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Comment by psyc | Hacker News Reader

I can certainly understand how that would be upsetting. I'm sure you understand that KF isn't about respecting.... anybody. At all. They are as irreverent as anything I've ever seen.

But yes, they're attacked almost exclusively in bad faith by everybody. Everybody. As soon as somebody says "There's a website dedicated to making trans people commit suicide!" in this our Age of Outrage, there is a part of most people that wants to believe it immediately.

Which really makes me wonder why the media doesn't stick to reporting on what they actually say and do. Why isn't that bad enough? It would still make everyone mad.

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This is a really good example of sealioning. Saving this for later. Thank you.

Arguing that people acting disingenuously is a problem with the Internet seems like going after low hanging fruit.

The alternative is actively engaging with them, but the incentive structures are all messed up. If someone has more energy, time, and rhetorical maladaptions, they can "run out the clock" on internet debate. This becomes an effective strategy when we acknowledge that most internet "debates" aren't actually trying to change the minds of those engaging in them. They are performative acts intended to convince the readers which easily outnumber the participants by orders of magnitude. In essence, master debaters craft their message to appeal to viewers whilst simultaneous serving as a foil to the other participants.

I often find people mistake the Socratic method with sealioning. Sometimes to argue a topic you have to ask a series of questions first to find out from what axioms the person is reasoning. It's highly unproductive when people start pulling out the term sealioning instead of actually exploring the ideas they are advocating. Because of that I'm not a fan of the term.

The Sorcratic method is great for novice-expert dialogue. It's demeaning when it's over applied in discussion amongst peers.

If someone wants to know another's axioms, it's easy to simply preface questions with that context. Absent that, the audience will infer what the writers intentions are. Usually when the audience guesses wrong we don't blame the audience, we instead respond back with polite critique that the author's words were unclear.

Maybe I've been on the internet too much, but there's been times when it's clear the Sorcratic method was being used as a rhetorical device with great effect rather than a knowledge transference device. We can both agree that's maladaptive behavior.

> If someone wants to know another's axioms, it's easy to simply preface questions with that context

This might actually be a good technique. It is very difficult to convey good faith intentions on todays internet.

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