Learning happens in environments optimized for understanding, not winning | Hacker News Reader

Learning happens in environments optimized for understanding, not winning

joanwestenberg.com

73 pointsrbanffy26 comments

The author says we should look for: “Controlled Environments - Save serious discussions for spaces designed for learning rather than engagement. Book clubs, study groups, and moderated forums can create conditions for genuine discourse.” I find the constant, gentle moderation here at hn encourages the better angels of our nature. I learn something new from all you fine people everyday. Thanks for your cumulative effort.

Thanks, Dang et al. It’s such a massive effort.

And thanks to all those who have responsibly resisted the urge to x. It’s not easy!

Indeed. It always saddens me how childish and tribal we become when some subjects are mentioned. It can't be impossible for the smart people we find here to have civilised discussion about politics or Elon Musk.

People keep rediscovering what Aristotle taught: that there are different kinds of speech. He enumerated four types:

- διδασκαλικὸς λόγος (didactic speech): The person asking questions (a teacher) knows the truth, while the person responding (the student) does not (and presumably knows that he does not, or else peirastic speech should be used first). The conversation proceeds on the basis of principles of the domain of knowledge under discussion: a discussion about programming languages would involve prior special knowledge of those languages and not necessarily be accessible to the layperson. The goal of the conversation is to teach a student special knowledge.

- πειραστικὸς λόγος (examination speech): The person asking questions tries to test the person answering, because the person answering claims to know the truth. This could be a simple examination, like a test in school, or it could be "Socratic questioning" as Socrates usually practiced it in Plato's dialogues: Socrates happens upon someone who claims to understand something very well, so Socrates asks him questions about his beliefs until he exposes inconsistency. This kind of speech can either confirm that the respondent knows what he's talking about or does not, and, if it reveals that he held false beliefs, showing him his error makes him readier to learn more correct beliefs through didactic speech.

- διαλεκτικὸς λόγος (ordinary conversation): Two people, neither of whom fully knows the truth of what they're saying, begin from common sense and commonly held opinions, aiming to refine their understanding of ordinary matters in general and probable terms.

- ἐριστικὸς λόγος (competitive conversation): Someone gets roped into responding to questions; the questioner's goal, however, is simply to appear (visibly, in front of other people) to win the argument, whether or not he actually does win. The questioner does not necessarily possess the truth or any better beliefs than the respondent, but he does have strategies of false argumentation (the fallacies Aristotle outlines in his _Sophistici Elenchi_) that will fool everyone else and give him an apparent victory.

Serious discussions should be one of the first two types; internet discussions are almost invariably the last.

Also worth mentioning... even if you're trying to do "ordinary conversation" on the internet, someone is going to come in and steer it to competitive.

I think that captures what keeps me off social media.

I enjoy a good ordinary conversation with my friends and aquaintences, but social media won't let you have that. Every post, no matter how unserious and innocuous, is a valid target for competition or outright abuse/taunting/mocking/shaming/threatening, which I suppose Aristotle didn't encounter often enough to put on his list.

I have found it helpful and cathartic to write a response to an article or comment, and then close the window without posting. In many cases it is much more rewarding than posting and viewing the train wreck that is the responses.

Obviously, not in this case though. ;-)

If only we could get some HN statistics on number of unsubmitted replies on this comment thread ...

Agreed, although for me it is not about the responses, but about what it does for me: If you take your posts seriously (and I generally do), you try to construct a comment that is well-written and well-founded. In that process sometimes I have to come to the conclusion that my initial reaction was wrong entirely, wrong partially, incomplete, not supported by evidence or simply an overreaction. I learn from trying to make my point and failing, without anybody ever seeing the attempt.

It's better than simulating an argument in my head because of the definitiveness of posting a comment and because I am already at the device with which I most easily (fail to) find sources/support for my arguments.

I think the author might have missed the `usenet` era. Over the years it was running, I have had very good discourses in com.* and sci., without the debate, must-win aspect.

I distinctly recall discussing the inner working of IPX/SPX and how we can develop tooling, compressions post LZH, and alike. We discussed direction for protocols and came to agreement on sometimes as nuanced things as bit flipping in the packets.

Get into alt.*, and that is a whole different reality.

Yes, up until 1994. The internet was a different world before corporate growth hacking got involved

You may argue with the content of this article in one way or another, but the main fact - that all this communication, access to information, has resulted in almost zero global discursive improvement - is something blaringly obvious to reflect on:

"Were did these assumptions were wrong?"

>This sounds counterintuitive. Debate sharpens the mind, right? Exposure to different viewpoints broadens our perspective. That's what Socrates taught us, what our schools drill into us, what every "how to think better" course preaches. But something fundamental has been broken in discourse,

I wouldn't say it is "counterintuitive" because it wasn't "intuitive" to begin with: this is some artificially-constructed wisdom, but it is generally accepted, has been built up upon centuries of not millenia, and is fundamental to the way many core aspects of modern society are designed, like freedom of expression and democratic institutions.

> but the main fact - that all this communication, access to information, has resulted in almost zero global discursive improvement

Were we trying to optimize for that? Because it looks like an impossible goal.

IMO, we were optimizing for best effort interested discourse on some places, and peak discourse on others. Both seem to have improved greatly. That last one has got so extraordinary changes that people honestly can't imagine doing things the old ways anymore.

Page title is currently "You Will Never Win an Argument On the Internet—Here's Why", but here it's "Learning happens in environments optimized for understanding, not winning".

I think the latter is the preferred one for HN, as the former is clickbait. At the very least the latter is a good attempt.

Alternatively, it's all about the person. There's a great old article from WaitButWhy (when they actually used to publish articles) about your 'inner mammoth.' [1] It's a great article and I can't really give fair cliffs of, but I think one of the most important is the point about perceived self importance.

We mostly don't care about other people online. Of the thousands of people I've interacted with on Hacker News, I'd struggle to recall more than maybe 3 names. Sometimes there's a ding, or dang, of familiarity when I see a name, but that's generally just about it. I think most can empathize with that, yet the thing is - everybody else feels that way about you as well. Yet in so many situations we attribute far more importance and 'centralization' to ourselves than exists.

Once you realize you're just another face in the crowd, it's much easier to just not care - which is essentially a prerequisite to freeing your own thoughts, expressions, and so on. This applies to real life as well. And the funny thing is, you'll often find people are more receptive to the 'real you' than the imaginary you that you thought you 'should' be.

So I'll take the other side on this one. I've had countless arguments on the internet, and I feel far more the learned from it all. But when you don't really care about what other people think, things like argumentative fallacies suddenly feel like something for idiots. I mean you're not only wasting the other person's time, but far more importantly - you're wasting your own as well.

[1] - https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-op...

You need a critical mass for any decent discussion to happen, but there’s also a tipping point—go beyond that, and no matter what you do, it turns into chaos.

A bunch of people here have mentioned having great conversations back in the old Usenet days. Maybe because the barrier to entry was higher, naturally filtering people out (aka a gatekeeper).

Now that anyone can post anything online, every discussion attracts a bunch of people throwing random shit for no reason. This is why I usually prefer Lobsters over Hacker News.

Anytime someone shares a bad experience with JS, Vim, or Emacs, an armada of people shows up, ready to obliterate them. Trolls existed before 2010 too, but they weren’t nearly as bad.

"You Will Never Win an Argument On the Internet"=> True, but participation is important because even if the person you are arguing with will rarely change their mind in the process, you might convince some bystanders. So for very important issues, I feel it is important to participate even if the game is rigged. Social media influences everything, politics included. For ideas that are important, we can't just let a vacuum for fear of seeing it filled with propaganda and lies.

What will be even more effective? Talk to that person, face-to-face if possible, who you are friends with, who is empathetic to you and your views.

As this article points out, online public posting is performative.

Like the management guidance that is unfortunately not at all practiced enough, "praise publicly, criticize privately."

If you're going to get into a situation where criticism is unavoidable, do it when the person's "punishment" of the criticism won't be public to be read forever and ever.

Plus, it's a lot harder to have zero empathy with someone whose eyes you are looking into, whose presence is right next to you. But an anonymous internet poster, or even identified internet poster who you won't see for months or years? A lot of people don't care about that person's feelings at all, and don't have the leaps of imagination that what they type might actually cause that person pain / tears / sadness / etc.

The author asks when was the last time you changed your view based on an online argument. Now ask yourself when the last time you changed your view based on somebody else's argument. That's probably even more rare because I expect very near to 100% of people browse similarly to myself. I might read a post or two from a couple of guys arguing on whatever topic, but I quickly lose interest and move on. The only exception would be if I'm looking for a spot to also 'jump in'. But when it's just you and somebody else - you're performing for an empty theater 99.99999% of the time.

It’s a lost cause. For every misinformation out there that you comment on there are thousands that that you don’t. All it does is increase engagement in a toxic environment. It drags you down and lifts no one up.

How can it be that we invented this marvelous tool to connect us, and then we proved unable to make full use of it?

Sometimes I get some Forbidden Planet vibes. It's like the Krell died when they invented Twitter.

Over the course of the past century we've become enured to media selling our vices back to us.

What happens when media sells our virtues back to us?

In other words, it feels really good and righteous to be angry at the bad people. It feels really bad to consider that they might just be people.

Not just bad - it feels subversive - disloyal to the in-group. It would take a heretic to claim that the demons are just sinners.

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I think the greatest qualities of humanity are curiosity, humility, patience and empathy, but it is very hard to feel curious, humble, patient and empathetic in many online discussions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43055914

Social media as a platform to argue and discuss is a lost cause, social media tends to groom to some extent, the narcissistic trait in people, so long term members, when there are serious disagreements, rather than discuss in good faith with a willingness to concede even simple misconceptions, the member has invested heavily, as the account is either solidly linked to their real life, or more often as an identity they've crafted of how they like to see themselves.

So IMO the article does hit rightly on a lot of points as per social media discussions.

Though a lot of interesting stuff gets posted and people still will include info links, the outcome isn't quite the same IMO as within a forum or interest focused discussion group. I don't do social media, never did, never plan to.

I read this comment 3 times and that first paragraph just has too many commas.

misplaced commas, even.

Totally agree - apologies, looks like the monkey was at the keyboard again. It was well past the time I should be up and replying quickly despite even proof reading a couple of times - it was the last effort being the killer as I recall deciding it needed those extra commas ... lights on and no one home. Normally if I post the reply been sitting around for some time while I chew on it and check back if it's still relevant to the discussion, as such more replies end up not posted.

If not a full stop after 'cause' the comma should have included 'as' afterwards, also so needed to be 'more so,' no comma after extent or members.

> Social media as a platform to argue and discuss is a lost cause, as social media tends to groom to some extent the narcissistic trait in people, more so long term members, when there are serious disagreements, rather than discuss in good faith with a willingness to concede even simple misconceptions, the member has invested heavily, as the account is either solidly linked to their real life, or more often as an identity they've crafted of how they like to see themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com