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Comment by jonfw | Hacker News Reader

'The "Reddit Contrarian", waiting to snipe your post with their immense intellect'

This one is interesting to me. I could certainly be accused of being this guy, you could probably make an argument that I'm being this guy right now.

We're all here and participating for different purposes, and one of my purposes is to sharpen my writing skills and my rhetoric. Arguing with strangers on the internet is the most effective way of doing this that I've found, that doesn't affect my personal/professional life.

Another thing you mentioned - people with immense issues. We've all got plenty of issues, and one of the best things about commenting anonymously on the internet is that there is no punishment for revealing them.

I think that there are positive perspectives you could take on some of these bullet points

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> We're all here and participating for different purposes, and one of my purposes is to sharpen my writing skills and my rhetoric. Arguing with strangers on the internet is the most effective way of doing this that I've found, that doesn't affect my personal/professional life.

> I think that there are positive perspectives you could take on some of these bullet points

Arguing with someone on the Internet is positive only if the other party also wishes to argue.

Kind of like going out to the street and physically fighting with a random person. It'll definitely sharpen your fighting skills, but it's not a positive if the random stranger doesn't want to fight.

There are many differences between arguing and fighting. One that comes to mind is arguments ability to be productive.

I feel you've made an argument towards me with your comment, and it was welcome because you posed it rationally and without making it personal. It's impossible to pose a fight with a stranger rationally and impersonally, so I'm not sure that that analogy is a good fit.

> There are many differences between arguing and fighting. One that comes to mind is arguments ability to be productive.

I think the distinction is that while it is productive for you, it may be the opposite for your interlocutor. People have conversations for different reasons, and the reasons you have are a strict subset of those. And in real life - outside of academia and some of the tech world - their reasons rarely align with yours.

(Lesson learned the hard way).

In HN you can simply not reply when you don't want to argue.

> In HN you can simply not reply when you don't want to argue.

If you're addressing the physical fighting analogy, yes - it is an imperfect one. It is also not the main thrust of my argument.

If you're referring to the wider point, I don't see the relevance. It's not a given that the purpose of commenting on HN is for sharpening writing skills and rhetoric. It no doubt is the purpose of some on HN, but not everyone.

To take the statement to a pointless extreme, you can also choose not to reply to someone who is openly insulting you on HN. That doesn't make it OK to do so.

I don't think arguing with strangers on the internet presents a valuable feedback loop for learnings in real-life discussions. It's just a very different world with different repercussions.

It's a very different medium which is why is presents a valuable feedback loop. It presents a rare opportunity to build the skill of making a strong argument, without putting your reputation at stake.

In my work I'm able to make a convincing argument as to why a given architecture is the right way to do it, why a given tool isn't worth using, etc. This allows me to participate in high-level design discussions and be a major contributor to them, even though I have relatively little experience. I attribute that almost entirely to my experience as an internet commenter, as odd as that sounds.

I coached high school debate teams, neither that nor arguing shit over the internet are the real world because you aren't actually risking anything and they are, as we are exploring in this very post and thread, predictable.

If it was the same as the real world it wouldn't make for very good practice, now would it?

When I played sports, we spent a fraction of our practices trying to mimic the real world scenario (scrimmaging). And even in a scrimmage, it's risk free, there are no stakes.

The lack of risk is exactly what makes it great practice.

I can't agree with the idea that physical repetition is a suitable analog for any social interaction. For example, a hetero male can't get better at attracting women without being in the actual, concrete situation as it unfolds, which is exactly what is happening in coached dating situations as well.

Edit: I would go a step further and wager our brains aren't calibrated for arguing random other human beings in person we don't share assumptions, behaviors, and/or appearances with; I mean people have a hard enough time communicating with the people they've chosen to commit the rest of their life too, it's hard to conceive of being able to master a marriage without being in the marriage.

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