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jackI was recently musing about free will and other philosophical issues, and it occurred to me that I rarely post or comment about stuff I learned or figured out a long time ago and feel fairly settled about: I much more often post or comment about stuff I'm mulling over right now.
Which is natural, because that's what's taking up brainspace, and that's what I'm excited to know, and that's what I need helpful feedback about. But it manifests as rushing into related conversations to explain whatever it was I was just figuring out.
Whereas, when I'm fairly sure of something, I don't feel I have the time to bring it up everywhere it's relevant, even if someone is doing it wrong: I expect someone else to do that. Except when it's something I've made a personal crusade to educate people about.
This, while very natural and promoting animated discourse between people with a similar level of understanding, I think contributes for the tendency for people who know nothing, and people who pretty much grok the topic completely, to stay out of discussions, and discussions, especially controversial ones, to degenerate into massive bun-fights between people who know exactly just a bit about them.
If I manage to post whatever I'm musing about free will, I imagine I will get few people who've never thought about it to take an interest, and few people who are well read on the subject to educate me, but comparatively many people to chime in with "that's really interesting, I was thinking something similar, but X".
Which is natural, because that's what's taking up brainspace, and that's what I'm excited to know, and that's what I need helpful feedback about. But it manifests as rushing into related conversations to explain whatever it was I was just figuring out.
Whereas, when I'm fairly sure of something, I don't feel I have the time to bring it up everywhere it's relevant, even if someone is doing it wrong: I expect someone else to do that. Except when it's something I've made a personal crusade to educate people about.
This, while very natural and promoting animated discourse between people with a similar level of understanding, I think contributes for the tendency for people who know nothing, and people who pretty much grok the topic completely, to stay out of discussions, and discussions, especially controversial ones, to degenerate into massive bun-fights between people who know exactly just a bit about them.
If I manage to post whatever I'm musing about free will, I imagine I will get few people who've never thought about it to take an interest, and few people who are well read on the subject to educate me, but comparatively many people to chime in with "that's really interesting, I was thinking something similar, but X".