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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

> lots of people are there who lack a background in early internet culture or academic culture

I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to defend their beliefs and explain why they think they're right.

For many people the way they think is correct, just is correct. It's not something that needs defending or even investigating. It's just how things are.

Perhaps the problem is fundamentally how many different people social media exposes us to. And maybe if you weren't exposed to that in your formative years, it's a hard thing to get used to.

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Framing that difference as a "lack" the other person has, may be right, but creates a sense of superiority over that person which also seems wrong, for certain people that are aware of their differences (they may not be "lacking" anything").

Some people are emotivists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism), which means that for them preferences are moral positions in themselves, not just reasons about the morality of preferences.

it is “… the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.”

In other words, emotivism holds that there can be no way of rationally justifying one’s claims about controversial issues.

I think this view describes a great many number of people; though it's true that academia, STEM, and rational enlightenment thinking tends to filter it out or select against it.

TIL! I've never heard of emotivism before.

And I don't think that's what I was pointing towards. My comment is about the idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs investigated or challenged. No matter what the basis is for their existence.

It's more a lack in their environment than in themselves I think. You can't get used to defending your beliefs until you're exposed to people and ideas that challenge them.

I mean it's fine if your defense is "That's what feels right". But it's not fine if your response to "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being attacked and it makes you feel superbad.

sure, though I think emotivism is pertinent here, for example

> "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being attacked

This is exactly what the emotivist thinks because challenging an idea means challenging a preference which is directly challenging the moral character of the individual. There is no ability to discuss things in a detached way for them; this seems to check out anecdotally.

Is that "not fine?" - I certainly don't like it, and I don't think it's fine for people i choose to interact with, but my first step is to understand it, if only because there are so many people like this. Folks will continue to act like this despite my desire to see the opposite behavior, so it's good to be prepared and not self-deceive what other people are really like.

> My comment is about the idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs investigated or challenged.

I think I get where you're coming from. someone people not used to something could be said to having a deficiency in dealing with that situation and presumably with more experience they would change their behavior.

But I think there may be a slight difference in what I was saying, which includes some overlap with your point, but also allows for people who are quite familiar with being challenged, but yet immediately disapprove of such behavior anyways, due to the explanations above.

Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by other people.

If I come across someone who really thinks that way, they get dismissed and I lose 100% of any shred of respect I may have had for that person.

I don't care if that's considered closed minded, the mindset is wrong, fullstop, and it's obvious to anyone with a modicum of thinking skills.

The idea you've described here can be true sometimes depending on the subject matter, but it is not nearly true all the time, and if someone is unable to recognize that, then I cannot trust anything they say, and it's not worth the mental or emotional energy to engage them.

> Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by other people.

Very well, but I don't believe that is what I described or claimed.

I didn't mean to imply that you did, my point is that someone being being "an emotivist" isn't understandable, and it doesnt' mean the people around them should be inclusive of such an outlook on life.

Ok, I didn't say that such people should be accepted, description is not prescription.

yep, no argument there, I was just weighing in with my (admittedly strong) opinionon the matter.

I suspect many emotivists aren't even aware of the concept's existence. So, as a practical matter, I suppose the onus is on those who are aware of it to modify their approach if they wish to persuade such people.

I've noticed a few older, more experienced 'intelligent-rational' types who have developed techniques to deal with emotivists. For instance, they tend to couch criticism or disagreement in words like "Now it's probably just because I'm not as well acquainted with this issue as you are, but..." To my ears, this sort of language sounds disingenuous and insincere (and talking this way doesn't come naturally to me). But it's hard to dispute the results. I'm constantly amazed at how effective this approach can be.

I suspect this approach is effective, even though it feels like it shouldn't be, because people who are tied up in their own emotions don't pay close attention to what others are saying, and how they're saying it. The way the language 'feels' doesn't activate their heuristic-defensiveness and usually manages to slip past.

>I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to defend their beliefs and explain why they think they're right.

And some people like myself just don't feel like sitting around arguing all day.

You get to the heart of the issue.

So much complaining about arguments in social media boils down to "they didn't let me be!", rarely accompanied by an explanation of what the opinion stated was, as if it didn't matter.

If opinions matter, feelings will get hurt. There's ways to mitigate this to some degree, but at the end of the day many positions are irreconciliable, and just because people stop talking about it doesn't mean that it won't eventually bubble up.

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