Something that bothers me about conversations generally

Something that bothers me about conversations generally, and especially on Twitter: When making claims, statements, or hot-takes on a given topic, and someone responds with a counter-point, there is often not enough feasible/appropriate room/time to really respond to the counter-point in an epistemically-sufficient way.

In in-person conversations, like say at a coffee shop or social gathering, this results in epistemic progress on the topic being stunted, unless each participant is willing to engage in a monologue and listen to the other participants' monologues. And this is assuming each participant has the working memory and experience to adequately convey the points they want to make and recall and respond to the other participants' points. But our social norms make this manner of dialogue inappropriate anyway.

At least on blogs, some social media, and forums, you can share links to references, give long-winded monologues on things, you have the time to gather your thoughts on the topic, and it's more socially appropriate to do that there than it is in-person. But that's not usually how people want to discuss things on social media, least of all on Twitter.

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Last updated: 2022-01-17

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