Two interrelated factors have a lot to do with why debate has gotten so heated and uncharitable:
1. Most of our debates happen online and people on the other side of a screen are a lot harder to empathize with than people we know and disagree with in person.
I think this has a lot to do with why people tend to retreat to tribalism so fiercely; that person’s disagreement with them about a contentious issue is literally they only thing they know about the other in many cases.
2. People have less shared epistemics than they used to. These days there is a lot more disagreement about what facts are real and what information to trust.
It's one thing to argue about something where you both agree about what happened and disagree about causes from among a variety of plausible options. It's quite another when the underlying event and the facts of that event are widely disputed, cf certain recent events in Minneapolis.
I also suspect that the way that the internet drives so much attention toward upsetting things that are far away and out of people's direct control is kind of breaking our brains. More touching grass pls.
Good points - also a surprising thing to me is how friends you've known for decades are also pretty unhinged and uncharitable - so it's def not just online
It's wild when someone you've known for years seems to go off the deep end. And you're right - it's not common, but happens enough that it's not shocking anymore.
Two interrelated factors have a lot to do with why debate has gotten so heated and uncharitable:
1. Most of our debates happen online and people on the other side of a screen are a lot harder to empathize with than people we know and disagree with in person.
I think this has a lot to do with why people tend to retreat to tribalism so fiercely; that person’s disagreement with them about a contentious issue is literally they only thing they know about the other in many cases.
2. People have less shared epistemics than they used to. These days there is a lot more disagreement about what facts are real and what information to trust.
It's one thing to argue about something where you both agree about what happened and disagree about causes from among a variety of plausible options. It's quite another when the underlying event and the facts of that event are widely disputed, cf certain recent events in Minneapolis.
I also suspect that the way that the internet drives so much attention toward upsetting things that are far away and out of people's direct control is kind of breaking our brains. More touching grass pls.
Good points - also a surprising thing to me is how friends you've known for decades are also pretty unhinged and uncharitable - so it's def not just online
It's wild when someone you've known for years seems to go off the deep end. And you're right - it's not common, but happens enough that it's not shocking anymore.
"Clarity only arrived later, once distance allowed reflection." Bingo.
In my short time on this earth, I have found that life is lived through the windshield, but understood through the rearview mirror.
I have many thoughts on this, which I basically spelled out here: https://joedonatelli.substack.com/p/why-i-have-not-replied-to-your-facebook TLDR How you debate matters, and we've lost something important in an online world.
The left killed Charlie Kirk because they couldn't defeat him in debates. That should be a sobering warning sign for all of us.