And there we have it. Yes, I can come across that way. It’s actually a rather interesting phenomenon on the internet.
Take someone like Professor Dave on YouTube. He can be absolutely vicious toward people he debunks, and audiences applaud him for it, often because the people he’s criticizing are demonstrably spreading misinformation or making objectively terrible arguments.
Yet when I adopt a somewhat abrasive tone while doing essentially the same thing, suddenly I’m the worst person imaginable.
Here’s the distinction people seem to struggle with: I have absolutely no obligation to be nice, agreeable, or easygoing when correcting someone who is confidently presenting misinformation. I saw a statement that was factually incorrect, corrected it, and pointed out that the OP didn’t understand the subject matter they were attempting to discuss.
People may not appreciate being confronted that way, but their discomfort doesn’t make my argument arrogant, incorrect, or mean-spirited. Being nice is a social preference, not an intellectual obligation. And being abrasive doesn’t automatically make someone wrong any more than being polite makes someone right.
You seem to be treating niceness as the standard by which an argument should be judged. It isn’t. The standard should be whether the argument is factually sound.
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Everything else is window dressing.
And there we have it. Yes, I can come across that way. It’s actually a rather interesting phenomenon on the internet.
Take someone like Professor Dave on YouTube. He can be absolutely vicious toward people he debunks, and audiences applaud him for it, often because the people he’s criticizing are demonstrably spreading misinformation or making objectively terrible arguments.
Yet when I adopt a somewhat abrasive tone while doing essentially the same thing, suddenly I’m the worst person imaginable.
Here’s the distinction people seem to struggle with: I have absolutely no obligation to be nice, agreeable, or easygoing when correcting someone who is confidently presenting misinformation. I saw a statement that was factually incorrect, corrected it, and pointed out that the OP didn’t understand the subject matter they were attempting to discuss.
People may not appreciate being confronted that way, but their discomfort doesn’t make my argument arrogant, incorrect, or mean-spirited. Being nice is a social preference, not an intellectual obligation. And being abrasive doesn’t automatically make someone wrong any more than being polite makes someone right.
You seem to be treating niceness as the standard by which an argument should be judged. It isn’t. The standard should be whether the argument is factually sound.
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Everything else is window dressing.