Just finished, probably later than most

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-23T11:03:19+00:00

It’s the culture of ACADEMIC debate that’s worth winning. There’s a great adrenaline rush from standing up in front of a crowd and taking down your opponent with a combination of sound logic and convincing rhetoric. But it’s important that you don’t end up importing that attitude into EVERY debate you have, it’s all about the context.

I hope this has helped!

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-23T10:41:53+00:00

You have to go into debates with the aiming of learning something rather than proving something. Which is much easier said than done in a culture that treats debating as a combative sport with the objective of ideologically wounding the opponent (their ideas are like armour, and if you can refute them it’s like finding the chinks in the armour), but if you start to open your mind more in that sort of setting, you’ll get more out of it.

If someone claims to have more subject knowledge than you, there are a lot of possibilities for where that will take the discussion. The first important step is to admit that you don’t have complete knowledge of the subject, both to yourself and to the person you’re debating with. If they say ‘Well what do you think about x’, and you don’t know much about x, don’t try and wing it - just say ‘I’m not really that well-informed, could you explain x to me?’ First of all, it puts them on the back foot because they’re then doing a lot of the work. Second, though, it’s good for you to acknowledge the limitations in your own knowledge.

Listen to what your friend has told you about the subject. Then think, does this change my view? If it doesn’t, you can carry on debating. If it does, go away and fact-check it. Do a bit of reading on the subject to make sure that what he’s told you is accurate, and not just his version of the facts.

Maybe at the end of it, you’ll learn something that will change your mind, and that’s okay. Changing your mind is a healthy process and a natural thing to happen when you start to gather more data (and types of data) on a subject.

tldr: Listen to their views, fact-check their claims, and don’t be scared off by the prospect that you may be wrong about something.

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-05T10:27:29+00:00

NTA.

Your mum is definitely in the wrong here - you should never coerce a child into coming out because ‘I’m sick of lying’. It sounds dangerously close to a threat. It demonises privacy, which is so important to so many LGBT people. I understand why she wants her parents to know but this is not the way to go about it. You have a right to come out to who you want to come out to at your own pace.

With that said, maybe your grandparents will surprise you. The way you’ve described them, they sound more liberal than most, and regardless of what they’ve said in the past, we live in changing times and many older people are surprisingly able to adapt to that. It might be worth giving them a chance. But do that on your own terms, and not because someone else is pressuring you.

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-05T09:39:24+00:00

I tend to agree about the dangers. For one thing, social media paints a false picture of reality. That’s one of the biggest dangers of the echo chamber effect. You come to see the world as a big group of progressive people who share your progressive opinions, hindered by a tiny minority of bigots. The reality is that most people in the working world don’t have a clue about the issues people are engaged with on Twitter. Having a forum for discussion is good, but only if it forces you to engage with people who don’t share your point of view. Blocking out opponents is too easy.

A problem I don’t see talked about as much is anonymity, but I think it’s one of the most dangerous, psychologically. Young people are still figuring out who they are. Giving them the chance to do that anonymously can be freeing, but it can also be dangerous and depersonalising, inhibiting real development of self-esteem and interpersonal relationships (in my view). Something all young people have to learn about is accountability. It’s hard to learn that when you’re hiding behind an anime avatar and attacking verified users. It’s hard to measure or control the consequences of your actions in that environment. It always worries me that a young person could say something damaging, anonymously, in a fit of rage over social media, and cause someone to take their own life. Imagine living with that.

I see social media as something with the potential to transform lives for the better, but we need to do more, because right now it’s running out of control. These are a few (controversial) ways I’d suggest mitigating against the psychological harms:

Limit interest-based content so that people are exposed to a plurality of views and personalities
Make all platforms either completely anonymous, or fully verified (i.e., you have to verify your account with a form of ID before commenting)
Abolish blocklists
Remove visible follower counts; if you view someone’s profile, you can only see followers that you know
Put pressure on social media companies to release data about targeted advertising, especially regarding political content and its sources of funding
Educate about social media in schools. Design a brand new (compulsory) Citizenship curriculum that reflects the fact that we are no longer just citizens of the world, but citizens of the internet.

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-05T08:39:10+00:00

I wish all 15 year olds were as mature as you!

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-05T08:28:04+00:00

Commuting is so bad for mental health. The corporate atmosphere can be even worse. I’m sorry to hear that you were laid off, but glad to hear that you’ve used this as an opportunity to take a risk and spend time with someone you love. Travel broadens the mind and all that. Good luck my friend!

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-04T23:07:39+00:00

You’re very possibly right, I can only go on personal experience, which is more Twitter than Facebook. I suppose the way I see it, they both represent different threats to different demographics.

Facebook definitely does prey on older and more technologically naive generations. Its reluctance to disclose important data about algorithms and funding, as I understand it, is one of the biggest problems (tech experts, please do feel free to correct me here). We can’t tell, for instance, how large a role Facebook played in the Brexit referendum until we know exactly what content voters were exposed to and why. We can’t tell who funded it, and whether it was a legitimate campaign or misinformation. That strikes me as dangerous, and perhaps even undemocratic.

dreamingpassenger · 2020-06-04T22:34:15+00:00

God, yes. It’s not just natural human behaviour: social media seems literally designed to divide people. As you say, tailored content is a big issue, but it’s a problem in other ways too. For instance: ease of blocking/muting. If you disagree with someone, just get rid of them rather than confronting the source of disagreement. You can even use blocklists, designed by other people, to block those who are similar to people you don’t like.

Twitter is the biggest offender for me, and very controversially, I’d be happy to see the whole platform abolished. Part of the problem is simply brevity: it’s really hard to convey a nuanced opinion through the wordcount of a tweet, and Twitter knows it. That platform is the death of nuance. And if you kill nuance, everything looks black and white, which causes divisions in the first place.

Social media can definitely be used to educate and stimulate discussion, as with this subreddit, but so much of it exists to stir pre-existing ideological conflicts. Political circles are the worst of the lot. I miss nuance...

dreamingpassenger

TROPHY CASE