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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3181 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 15, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How much stock do you put in the age of someone posting? How much in their "stage of life?" Does it matter to you whether a poster is in high school? University? Do you care if a poster is only in their teens or early 20s, already in their late 30s, or early 40s, or approaching senescence in their mid 50s? Does it matter whether they're married or not, whether they have kids or not? Whether they're male or female? From the first world it third world? Do any of these factors affect how you read their posts?

Some of these definitely affect me, but I can't decide whether it's a good heuristic or just a knee jerk reaction.

Unless they intentionally reveal it, none. (If they do, now there's a political angle- the 4chan approach to that behavior is mostly correct, and I use it when appropriate.)

I didn't like "but you aren't even a human being" when people did it to me, and they were usually wrong when they did it, so I go out of my way to avoid doing it to anyone else. And while I'm not (well, I guess it's 'wasn't' now) deterred by the microaggression of "teenager", the concept (as most Progressive terms are- the fact that they just use them as an excuse to be bullies notwithstanding) is a valid one here; if it discourages someone from actually trying to use their own reason, then it's probably wrong to say and/or being used to cover up something that's obviously wrong.

Sure, if there are obvious markers of age/inexperience with a given topic it's going to color the way I respond- but I'm not going to expressly point out that I believe a blind spot is age-related since it can (will?) invite the above problem if not done very carefully. Humorously, I find that someone taking pains to explicitly call it out (or being worried about it, which is understandable considering the above) is itself a reliable indicator that someone's not particularly mature in the first place.

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