both the work you're putting in to gather up these examples and package this in such an easily consumable way, but also the depth of insight and the larger commitment that you obviously have, which this post is in service of. clap hands emoji x3
I don't think I will get tired of hearing what parts of my work resonates most and feels most useful to people!!!! 🙏
(I'm trying to lean more fully now into "internet argument discourse" as my thing because it feels easy/fun/effortless. I almost didn't write the one with apple & bee because it seemed too obvious to me, but it wasn't to a few people I asked. This is also why I kind of want to develop little quiz games to sort of gauge how good people are at predicting what types of replies fail and which succeeds, and getting better at internet discourse becomes a big game!)
I agree with you, but there is an element of social media that is performative, and often I feel people say things online not because they believe the message, but rather to spread the narrative. Criticizing your own side is good, but is best done in private. After all, even just spreading the knowledge that "your side" is "fractured", isn't the best advertisement, it spreads doubt to bystanders.
This makes it hard for it to be normalized. Even in the examples you shared, I wonder how much of that is simply to spread the narrative that "our side" has "reasonable" people.
> Criticizing your own side is good, but is best done in private
yes, I agree. This is what led me to tweet "maybe there should be a social media app that's private to US citizens" (everyone hated that 😅)
> just spreading the knowledge that "your side" is "fractured", isn't the best advertisement
yes, this is very important. I sort of try to hint at that with the fiction of OpenAI discussing the criticism internally, privately. I think the problem is that subcultures don't really have private places to discuss things, which I think is part of the problem. Any mention of your tribe's flaws can be weaponized. Best we have right now is layers of legibility, when you tweet something in Arabic, or in language that isn't very legible to outsiders.
> I wonder how much of that is simply to spread the narrative that "our side" has "reasonable" people
even this I think has value. it's hard to spread the narrative that our side is reasonable and listens to criticism without that having some actual effect on how people think. There's another layer of this where I think people avoid giving feedback to their friends (and instead just stop seeing them), which is not good. I want people to recognize that if we care about growing, if we care about winning, we need to find safe ways to give & receive feedback.
i think a great method of productive discussion would be to first ask what "camp" (on any issue) someone sees themselves as part of, how strongly they identify with it and perhaps what steers them away from the opposing camp... and then to follow up with "so what are your biggest criticisms of/disagreements with other people on your own side here?"
this weeds out any bad/unserious actors who answer "nothing! i agree with everything!", and for those who have a real answer (which is ANYONE who's ever seriously engaged with the broader conversation and variety of perspectives within their own side), it turns the conversation from often useless tribalism towards a more nuanced and informed account of the issues
to put together some graphic representations of "dialogue trees" like this that you can use to encourage useful discussions on complex topics
we could test them out in the real world and come back and iterate/add unexpected responses to get a pretty comprehensive map of typical discussions !!
and this could be done wrt specific issues, OR in with a broader template that can be applied more generally!
i just love what you're doing. i'm gonna sound like a broken record soon. i'm fine with that.
both the work you're putting in to gather up these examples and package this in such an easily consumable way, but also the depth of insight and the larger commitment that you obviously have, which this post is in service of. clap hands emoji x3
I don't think I will get tired of hearing what parts of my work resonates most and feels most useful to people!!!! 🙏
(I'm trying to lean more fully now into "internet argument discourse" as my thing because it feels easy/fun/effortless. I almost didn't write the one with apple & bee because it seemed too obvious to me, but it wasn't to a few people I asked. This is also why I kind of want to develop little quiz games to sort of gauge how good people are at predicting what types of replies fail and which succeeds, and getting better at internet discourse becomes a big game!)
I agree with you, but there is an element of social media that is performative, and often I feel people say things online not because they believe the message, but rather to spread the narrative. Criticizing your own side is good, but is best done in private. After all, even just spreading the knowledge that "your side" is "fractured", isn't the best advertisement, it spreads doubt to bystanders.
This makes it hard for it to be normalized. Even in the examples you shared, I wonder how much of that is simply to spread the narrative that "our side" has "reasonable" people.
> Criticizing your own side is good, but is best done in private
yes, I agree. This is what led me to tweet "maybe there should be a social media app that's private to US citizens" (everyone hated that 😅)
> just spreading the knowledge that "your side" is "fractured", isn't the best advertisement
yes, this is very important. I sort of try to hint at that with the fiction of OpenAI discussing the criticism internally, privately. I think the problem is that subcultures don't really have private places to discuss things, which I think is part of the problem. Any mention of your tribe's flaws can be weaponized. Best we have right now is layers of legibility, when you tweet something in Arabic, or in language that isn't very legible to outsiders.
> I wonder how much of that is simply to spread the narrative that "our side" has "reasonable" people
even this I think has value. it's hard to spread the narrative that our side is reasonable and listens to criticism without that having some actual effect on how people think. There's another layer of this where I think people avoid giving feedback to their friends (and instead just stop seeing them), which is not good. I want people to recognize that if we care about growing, if we care about winning, we need to find safe ways to give & receive feedback.
yess this is so good defender
i think a great method of productive discussion would be to first ask what "camp" (on any issue) someone sees themselves as part of, how strongly they identify with it and perhaps what steers them away from the opposing camp... and then to follow up with "so what are your biggest criticisms of/disagreements with other people on your own side here?"
this weeds out any bad/unserious actors who answer "nothing! i agree with everything!", and for those who have a real answer (which is ANYONE who's ever seriously engaged with the broader conversation and variety of perspectives within their own side), it turns the conversation from often useless tribalism towards a more nuanced and informed account of the issues
you know what would be a really cool project?
to put together some graphic representations of "dialogue trees" like this that you can use to encourage useful discussions on complex topics
we could test them out in the real world and come back and iterate/add unexpected responses to get a pretty comprehensive map of typical discussions !!
and this could be done wrt specific issues, OR in with a broader template that can be applied more generally!