Actual Discussion

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Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.

Welcome to Actual Discussion!

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For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: !casualconversation@piefed.social

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jet@hackertalks.com

People prefer to suppress different perspectives rather then engaging - especially on social media (hackertalks.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by jet@hackertalks.com to c/actual_discussion@lemmy.ca

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is a book called “On Being Certain”, by Robert A Burton who’s a neurologist, discussing how we know what we know. He postulates that the sense of “conviction” has less to do with objective reality and far more to do with “a feeling of knowing.” He also suggests that we are far less self-aware than we think we are.

People see a different viewpoint and their body reactively brings up all the conditioning received from popular advice. Instinctively, they hit the downvote button, thinking that they are rightfully decreasing the noise of a dangerous idea and protecting the less aware.

Most people aren’t interested in debate nor challenging the reality they find themselves in, or even the framing and interpretation of that reality.

Is lemmy supposed to be better then other social media?

How do we make lemmy a more thoughtful place? Or how do we create meaningful spaces on lemmy for thoughtful discussion of opposing views?

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[–] scintilla@crust.piefed.social 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hot take maybe. If you don't like downvotes just use an instance that has them disabled. I'm not using Lemmy for actual discussion most of the time and neither are probably 99% of other users. I don't want to see the nazi adjacent comment and don't think debating with them is really worth anyones time but someone else can try.

Let's say you think people with Nazi adjacent views can be downvoted/banned. Where is that line drawn then. How nicely do they have to frame eugenics before you shouldn't downvote it because it's "thoughtful". Someone JAQing off in the comments about race statistics?

The line of where people do and don't downvote is not something that should be decided by instance admins/ community mods because it's one of the few things a user has total control over. I find it mildly alarming that vote are public but I understand that it's inherent to the system.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't think this discussion is actually about downvotes, those can be a element, but beyond having or not having downvotes how do we get more collaborative discussions happening here?

I don’t want to see the nazi adjacent comment and don’t think debating with them is really worth anyones time but someone else can try.

Different people have different bars for nazi adjacent. i.e. all meat-eaters are nazis

[–] scintilla@crust.piefed.social 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My bad I backed out of the discussion I was trying to respond in linked in the comments.

Yeah I know I'm going to get downvoted for having a discussion about veganism on Lemmy. I've been called a monster before but that doesn't really bother me ethier. They truly think that what i am doing makes me a horrible person and that's their perogative.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I know I’m going to get downvoted for having a discussion about veganism on Lemmy.

As a carnivore on lemmy, I have a similar experience! It's a really good example you bring up, things people have strong visceral feelings about often get emotional reactions and are very difficult to discuss productively on lemmy with respect for people who have made different choices.

How can we bridge the gap so that we can speak about these sensitive subjects without people feeling like monsters, or being subjected to pejoratives ?