clearly, if I didn't consider the 'irrational' bit true I wouldn't have been trying to refute such posters in the first place, but I do allow for the theoretical possibility of being proven wrong. So if I have inflamed any tempers through poor use of words, I apologise.)

I would also like to thank Asphias for his thought-out reply, which I'll probably respond to in a little more depth later on.

The main point I wanted to make here was, quite honestly, not to fling about personal insults, but to point out that discussions like these may have a value or 'instructive quality' which is completely independent of the practical significance of the subject-matter. If politics is any example, I am not at all certain that real-world discussions of similarly contentious topics have a higher likelihood of reaching peaceful concensus- rather, one side or the other tends to get bludgeoned into submission by some combination of demographic momentum, military action, or the laws of physics. And that worries me.

[Bulldog Psion]

Well, I always figure the arguments get more nitpicking and involved, the less new stuff there has been to talk about. In other words, when the comic updates fast, the discussions keep moving and don't get quite as deeply involved in minutiae.

Intricate discussions and arguments are, in my opinion, just the way that people here stay involved with a comic they enjoy when it hasn't been updated in a long time. They want to interact with the comic, so to speak. In the absence of new material to marvel over, they comb over the existing stuff over and over again, in more and more excruciating detail.

This continues until a new comic posts.

With the Giant hors de combat indefinitely, the nitpicking can potentially approach infinite complexity. :smallbiggrin:

That, at least, is my theory, which I believe has considerable empirical support. :smallwink:

[Winter]

Well, I always figure the arguments get more nitpicking and involved, the less new stuff there has been to talk about.

While that is generally true, there still are a lot of exceptions. There always have been very nitpicky discussions and at they showed up at latest on page 3 of any thread about something "more general" that I read.

Especially Miko has caused those debates since she got introduced (and her death and the years of "not returning" made it better to the point where it's "bearable").

[Carry2]

i think that´s a perfectly valid viewpoint to have, even though saying your motivation would be `liking a discussion´ would be enough in my opinion.

on the broader topic, you´re wondering how we can ever come to an agreement on broad topics if we can´t even agree on such trivial things as "is miko guilty". the thing is, and i've been thinking quite a bit about this in a way, is that most of the people you're discussing with - either about the big things or about such a small idea - have had a wildly different life experience, and add importance to completely different things. from having made a mistake yourself and working to fix that mistake, to seeing a bully can get away without consequences. from seeing people can change to figuring out that you're still doing exactly the same thing years down the road, etc.

especially with questions of value: "is that right or wrong to do, is A more important than B? can we forgive someone after doing C?" depending on their experiences in life, people will all grow up attaching different important to different values.

i think the furthest you can come in such a discussion, is finding out why someone disagrees with you, and why you disagree with him, and then agreeing to disagree. even though you don't agree with the others conclusion, you can understand what arguments he uses and why, and understand that he attaches more impotance to those arguments then you may do.

and unfortunately, even things based on "fact" will have the same discussions and problems. is having 95% certainty enough(used in much scientific work)? were the scientists biassed in their work or conclusion(answer: Yes, everybody is biassed in a way, the questions are how much? and is it relevant if they are?), etc.

and even if you agree on the facts, is it more important to have a good economy or more important that everybody has housing and food - even if that means everybody is poorer? is the earth warming because of humans, or only partly because of them? how much are we willing to give up to stop global warming? when does a foetus become human? in what situations is killing someone allowed? etc.

even IF you can agree on all the facts, everybody will have had different experiences in life, and therefore will end up with different arguments and different conclusions.
I don't disagree with any of what you're saying per se, and I do appreciate laying out a range of explanations as thoroughly as you have. I'm just not quite sure to make of it. Does that mean discussion is pointless? Is the whole exercise futile? Do people believe what they do, purely for emotional reasons that cannot be intellectually challenged?

I like to imagine that's not neccesarily the case. There have been at least a few occasions in my life where the weight of empirical evidence overturned some deeply-held convictions on my part. Maybe it's possible that at least a sizeable chunk of human beings can be brought to accept an objective assessment of reality, given the right presentation. The right presentation, of course, can be as difficult a thing to arrive at as an objective picture of reality.

I can certainly agree that people often have fundamentally different value systems, but I can also imagine many cases where one could productively compromise over ultimate ends or objectives. (I enjoy apples, you enjoy pears, so let's settle on a program that gives us 50% apples and 50% pears.) What I do not see the point to compromising on are (A) facts, including the facts about whether a given program will actually achieve the specified goals and (B) consistency within a given value system. (e.g, if you declare that apples are tastier than oranges, and oranges are tastier than pears, how can one believe that pears are tastier than apples?)

I agree that biased or flat-out dishonest research is a real problem, but I also think this problem can be sorted out eventually with sufficient experimental replication. You can fool your coworkers, you can fool the research committee, you can fool the journals for a surprisingly long while, and you can certainly fool yourself... but you can never fool nature. Sooner or later, bad theories make bad predictions. The problem, of course, is that experimentation can be a costly business (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hT72Xv5AAY&t=8m22s).

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[Bulldog Psion]

I would say that discussion rarely changes someone's opinion, but it can change it.

In my case, I've undergone a massive change of outlook and opinion over the past two years, because of one specific article. It's a pity I can't describe anything more about it, since it meshes with what we're talking about here. :smallbiggrin:

[asphias]

I don't disagree with any of what you're saying per se, and I do appreciate laying out a range of explanations as thoroughly as you have. I'm just not quite sure to make of it. Does that mean discussion is pointless? Is the whole exercise futile? Do people believe what they do, purely for emotional reasons that cannot be intellectually challenged?

a good question, i felt compelled to write out my piece mostly because of what you mentioned:

If I, or we, can't produce agreement on this one, tiny, insignificant, trivial topic- where all the evidence is meticulously documented in the plainest way, that requires little or no specialised technical knowledge to interpret, on a question that doesn't threaten anyone's job or impact global sea levels- then what chance do I, or we, have when it comes to the big questions in life?

and basically, my conclusion is that we don't stand a chance, and we as humanity will never come to an agreement about nearly anything. (the only exception being, as far as I've experienced, the physical sciences and math, insofar they only describe the laws of nature, yet never answer the questions of "why").

your question of what to make of this, is something different, and something i have not consciously thought about, so i'm going to try here.
because does never reaching a final conclusion mean that discussion itself is pointless? in the contrary, i think. Because people (including you and I and everybody else) base their viewpoint on their own value's, emotional reasons and life experience, it means that it CAN be intellectually challenged. you can be challenged to ask yourself why exactly you think one thing or the other is right, and therefore also figure out why someone else thinks your answer is wrong. and because your opinion can be swayed, i suppose it means that one should never stop discussing something, ever, because even after 90 years of experience, one can find another piece of experience to make you challenge your own beliefs.

i think that is the main conclusion i can pull out of the idea that we will never agree on everything. it means that you should always challenge your own beliefs, and that discussing something(as long as it remains civil:smallwink:) can never be wrong.

[veti]

I don't disagree with any of what you're saying per se, and I do appreciate laying out a range of explanations as thoroughly as you have. I'm just not quite sure to make of it. Does that mean discussion is pointless? Is the whole exercise futile? Do people believe what they do, purely for emotional reasons that cannot be intellectually challenged?

Define 'futile'. 'Incapable of producing any useful result'? - obviously hinges on the definition of 'useful'.

I think one reason why it's 'useful' to discuss fictional dilemmas, divorced from anything in real life, is that it gives us a way to cut through the emotional loading and personal resonances that any real-life debate is going to involve. No matter what conclusions we reach about Miko - not one of us is going to be richer or poorer, none of us are going to feel our ancestors are insulted or our children endangered by it, none of us are likely to lose our jobs or change our way of life over it.

And that allows us to talk about the things that really do divide opinion, unclouded by the fog of interest. The question "is Miko guilty?" is not about facts - it is, and always will be, basically a question of opinion. We can't expect everyone to agree - but we can learn something, if we choose, by looking at the reasons why we disagree.

[Carry2]

I think one reason why it's 'useful' to discuss fictional dilemmas, divorced from anything in real life, is that it gives us a way to cut through the emotional loading and personal resonances that any real-life debate is going to involve.
Well, this kind of ties in with what I was trying to say in the OP, that presumably the challenge of reaching concensus on these fictional dilemmas pales in comparison to the emotional investment that people have when it comes to real-world problems. However, I'm not sure that 'emotional loading' or 'personal resonances' are going to wholly absent from the former- it's just that, hopefully, they're less intense.

And that allows us to talk about the things that really do divide opinion, unclouded by the fog of interest. The question "is Miko guilty?" is not about facts - it is, and always will be, basically a question of opinion.
There's... basically no way to respond to this without getting into far more detail than it warrants, but I'll just point out what I mentioned in my previous post: fundamental values may be a question of 'opinion', but you can still base concrete arguments on logical consistency within a particular moral system, or with respect to particular kinds of evidence.


i think that is the main conclusion i can pull out of the idea that we will never agree on everything. it means that you should always challenge your own beliefs, and that discussing something(as long as it remains civil:smallwink:) can never be wrong.
I suppose so. Anyway, thanks for the POV.

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