Unpopular Opinion

I think this is a general problem with online discussion. You can have more productive discussion about capitalism/socialism/anarchism in a bar in the deep south than you can online. Online people tend to forget there’s another person with a brain on the other side of the conversation (if they even intended to be having a conversation, which people mostly don’t). We know from every day life that people don’t speak carefully in conversation—you really have to be constantly extending the benefit of the doubt. Online no one extends the benefit of the doubt even though we know most comments are off the cuff on the toilet.

There are some neat online tools for structuring discussions like Kialo that I think make some headway in diminishing the effect, but drinking a beer with someone while discussing still works better as far as having an interlocutor who is actually considering what you’re saying and who might actually be willing to shift their own view.

Internet is better equipped for quippy one liners and getting (bastardized) ideas into the zeitgeist.

I discovered Lemmy and Hacker news at roughly the same time, and the difference in comment quality is striking. Obviously HN is a lot more mature platform, and more specialised, but still... People over there are lamenting the quality of their comments and saying they're not what they used to be, but the majority are interesting and constructive

That's not an argument, you're just contradicting me

I definitely feel like I can get away with posting against group think here on lemmy far more than I did on reddit.

I just want to talk about Linux and make clever jokes.

Just ignore the low-effort comments and wait for someone who is able to invest more effort to answer.

why do you expect random people on the internet to be smart enough to be able to have a position and defend it for such a complex thing as the economy?

I think you'll find a lot of nuance for more specific matters, but not for something this complex and abstract. You'll mostly get emotional responses and opinions. If you want to have an intellectual discussion on economics, I don't think this is the right place.

You could also be part of the solution and create a community for that type of content. You could be in charge of moderating it, to keep away the users that you consider are echo-chambering without actual contributions.... I mean, if you really care about actual solutions.

I completely agree. However, I also think its better than 'most' internet places.

There is a down-vote brigade around any kind of criticism of a knee jerk reaction people are having to a headline. I think because of the current political climate, nuance around responsibility for the state of things simply isn't suffered, which I do understand the sentiment. However, I've also been pleasantly surprised at the number of 3+ deep comment threads, which seems to be about where the nuance appears.

Its really the knee jerk downvoters and one line commenters who do actually lack critical thinking skills, but this isn't unique to lemmy. Its all over, hackernews has them too, there is simply a larger effort to 'appear smart' on hn than lemmy. Lemmy is more casual, which is fine. This is a space for casual discussion, and hot takes are fine and should be welcome.

I'll use a political example, such as my concern around how much water carrying I see for groups like congressional Democrats. If you push back on something coming from NYT as being a 'Democratic win', you'll be very quickly downvoted below 50%. However, I don't think the lack of nuance is because of lemmy or the demographic here. I think its from a place of real fear around what might happen if the US loses its democracy to fascism that is generally palpable across the internet and offline as well. People are materially very afraid, and reacting without nuance right now, and I think the fear is justified. However, if we want to find solutions, we need to maintain a clear head and keep discussions happening. Its open forums like Lemmy where opinions are made and nuanced developed; there needs to be space for that.

This same point can be extended to issues around global war, climate change, the rise of global fascism, the usurping of generations of potential by the oligarchical class, any of the innumerable ills we are currently staring down the barrel of. Its a stressful time and people are rightfully scared and worried. Scared worried people don't do nuance. They react. Up for things they think they agree with, down for things they don't. No nuance.

Largely I agree with the point, but I don't think its a lemmy thing in the current climate.

This is a great video for anyone trying to understand why those types of comments happen

I've found the opposite to be true on Lemmy. It's definitely getting worse with time, but the exodus that fueled Lemmy initially seemed to consist mostly of the reasonable people. You can see a noticeable decline in attempts to calmly rebut misinformation with sourced arguments in Reddit (to the general detriment of the audience reading the posts there). Just my personal experience of course, but you have to scroll so much further to see the actual true in a lot of posts on reddit than you used to (if that truth shows up at all).

So it's nice for us personally to be in a bit more filtered existence here, with a higher overall quality of conversation, but the masses on reddit suffer, especially the kids - Gut feels like all the 30s-40s millennials went to Lemmy and left the Gen Z kids as chum in the water for the boomers and bots that make up the ceaseless repetition of unsubstantiated broken-minded talking points.

I'd also encourage you to look internally at the quality of your own arguments if you feel like nobody is entertaining your opinions on things.. maybe you just kind of suck?

See? Even the post criticizing the lack of nuance says everyone thinks capitalism ia bad. :D

I wish there was an option to judge the content independently of form. A 2 types of karma kind of system.

There are times I strongly disagree with the idea behind the post, but it's really nicely written. And then there are other times when I agree with the general gist of a post, but OP is still a dick and deserves a slap.

Remember most people are teenagers.

Why aren't y'all just blocking the people you don't want to interact with?

I don't really agree. Sure, there's shitty content everywhere, and there's a couple of instances filled to the brim with edgy tankies possessing not only an IQ worthy of fenceposts, but a comprehension of Marxist theory on par with that the highest ranked Gulag camp keeper.

There's also, however, other people. And more often than not I find that wherever there's an interesting discussion to be had, people are having it. If someone annoys you it's not harder than blocking them or their instance, and you can keep having your high brow discussions in peace and quiet.

Upvoted for unpopular opinion. I don't agree though, I think it's still better than most other online places. It's just that "most other places" doesn't set a high bar and besides, I bet even if it was a lot better, people would still complain.