It's rude to ask for cognitive labor before establishing trust

Anatomy of an Internet Argument #3

(this post is part of an “Anatomy of an Internet Argument” series where I analyze internet arguments that people send me, to find ways we can all do better)

Here’s a common pattern in internet arguments:

1. You are open minded but skeptical of someone’s position

2. You ask them to explain

3. They refuse

You might conclude: “this person isn’t interested in truth / isn’t arguing in good faith”, but this is an incorrect conclusion.

This is a failure on your part. You don’t understand why they are holding their position. You’ve failed to gather information & wasted your time. Even worse: you end up with an incorrect model of people.

The truth is: they don’t trust that you’ll actually listen if they explain.

I’m going to show you the full context of this interaction between 🐝 and🍏, and talk about how to establish trust with online strangers.

Note to the skeptics: I’ve confirmed my theory here by DMing 🐝 and asking them why they refused to answer. I highly encourage people to try & prove my theory wrong by trying it in the wild and reporting back, and we’ll analyze it together.

Debate topic: “do we need more or less bureaucracy?”

The initial tweet claims that we can create a lot of jobs AND make cities safer by hiring psych grads en-masse in mental asylums.

https://x.com/Apis_Bicornis/status/1845225370552848462

🐝 is supportive & says this is a good idea, even though it didn’t work before. It can work this time with “much more corporate and bureaucratic structure”. 🍏 is skeptical, saying it would at best reward people for hitting arbitrary metrics and not actually improving people’s wellbeing.

Here’s the full interaction:

To 🍏’s credit, they were genuinely interested in listening (they tweeted afterwards asking “what did I wrong here?”). This is tragic for me to see because BOTH of these people are smart & truth seeking, but they don’t see that. The real problem is that the people who are NOT willing to change their mind sound exactly the same.

What 🍏 needs to do is signal:

“I want to understand your argument, and I am willing to change my mind if I hear a good reason why I’m wrong”

🐝’s fear is that they will take the time to explain themselves only for 🍏 to be stubborn/nitpick/not share anything new or useful. This is a legitimate fear.

How to establish trust with an online stranger

There’s several ways to do this. The best ways are ones that “cannot be faked”. Do something that is very difficult for a bad actor to do. In this case 🍏 can try to steelman / articulate 🐝’s position in their own words. This serves two purposes:

1. Signals “I understand you”

2. Saves 🐝 a LOT of time & energy. It shows 🐝 exactly why 🍏thinks their position is lacking, and can fill in gaps or correct it

For point (1), even if you don’t understand them, this still signals “I am willing to put effort into this interaction”.

Point (2) is useful even in cases where people have already established trust. You’re asking me to elaborate, but the point already seems clear to me. I don’t know why you don’t understand it & I don’t know how else to explain it. This is frustrating even between friends. Demanding this of an internet stranger rarely ever works.

So here’s what I did: I found that 🐝 had in fact already articulated their position as a reply to someone else. I quoted it and articulated my understanding of their position:

🐝 didn’t see this at first. I DM’ed him to ask. He apologized for not seeing my reply, and said:

Your turn

Next time you find yourself in an online argument, try articulating the other person’s position first, without criticizing it. Wait for them to say “yes, that’s exactly right!” or correct you. This doesn’t guarantee that you’ll change their mind, but you will almost certainly fail if you don’t do anything to establish trust¹.

If you fail, DM me/ping me and I will tell you why you failed. I’m trying to “open source” the research here.

Final note: as I was writing this I saw another teachable moment. The question below will almost certainly NOT get a response. Even if it does, it won’t be particularly useful:

Instead, I would have written this as:

“I thought his view was good because X. Are you saying X is not true, or X has side effects that I’m not aware of, or something else?”

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, I've made a collection here for all my "internet arguments" writing.

1. If you’re thinking “why should I have to do so much work to initiate trust? Why can’t they initiate?” It’s because they’re saying exactly the same thing. You’re wasting time fighting people on your side because you can’t recognize each other, because you’re failing to signal good faith. Also, this is not more work, this is LESS work. This helps you avoid wasting time arguing over miscommunication.