I see, I understand that a bit better. Imo you need a carrot-and-stick approach, meeting belligerence with reason can come across as weakness, and if bad faith tactics are allowed to be deployed, they can win against someone committed to staying in good faith. The goal should be to have a reasonable discussion, but to do that, you gotta make sure the costs of straying from that are too high to be worth the benefit, and that can mean being rude and confrontational and throwing their tactics back in their face - but it’s situational. That’s what “speaking softly but carrying a big stick” means to me.
Exactly, and in my opinion, online discussions are not the place for the “unreasonable” tactics. It’s not really possible for an individual to be “louder” via text, and it’s not just the unreasonable person you are reaching. It’s all the people who may happen across the conversation later, and you have no way of knowing just how many of those are people that may still be swayed by reason.
I don’t really agree. You can be “shouted down” in text format, even if not literally. And yeah it’s not about reaching the unreasonable person, but it’s about not letting them win at the game they’re playing. Like I said, responding to aggression with reason can come across as weakness, and for some people, they’d rather feel strong than feel reasonable. It’s not really as simple as the more reasonable person wins, there’s a range of different things that are going to influence who people agree with, it might be aesthetics and which side sounds more cringe, or it might be empathy, or so on. “Logos” is only one factor.
I see, I understand that a bit better. Imo you need a carrot-and-stick approach, meeting belligerence with reason can come across as weakness, and if bad faith tactics are allowed to be deployed, they can win against someone committed to staying in good faith. The goal should be to have a reasonable discussion, but to do that, you gotta make sure the costs of straying from that are too high to be worth the benefit, and that can mean being rude and confrontational and throwing their tactics back in their face - but it’s situational. That’s what “speaking softly but carrying a big stick” means to me.
Exactly, and in my opinion, online discussions are not the place for the “unreasonable” tactics. It’s not really possible for an individual to be “louder” via text, and it’s not just the unreasonable person you are reaching. It’s all the people who may happen across the conversation later, and you have no way of knowing just how many of those are people that may still be swayed by reason.
I don’t really agree. You can be “shouted down” in text format, even if not literally. And yeah it’s not about reaching the unreasonable person, but it’s about not letting them win at the game they’re playing. Like I said, responding to aggression with reason can come across as weakness, and for some people, they’d rather feel strong than feel reasonable. It’s not really as simple as the more reasonable person wins, there’s a range of different things that are going to influence who people agree with, it might be aesthetics and which side sounds more cringe, or it might be empathy, or so on. “Logos” is only one factor.