Ask HN: Has the Internet Become Too Intellectual?
In arguments/conversations on forums such as Reddit or Hacker News, you often find terms like “whataboutism” or one or other kind of fallacy bandied about. Any comment that could possibly be taken in the wrong way will inevitably have someone complain of an “ad hominem”. I feel like this is the latest manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, people see this thing they heard of and feel they've “won”. I often see replies pointing out a fallacy and nothing else, no critical thinking, no interaction beyond pointing out a fallacy, no engagement with the actual content of the post. It's like terms are used as a thought-terminating cliché, so the commenter goes “ah they made a fallacy here! Now I can move on the reading the next post”, allowing one to safely ignore anything a post says, no matter how cogently written, because there is an error in one part and not needing to think about what's really written. That's assuming a fallacy has actually been made, often these terms are thrown around without any apparent knowledge about what they mean.
But it's not just the internet, I see this leaking out into meat space too. For example, I recall reading an article (sorry don't remember what it was) complaining how people can't speak emotionally in relationships anymore, that people can't say “I hate you". It became “your behaviour is toxic”, “you're gaslighting me by XYZ”, etc. We're being exposed to this sort of therapeutic and clinical language more and more. One hand, I am obviously happy that people can verbalise their feelings and be able to communicate it to others, I hope it's allowed people to get out of genuinely toxic and unhealthy situations but I also feel as though it's being weaponised (unintentionally I suspect) to pathologise normal (if unpleasant) behaviour or else as a bludgeon to attack others.
Our increasing awareness of mental health and mental illness is also being used this way. Now a days, instead of “wow this guy's an asshole” it's “this person clearly has BPD, you can see it when he X,Y and Z”. I'm sure you've seen this before: a video of someone behaving badly or strangely is posted and the replies will be full of armchair psychologists making diagnoses of this or that mental condition due to witnessing a few minutes of context-free video.
I think this, in part, comes from our new information society. The free and accessible nature of the internet has resulted in torrents of information with almost no time lag so people the world over can discuss something happening a continent away in real time. Everyone is expected to have an opinion on every event, every new idea, the latest scandal or tragedy. We need to have an opinion on the economy, we're supposed to understand the complex and nuanced causes of the latest geopolitical event. We've grown so used to the constant information feed that we now are expected to know everything, every new buzzword, proposed law, latest culture war topic. In short, we're now expected to be experts in all fields of knowledge and, with all the information in the world at our finger tips, we believe that we really are. Hell, I'm writing this after checking my RSS feed filled with news sites and blogs!
Perhaps I've just been hanging out on the pretentious side of the internet, perhaps I'm the one who's pretentious but this shift in how we communicate with others has become increasingly worrying to me. I just hope we don't sink deeper into our information silos, safe in the knowledge that we're not only correct but that the other side is clearly incoherent.
Maybe I'm just an old man yelling at clouds but have you noticed this to?