I literally still don’t understand. I can understand the motivation to be an asshole in communities you think won’t treat you fairly, but why be a lying asshole? I think the OP wrote “honesty” and meant something else.
I think the common point of intervention for people telling mis-truths, is not holding themselves back when they don’t really have enough evidence. A person might be about to write of a quick reply, and in most communities, know that they’re not going to be held accountable for any mischaracterisations of others’ opinions, or referring inaccurately to studies and data. In those communities, the comments are awful. In communities where you know that, if you do this over a sustained period, Carl Shulman, Jeff Kaufman, Oliver Habryka, Gregory Lewis and more are gonna write tens of thousands of words documenting your errors, you’ll be more likely to note when you haven’t quite substantiated the comment you’re about to hit ‘send’ on.
There’s an important difference between repeatedly making errors, jumping to conclusions, or being attached to a preconceived notion (all of which which I’ve personally done in front of Carl plenty of times), and the sort of behavior described in the OP, which seems more like intentional misrepresentation for the sake of climbing a social status gradient.
I think he means that it is human behaviour to do that, not that he does it himself.
I literally still don’t understand. I can understand the motivation to be an asshole in communities you think won’t treat you fairly, but why be a lying asshole? I think the OP wrote “honesty” and meant something else.
I think the common point of intervention for people telling mis-truths, is not holding themselves back when they don’t really have enough evidence. A person might be about to write of a quick reply, and in most communities, know that they’re not going to be held accountable for any mischaracterisations of others’ opinions, or referring inaccurately to studies and data. In those communities, the comments are awful. In communities where you know that, if you do this over a sustained period, Carl Shulman, Jeff Kaufman, Oliver Habryka, Gregory Lewis and more are gonna write tens of thousands of words documenting your errors, you’ll be more likely to note when you haven’t quite substantiated the comment you’re about to hit ‘send’ on.
There’s an important difference between repeatedly making errors, jumping to conclusions, or being attached to a preconceived notion (all of which which I’ve personally done in front of Carl plenty of times), and the sort of behavior described in the OP, which seems more like intentional misrepresentation for the sake of climbing a social status gradient.