Conservatives of Wrong Planet

Post Reply New Topic

You came in calling me thin skinned and accusing me of creating hostility; whether or not those things are true, they have nothing to do with the issues I've raised, and are critical of me specifically rather than anything I've said.

I have a role here? Last I checked, I was just a guy who posts here, I didn't have any specific job, though I do enjoy playing the gadfly.



Indeed, I do, people often don't like it when someone repeatedly points out the holes in their arguments and the gaps in their knowledge, both personal specialties. Frankly, it would be more surprising is I didn't cause hostility given my ideological differences with much of the board, but I also don't engage in the kind of baiting, pointless, borderline trolling behavior I've been describing in this thread. Yes, I'm merciless when someone doesn't know what they're talking about, as well you know, or hasn't really thought their position through, but I don't belittle and antagonize groups with schoolyard insults and broad brush attacks. If I did, I'd be hearing about it, it's not like I don't have enemies here who'd delight in causing me difficulties.



You mean calling attention to the fact you don't know what you're talking about? I could certainly be nicer about it, but you haven't given me any reason to.



You keep saying I'm misunderstanding you without ever actually saying what it is I'm supposed to be getting; you're even fallacious when denying your fallacies.

I would argue that many people here don't really get where conservatives are coming from on this stuff, making a lot of bad faith assumptions to the effect that conservatives want people to die in the street, when their perspective is closer to wanting to teach a man to fish rather than giving him a fish. I'm not even really blaming people for the misconception, I had similar beliefs before I went to gunsmithing school, they were pervasive where I grew up in Seattle, and it took an extended period of close contact with a lot of very conservative people to understand their perspective. I mostly see it as an empathy fail, probably exacerbated by the autistic tendency to black and white thinking, towards what amounts to many people as a foreign culture.

Regardless of the cause, I think it's a problem for reasons I've already outlined, and one that should be addressed for the good of the site as a whole.

It seems like both sides are equally capable of bad mouthing the other. I haven't noticed Conservatives being treated worse than anyone else.

While the teaching someone to fish metaphor is a good one, it does not apply to people who are incapable of fishing. It's good that you found something you could excel at, but not everyone is able to excel. Some people just don't function well in this world and they need help. If these people are left to fall they will make the sidewalks ugly with poverty and disease. Some people are okay with that, but I prefer it when society helps those who can't make it alone.

You complain about hostility in PPR. Than you proudly admit to being a source of it. You're making my point.

I started off giving you my opinion but you just kept putting words in my mouth. So yeah, I stopped explaining myself to you.

And being merciless in a debate is fine. Insulting me is not.

Affective fallacy this time. What's next?
More importantly - what, beyond pointing out that you feel the left and right are equally guilty of being rude in PPR, do you want to add to this thread?

Not even close.

In other words, PPR is business as usual when it comes to debating behind the anonymity of the Internet.

This applies to both the liberals and the conservatives, and having Asperger syndrome has nothing to do with it whatsoever.

People really should become more involved with their local governments if they want change to occur. Pissing contents on the Internet are not going to help anybody, and for most people, opinions cannot be formed through personal experience if they do not go out in an attempt to obtain them for themselves.

I absolutely agree.

I don't see a problem, the demographics of the site are what they are. Not every audience is a friendly one, if you think the people here are misguided you're more than welcome to make your case to them, that's what PPR is all about.

I know you don't like rhetoric, but if you'll hear me out you may actually find more success here and similar settings. You're in a minority group in this setting, the onus is on you to peel away the middle of the audience to your side, they're not just going to come because you think something is right, you need to find common ground with them-- i.e. show you're the "same". A hostile tone in this audience setting will force the malleable ones (the middle) to hunker down behind their current leadership--if the herd feels threatened it condenses to protect itself, and those very same people you're trying to persuade are the ones running quickest. Likewise, when the leaders of the opposition see their herd hunker down for protection they become more emboldened themselves-- they're expected to protect the herd so you'll see very aggressive behavior, failure to protect the herd leads to lack of status and all the ramifications that come with it. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the politics at play, it's the social herd mentality of human nature at play.

A hostile audience is much more likely to follow honey than vinegar. If you keep a civil tone, especially if the opposition leaders use an aggressive tone, then you will appear reasonable and the opposition will appear rabid. Now the middle ones are more interested in hearing what you actually have to say since you appear stable, and the opposition appears unhinged. Or we could look at it as war. You're outnumbered 2-1, which sounds like the better option: going through the entire opposition's army to kill the leaders (spray them with vinegar), or pay half the opposition's army to fight for you (buy them with honey)?

None of this has anything to do with the politics at play, it's all group dynamics. Point being, one doesn't need to change their beliefs or politics, it's all a matter of presentation. At the end of the day we're still just animals with social instincts, best to use those instincts to your advantage than let others use them against you.

^ This.

I love politics, but I won't discuss them here. It's just too toxic. Left the site for well over a year because of it. I'm pretty solidly Democrat, and from where I'm sitting there isn't one political faction more likely to attack people. It's just that my faction is more numerous on this board, so we're a lot more visible in our behavior. If 10% of the left and 10% of the right are screaming at each other, there will be a lot more leftists screaming. I don't think that means we're worse, because I see some nasty behavior from everybody.

Unfortunately, I actually am going to have to attribute this partially (though certainly not completely) to Autism. Trouble understanding how other people feel about things you do is a very well known and documented symptom of Autism, and I really do feel that this is contributing to the political environment to each other. Our trouble with empathy does make it harder to understand opposing viewpoints, and make it easier to dig in against each other. This certainly happens plenty among neuto-typicals, and we don't have a toxic political environment because we are Autistic, but that doesn't erase that this community is one of people who do have a lot of difficulty with social interaction, and I don't see how that difficulty wouldn't be a factor in how we discuss very controversial and emotional topics with each other.

I'm thankful there are curtains on voting booths. It's nobodies business who I vote for or why.

It's not my business to disparage, make blanket judgments, or attack anyone based on their favorite candidate. That's simple-minded. I'm glad we still have at least two major parties to choose from. If we all thought alike this country would be doomed.

Just wanted to chime in here.

In theory, this is "my job" on the site, in practice I'm not really on often enough to do much about it these days.

From a casual glance at PPR over the past few days, leaving aside one individual, it seems that right-wing factions are dominant at the moment. Trump seems more popular than Clinton, despite his open hostility towards Mexicans and Muslims, and there's still significant support for the idea that Clinton will go to prison soon. The Brexit thread was absolutely dominated by right-wing Eurosceptics. All the passion in the gun control threads seems to be coming from the right.

I think the main problem is that the quality of discussion in PPR has been very low for the past year-eighteen months. There aren't many posters who are interested in anything other than stating their opinions forcefully. Present a claim and it won't be judged on whether it is true, but instead on confirmation bias. There's nobody reaching into the middle by saying "Trump is a bad person and would be a risk but may solve this issue which is important to me", or "although your criticisms of Clinton are good, on balance I feel her policies are strong". The main exception, as always, is Viper, who seems to do a remarkably good job at battling confirmation bias.

Personally, I always felt (as a mod) that I was giving Raptor and Dillogic a longer leash than I would to a left-wing poster because I knew I was likely to find their views less acceptable. This might not have been the right strategy, and I might not have actually been doing that at all, but I certainly don't think my moderation actions reflected my political views beyond the extent that my views lined up with the site's rules.

I've been extremely busy with work the last few weeks and have neglected some posts I want to reply to, but I just wanted to clarify something that I probably could have made more clear. I used the conservative members as an example because I'm usually lumped in with them and have spoken to many of them at length in PM and am familiar with their frustrations, but my real problem here is more ideologically agnostic, and has to do with gratuitous baiting and bashing being allowed to stand as long as it's not personally directed, which I think just makes everyone angrier without contributing anything to the site.

To use myself as an example, when someone creates a thread or comment just to bash my deeply held beliefs without offering any critique beyond "what kind of idiot would believe that, they must be stupid or evil", not only am I unlikely to be civil in my response, making some nasty implications of my own about the kind of person who would make that kind of post, I'm likely to go after that person in other threads in the future and try to inflict some emotional payback on them. I say that knowing full well how ineffective it is, as someone who constantly encourages others to go to the moderators with their problems rather than trying to "take care of them" themselves, who understands the futility of internet feuds, and yet I still have that reaction to people baiting and disparaging me. THAT is what happens when there is no authority I can rely upon to have my back when I'm being attacked indirectly, and THAT is what fuels these obnoxious cycles of personal animosity on the site. Compared to how I was in 2008 when I joined, I'm a model of restraint and civility, but I'm still human, and it's simply not realistic to expect me, or anyone else, to just sit back and take constant disparagement of the views that define us without reacting, especially when nothing is ever done about it.

Cornflake and I discussed this at length some years ago, and he would step in on occasion when someone seemed to have a hard-on for one group or another, often with a simple post reminding people that they were talking about people who also use the site and to try and keep it civil, and that's all I'm really asking for. I don't even care about the little digs and jabs here and there, just the blatant and unambiguous trolling threads, like the one that just went up in News, or the many questioning the intellect of religious folks in PPR, where discussion clearly is not the objective.

Also, I agree with The_Walrus about the general state of discussion on the board, it's sucked for a while now, but I really do think that cutting down on the pointless broad brush attacks could help with that.

Turn away from the Dark Side Dox.