> My main problem with discourse today
> You can't debate things anymore
I can't stop hearing this "it used not to be like this". Does this erroneous argument has a name?
> You can't debate things anymore
I can't stop hearing this "it used not to be like this". Does this erroneous argument has a name?
I attribute a lot of the belief that the past was an intellectual wonderland to the fact that in the past, only intellectuals had a chance to communicate over the mechanisms that were both widespread and lasting. There is a extremely effectual selection process on what has survived to be seen by us as we look back in time that biases us to see a more intellectual, positive time. As communication became cheaper, more and more people become involved, and inevitably that pulled the center away from the extreme intellectual center that it occupied before, by sheer regression to the mean.
But there is one relevant change. Even fairly recently you could go online and hear people cite the idea that an argument is separate from the arguer, and that it's a fallacy to attack the arguer. That's no longer accepted by any culture I'm aware of, up to and including academic culture which has wholeheartedly embraced the idea of attacking the arguer and discrediting them at the most fundamental levels they possibly can. There's hardly even anybody paying lip service to the idea, except a few people who haven't realized that time has passed them by and a few diehard idealists. (Like me, who still thinks it's a basic foundation of anything worthy of being called "intellectual". But I recognize that my belief in that statement doesn't make it something that exists in the real world.) There was a time when I could debate things on the Internet, and if insulted, other people would cite the principle and ignore the insults. Now making unpopular arguments carries real risks of being the target of an Internet mob, and every argument is unpopular with a lot of people. Yes, that is a real change that has happened.
You could argue that had this level of easy communication existed in any previous era, the same result would have obtained. I'd be down with arguing that humans fundamentally lack the ability to intellectually debate things at this scale and mob mentality would have been inevitable in any time in history where such technology was introduced and that there is nothing necessarily special about today's people. But it is a change that has occurred in the past 20 years for sure. Posting controversial opinions online has always required a certain amount of fortitude for the resulting responses, but there was never a mechanism that allowed the responses to magnify into a feedback loop so large that it could cost you your job or more.