I know, I know, this is the internet and that’s not how it works. However, I’m weary of attempting to have a serious discussion only to be met with unserious and intellectually dishonest replies. For example, asking a specific and nuanced question and only getting replies that ignore the details or the question entirely.
Are there any communities where people make an honest effort to have real discussions? Where we take each others points seriously, demonstrate we understand them, and then address them?
There must be some communities like this, right?
Edit: I need to clarify that I am not criticizing or complaining about THIS community! I’m looking for communities focused on specific topics that have this attitude.
No.
You’ll never get that in any online forum open to the general public.
You’ll get that at academic conferences, or university affiliated events/spaces.
On the internet? No.
Some exist here, the problem is, even with good moderation the trolls or intellectually dishonest will wear you down and burn out your good will. Eventually when someone thoughtful comes along you don’t have the energy to engage.
You have to pace yourself.
Even if people are engaging in good faith: reading comprehension, and intellectual rigor are at all time lows. So their good faith attempts at engagement might come off as dishonest
Even if people are engaging in good faith: reading comprehension, and intellectual rigor are at all time lows.
Indeed.
even with good moderation the trolls or intellectually dishonest will wear you down
This is already my experience with any kind of nuanced or challenging topic. There are even examples in this very thread.
Yup, even if you had a great moderator they can’t moderate everything in real time.
So for the kind of debate club format your talking about… would need a club with invitations and limited access, gate keeping. Which will be a thing in lemmy 1.0 member only communities.
Yes, there are communities like that. I know of two or three, like you said, focused on specific topics.
But the key to joining a community like that is to demonstrate elsewhere that you are already someone who will participate seriously and civilly in discussion. There’s no shortcut for this. Everyone wants to be listened to, but not everyone wants to listen. The people curating these spaces are only looking to add new users who are proven qualities.
They mostly just want people to bias confirm them. Like everyone else.
I was in academia for 10 years. One reason I left was the deeper I got the more depressed I was how most of them where anti-intellectual. They were only pro-intellectual for ideas that supported their pre-existing worldview and biases. They often labeled anything outside of that worldview, as hostile and stupid and awful and impermissible.
I remember once in a political theory class I dared to suggest that maybe the uneducated Amish and other such religion folks were not ignorant racist pathetic fools. Holy shit, the blowback I got. I had people come up to me and go ‘you can’t be serious that you’d actually think those people are anyway equal to educated atheistic science following people like us’.
Wowzers. And when I followed up my mentioning to this person, that while I was not Amish, my upbringing involve some similarities, and yet here I was. They never spoke to me again, because I was a dirty ignorant peasant to them.
many people use ‘intellect’ as a way to conceal their incredibly social biases, as in, you can’t be a real intellectual or on ‘their level’ if you weren’t born that way, or have a certain level of degree. As if say, community college professors can’t ever be intellectuals, because they are too lowly in status and if they were intellectuals, they most certainly would have jobs at more prestigious places.
Where we take each others points seriously, demonstrate we understand them, and then address them?
This isn’t how human discussions work, unfortunately. At least not outside of formal debate clubs.
Humans in general use language to understand or be understood. If you make an assertion and people “ignore” it by trolling, they are expressing that they have disdain for your position–which implies at least a coarse understanding of it.
I’ve found that essentially any place on the internet can lead to worthwhile discussions, if you simply practice the habits of ignoring the trolls and engaging with those who respond to you.
I’m not talking about trolling.
I’m specifically looking for discussions where Intellectually Honesty is practiced because that’s how the people involved would like to engage in discussion.
edit: typos
there is no space that is free form intellectual dishonesty.
further, people have different views on what it is.
While I generally a fan of Wikipedia as a way to explain obscure terms people may not be familiar with, in this case I don’t think your linked article reflects a distinct concept worth seeking.
People in general are honest in their discussions. Asserting that you want to have a dedicated space for “intellectual honesty” asserts that it isn’t workable in the extant communities, and implies that the rest of us are being “intellectually dishonest” if we are “partisan” or do not pretend our beliefs do not affect how we state facts.
The internet writ large, and social media in particular, is neither a scientific journal nor academic forum nor business back-room. And biases always affect how we state facts.
Someone would have to enforce that. Which means they’d have to lay down specific rules to determine what’s honest and real and serious. I wouldn’t want to be the one to do any of that, especially not without a group of other mods to share the inevitable blame.
I think you just described moderation in general :)
Well, there is a difference between a community dedicated to serious discussion and one for, say, shitposting. The shitposting mod can let a lot more slide that wouldn’t fly if you want to achieve deep insights through conversation. And those are just the two ends of a spectrum.
Yes and I’m learning that many serious discussion communities are invite only to make moderation easier.
Tildes might be what you’re looking for. It’s invite-based, which helps to keep the level of discourse at a somewhat decent level.
No. Tildes has incredibly upright admin who bans anyone who they don’t personally agree with.
It is not intellectual in any sense, unless your definition of intellectual is limited to ‘popular educated liberal mindset’.
Stray outside that set of viewpoints, or challenge them, and you are banned. Any genuinely intellectual pursuit will naturally challenge that default worldview, and get you banned. The second you are skeptical of the the admins default pro-tech neoliberal worldview, you are gone.
Depends what the topic is, but generally you want forums. Forums are more geared to this. Reddit (and Lemmy, which is based on the Reddit model) tried to replicate and decentralise forums (whereas on a forum you have a small set of mods and an admin or two; on Reddit, each sub would have its own mods; Lemmy improves upon this with instances (for example, the one I’m on is more freedom of speech/anarchy)), but forums still exist. A lot of them have died out. One forum that tries to take itself pretty seriously is Ars Technica’s. They can be a bit of a clannish bunch and they’re a little distrusting of newcomers, but some of them have been there for 20 years.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/
Worth noting, when they say forum, they lean pretty heavily into the original definition of a gathering place where people would gather and talk, so there are similar themes throughout the site. But, if you like tech stuff and science, that’s their thing (their name is Latin for “The Art of Technology”).
I’m not a member. I was, a very long time ago. I had issues with some long standing members and they basically ran me off. But it was like 10-12 years ago. So who knows. Things change. People change. And I don’t even remember what I was called then. But, for what it’s worth, I would imagine if Arsians have a social network they use, it’s probably Lemmy/Piefed, though I imagine it’s more Reddit.
Socially, it is much better to look for a small group of friends or hobby group for this in IRL…not online.
If you want to do this more seriously then you’d be looking for some academic community…a university or bunch of professionals who are involved in an area of your interest who are willing to talk to you. You would need to have a pretty serious knowledge base to be involved at this level.
If you’re dealing with people online, then you’re dealing with The Public. There’s only so much you can expect.
If you want to do this more seriously then you’d be looking for some academic community…a university or bunch of professionals who are involved in an area of your interest who are willing to talk to you.
Those are called “journals.”
Appreciate what you are asking for but the internet is a shit-slinging fest and when you add upvotes and downvotes into the mix, a lot of people try to present the popular opinion. You’d need to have the discussions in person.
most of the places where it existed, for a time, where small, and the votes didn’t matter much because there were so few of them.
There are a few places like that still left on the internet, I don’t really want to mention them by name since they probably like to stay that way not that they would get a huge influx from here but regardless. I will say, I have no had any luck making good friends on the internet after decades of use, but I’m not good at it either and I have a tendency to drift away. Forums are a good place to start though as mentioned.
For the most part, not that I’ve found. Occasionally here.
I don’t think there is. Way too easy to troll people and argue in bad faith.
Create your own sub and mod it how you like. Serious people will come.
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