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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28294 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I will confirm that your phrasing is quite antagonistic. Please don’t do this.

The person to whom I was responding was being intentionally inflammatory while also making it clear that he is not interested in having an open discussion. How then am I to respond? I could overlook his derision (directed at me and mine) and try to explain something to him, except that he's also indicated that he won't consider what I have to say.

Meanwhile, I don't want him to confuse people refusing to cast pearls before swine with his opponents declining to respond out of fear.

Apologies for the delay.

I agree that he probably wasn’t looking for a serious discussion. Sometimes providing that is still worthwhile, on the off chance your opponent decides to break the mold. Also, it looks really good to the audience.

If the goal is to make the existence of disagreement clear, rather than the substance…well, there’s not really any nice way to dismiss someone out of hand. The best you can do is probably emphasize your reasoning.

I think you’re laughably wrong, but I don’t want to recreate the early atheist flame wars, so I’ll leave it at that.

It’s still not great. Fundamentally, you’re still announcing that he’s not worth your time, which is going to rub people the wrong way. The more politely you do so, the less pushback you’ll get.

Yeah, it’s hard to engage productively with a comment like his. The question is—what are you hoping to get out of the exchange?

Edit: just saw your edit when I posted this, will respond

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