What a sad world we live in that we need to self-censor opinions on the Internet. I long for the "good old days" which were in fact not that long ago.
Even if someone wanted to use your opinions against you, there is no way for them to figure out what your opinions are because, again, there is no value in talking about your actual opinions. They are already established. There is nothing more you are willing to learn from them, so there is no remaining communication value.
Once you have accepted an opinion as your own, however, you have had to believe that you understand it to the greatest extent possible and spending more time learning about it is going to be unfruitful. As such, there is no remaining value in talking about the opinions you actually hold.
Only the opinions you don't hold are those you are going to share, as those are the ones that are still out there able to be learned from. They are merely hypothetical, and are likely to be contradictory as you explore different angles.
Indeed, you may come to hold those once-hypothetical opinions in time as you learn more about it. As that happens, the value in sharing them will diminish. There is good reason why we don't spend our days sharing that we believe "1+1=2" and "the sky is blue". One's own opinion has no communication value.
So, what is to be gained by censoring a hypothetical opinion that may not be held by anyone and certainly not you? If it were your opinion you wouldn't have to worry about censoring it because there would be no value in sharing it in the first place.
Is there no such thing as a strongly held opinion vs. a weakly held opinion? Different people might change their mind given different amounts of contrary information. I don't see the value in reducing this process to a binary divide between "actually held opinions" and "opinions not held at all".
Also, even if someone does hold an unshakeable opinion, I don't see why they couldn't express it while trying to convince someone else of their opinion, unless they don't care what opinion anyone else holds. And there are many people who (seemingly) care quite a lot about what other people think.
Yes, there are the opinions you hold and opinions you are exploring. This was established previously. You can't explore opinion without hypothesis.
> Different people might change their mind given different amounts of contrary information.
During the exploratory phase. Once opinion is established in your mind, you will tune out further information as no longer being interesting. Collecting information is hard work and there is only so much energy to spare, so it is prudent for the brain to tune out information that it deems no longer useful. If you have formed an opinion, the mind has declared that further information is no longer useful.
> I don't see why they couldn't express it while trying to convince someone else of their opinion
Functionally it could be done, but what is to be gained? The time and effort required is in competition with other things one can do with their time, so there has to be a value proposition.
> And there are many people who (seemingly) care quite a lot about what other people think.
Sure. That's what exploration is all about. If there isn't probing other people to find out how they respond, how are you going to derive the learning that provides the value for your effort? But you are only going to care so long as you haven't formed an opinion to call your own. If you are certain you've got things figured out, there is nothing else you can gain from continuing.
For one, someone can care about others' well-being. If Alice is of the firm opinion that binge-drinking is bad for one's health, then does she have nothing to gain in trying to convince her good friend Bob that he should stop binge-drinking? Is the whole concept of giving advice an illusion?
Or in politics. If you believe that a certain oppressive tyrant ought to be overthrown, then would you not try to convince other people of this, so that you can form a large enough conspiracy to carry out that goal?
(For other political movements, simply replace "an oppressive tyrant" with some abstract idea, e.g., car ownership, or monopolies, or whatever. That might seem silly, but humans are not creatures of pure reason, and nothing's stopping people from valuing any arbitrary thing.)
Or for personal gain. If a candidate for some political office runs a campaign telling everyone why they should vote for him, then is he really doing that for the sole purpose of probing for reasons why he shouldn't be voted into office?
Or just for fun. Are there not people who simply love to hear the sound of their own voice, as the saying goes?
I don't deny that people sometimes express opinions that they don't hold strongly, but you seem to be suggesting that there is never (or hardly ever) any good reason to express an opinion that one does hold. There are all sorts of situations, especially in politics, where someone thinks it would be better if others were of the same opinion.
The solitary activity of comment writing on Reddit is an unusual way to let Bob, a good friend, know about his binge drinking. I wonder if the context of Reddit got lost somewhere along the way? It could be that social interaction brings additional value potential that would justify sharing formed opinions in a social setting, but that is beyond the topic being discussed here.
> If you believe that a certain oppressive tyrant ought to be overthrown, then would you not try to convince other people of this, so that you can form a large enough conspiracy to carry out that goal?
There are numerous subreddits claiming millions of users who appear, based on comments, to share a common political goal that goes against a status quo. The numbers are there. The will alleges to be there. Why haven't they already risen up and done something about what they are supposedly rallying around? Perhaps it is because the opinions they express are only being explored?
And this speaks again to Reddit, and forum going in general, being a solitary activity. Realistically, there is little difference between Reddit and ChatGPT. You state your bit, maybe get a response back, and hope that response will contain some nuggets of wisdom from which you can derive some value. Possibly there are people on the other end writing those responses, but would it matter if there wasn't? The experience doesn't depend on it. If there are people, that's just an implementation detail.
If you are hard-lined "binge drinking is bad for one's health" and nothing is going to change your mind about that fact, are you going to tell ChatGPT that? If not, why would you tell Reddit? What are you going to gain from it? Why would you waste your time? Indeed, if you are unsure, only postulating the opinion of binge drinking being harmful as something to explore, then the responses provide a learning opportunity. That brings value and can make it worth your time.
> then is he really doing that for the sole purpose of probing for reasons why he shouldn't be voted into office?
A hypothetical can only take us so far, but presumably the candidate hypothesizes that they can win on certain qualities, but they don't know for sure and are throwing it out there to try and find out. Once the vote is done, the results are in, and the outcome is known I suspect continued sharing of that opinion diminishes. What additional value would be gained in continuing to share it at that point?
> Why haven't they already risen up and done something about what they are supposedly rallying around? Perhaps it is because the opinions they express are only being explored?
People are lazy, and turning public sentiment into a functioning movement is hard work. This does not stop the big political belief systems from including an evangelizing component, the idea that it would be best for as many people as possible to know about and be in support of the belief. Otherwise, they don't grow very big in the first place!
> If you are hard-lined "binge drinking is bad for one's health" and nothing is going to change your mind about that fact, are you going to tell ChatGPT that? If not, why would you tell Reddit? What are you going to gain from it? Why would you waste your time? Indeed, if you are unsure, only postulating the opinion of binge drinking being harmful as something to explore, then the responses provide a learning opportunity. That brings value and can make it worth your time.
My point is that someone might want fewer people getting harmed by binge drinking, even if the victims are complete strangers. So they post their earnest belief on Reddit that binge drinking is bad, backing it up with some reasoning, so that a few more people in the world might be convinced not to binge drink. That is, someone might feel some sense of pride when they help strangers by informing them of (what they see as) the truth, so they consider their time well spent.
> A hypothetical can only take us so far, but presumably the candidate hypothesizes that they can win, but they don't know for sure and are throwing it out there to try and find out.
Sure, the candidate doesn't know for sure that they'll win, but that's beside the point. Your idea would suggest that they aren't even sure if they want people to vote for them, and they only ask people to vote for them in order to probe for reasons why they shouldn't be voted for. I'm saying that they might earnestly want to win, so they campaign because they want to get as many votes as possible!
Overall, it just seems like an incredible claim that no one ever posts strongly-held opinions on Reddit primarily because they want to convince others. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might want to convince people of things! Also, I really wouldn't discount the possibility of people who like talking in its own right, as a way to spend free time. Not everyone is looking to optimize every minute of their day being maximally profuctive.
So, again, what's the value proposition?
Additionally, why do these forum users generally appear to crave feedback? An evangelical who claims to have it all figured out will do their best to avoid feedback to not have their message called into question.
And, more generally, if you really do think you have it all figured out, what is the feedback going to tell you? What is the value proposition in consuming it? There is a cost to that too.
> That is, someone might feel some sense of pride when they help strangers by informing them of (what they see as) the truth, so they consider their time well spent.
Is it conceivable that the same person would send the same type of commentary to ChatGPT?
> Your idea would suggest that they aren't even sure if they want people to vote for them, and they only ask people to vote for them in order to probe for reasons why they shouldn't be voted for.
Maybe. Like I said, you can only take a hypothetical so far. What an imagined person might think is only limited by your imagination of that person. I am not sure this can go anywhere. If you have real world experience in running for a political position, I'd love to hear about it.
> but many people love to socialize with others for its own sake.
It was recognized earlier that social interaction could potentially offer additional benefits not spoken of here, but as it is beyond the topic of conversation it is not something that has garnered attention to consider. But sending comments out to the digital void is not socialization. It is very much a solitary activity.
Well, if you have a big ego, you might simply crave hearing other people agree with you, or congradulating you, or cheering you on. People are emotionally motivated like that.
Alternatively, an evangelist might express their unshakeable belief for constructive feedback, not on why they might want to question their belief, but instead on how they can better present that belief. Presentation skills are very important for a committed evangelist to know! More generally, someone can post a comment on Reddit, some parts of which they do not question, just to introduce other parts that they want real feedback on.
> Is it conceivable that the same person would send the same type of commentary to ChatGPT?
Definitely, if they didn't know it was ChatGPT. Perhaps not, if they did. The emotional element comes from imagining the hypothetical lives of the audience members being improved from their knowledge. Especially with smaller communities, where one might already know something or another about the usual commentariat, to build a seed for the imagination.
> But sending comments out to the digital void is not socialization. It is very much a solitary activity.
You may feel that way, and it may very well be true, but I don't think that has sunk in on an emotional level for most people. Compare with parasocial relationships, which are well-documented. The celebrity does not care about a random person watching online, but this does not stop that person from harboring an illusion of intimacy.
Similarly, a person expressing their beliefs in public without wanting to learn anything is likely building a persona of the invisible audience, and becoming emotionally invested in that persona. This is only reinforced if someone occasionally gets bits of emotionally positive feedback from a few audience members.
So I'd say that there is usually no value proposition in terms of material gain for publically posting on Reddit. Instead, the value mostly lies in the feelings one gets when talking to the imagined audience persona.
Why, then, so much attention towards controversial topics? Opinions that are not considered controversial should garner the most agreement to swell that ego. My opinion that "1+1=2" is, aside from those being contrarian for comedic effect, going to see nearly everyone agree! Now that I said it the agreements are going to pour in and my head is going to grow so big that the US military is going to scramble their fighter jets to shoot me down.
Except, I'm not sure it works like that. I expect we don't continually get comments like "Guess what: 1+1=2!" because agreement towards your opinion doesn't stimulate the ego. Where the ego does come into play is when you haven't fully formed an opinion but are starting to feel more confident in a hypothesis you have been working on. The agreement strengthens support for the pathways that are on the verge of becoming established but are not yet established and validates the effort. Similarly, disagreement leaves one to feel like the effort has been all for not, hence the negative feelings. This doesn't happen when you have formed an opinion, though. You telling me that I am wrong and that "1+1=3" will generate no feelings. I couldn't care less. Right or wrong, I'm convinced that "1+1=2" and there is nothing you can say to change that opinion in me and it bores me that I had to resort to talking about it as an example for the sake of greater value of this discussion.
Aside from the Reddit thing, my young child is currently in the process of learning about numbers and simple arithmetic. Them stating their opinion that "1+1=2" and me responding with "Yes, that's right!" clearly does result in some kind of pleasurable stimulation. They are still learning and haven't fully solidified the understanding – but I doubt this will last. Once there is confidence and the opinion is formed as their own, I expect it will be met with "Duh. Of course it is right! Why are you patronizing me?", not the joy from validation seen today.
> The emotional element comes from imagining the hypothetical lives of the audience members being improved from their knowledge.
Without reasonable proof of lives being improved, wouldn't this person be working on the hypothesis of a message being able to improve lives, using the exploration of sharing that opinion to see if it manifests into something that can transition from hypothesis to the person's actual opinion? I expect after one is certain, with no way to convince them otherwise, that they have helped people (or didn't help people) they will move on.
> but I don't think that has sunk in on an emotional level for most people.
Is that a necessary precondition?
> Instead, the value mostly lies in the feelings one gets
That much is true. The learning value that comes from presenting a hypothetical opinion does not provide material gain. The value is very much derived from the warm and fuzzy feelings that are generated as opinions are in the process of being formed.
What I am saying is that after the opinion is adopted, those feelings go away, and it is no longer interesting to share or discuss the opinion that has been formed. That is with at least in respect to using Reddit. Whether or not there is other extrinsic value seen in social experiences where formed options are shared has not been explored and is beyond the discussion here.