Here's the general outline of something that has been happening frequently on Manifold lately.
Someone makes an obviously, easily-verifiably false claim.
I bluntly point out that it's false and how easily any reasonable observer would have known this, provide the evidence, and block them for acting in bad faith.
They don't provide any justification for their original claim or explain why they made it, and proceed to ignore the object-level issue entirely, dodging any further questions about it. Instead, they start making vague accusations about how this proves I must be biased, how I'm rude and unpleasant to interact with, how I block lots of people (never explaining why this is bad), and generally try to damage my reputation.
Their strategy often works, since they're willing to put more time into it than I am, have better social skills than I do, and are more willing to suck up to the community members who have social power around here.
It's getting annoying, and I'm open to suggestions on how to end this dynamic.
Related questions
Market for whether Isaac will respond to the very clear and concise explanations of social behavior, given below and elsewhere?
It seems to me that what you are describing is that you make it personal without realizing it, and then you get surprised that people respond to personal attacks by being defensive. For example, recently you told someone they are "Completely making stuff up". Even in this post you say that "easily any reasonable observer would have known this". I think the issue is that these may look to you like perfectly ordinary factual statements while in reality, these are personal attacks.
Let's say someone says that the earth is flat. Of course, that's completely false and quite ridiculous. But they don't know that. You could respond by saying "actually, if the earth is flat than gravity won't work". That's a totally fine, object-level response. But if you say instead "This is ridiculous and obviously false. You don't understand basic physics", you committed a personal attack. It doesn't matter if every single part of that is true. What matters is that by saying that, you questioned the person's integrity and intelligence. People care about those more than they care about winning any argument, so of course they are going to respond to the personal angle, not on the object-level. You will not be able to convince anyone of anything if you say things in this way.
You can tell people that they are wrong without resorting to personal attacks. All you need to do is tone down your language.
Another related dynamic that I've observed is that you write responses that belittle other people and condescend over them. I believe this is happening because you are extremely certain that you are right, and seriously do doubt the intelligence and integrity of the people you are debating. People can see that. I really recommend that you always, by default, consider the people you are talking to to be reasonable people with legitimate opinions. Sure you can override this intuition later, but I feel a kind of misanthropy coming from you toward people for none of their fault.
@Shump Yeah, I think the problem is that I have an expectation that people on Manifold are intelligent and well-meaning, and "should know better" than to engage in motivated reasoning, so it frustrates me when they don't. Whereas when I'm talking to an antivaxxer or whatever, I go in with the expectation that they're going to say stupid things, and my expectations aren't violated.
Seems to be a problem in other areas of my life too. I get along well with complete strangers since I tiptoe around offending them, but once I get to know someone I have a tendency to be far too direct and have unrealistically high expectations for them.
@Shump Well said! Good on you for having the courage and articulateness to describe this.
(Majorly erring on the side of stating the obvious.)
You’re describing a pattern of social interaction that you want to avoid, and achieving that requires improving your social skills. One of the big ones is perspective taking. Working at it will enable you to understand why people react to you the way that they do and to identify the tiniest tweaks to your communication style with the highest ROI.
Let’s analyze the pattern, but this time trying to consider alternative perspectives.
Most people like to see themselves and be seen as intelligent and honest.
Most people often a) are wrong b) don’t know that they’re wrong, c) don’t like being wrong, and d) don’t like being told that they’re wrong.
Mostly people a) try not to lie b) don’t like lying, and c) don’t like being told that they’re lying.
When you imply that someone is wrong and/or lying, their self-image and reputation are threatened.
They view you as attacking them, and so they’ll try to defend their ego and reputation, often by attacking yours.
All thoughts of the object-level disagreement are lower priority than defending their ego and reputation.
When you respond by blocking them, they perceive this action as a cowardly hit-and-run.
You’ve taken away their ability to respond to you, so they feel even more powerless and vulnerable.
Now the questions become:
How can you refute someone’s claims without them feeling threatened?
Once someone does feel threatened, how can you help them stop feeling threatened? And how can you do it in a way that’s brief and not exhausting?
I’d address them now, but I’ve gotta go do some other stuff. Let me know your thoughts! Which parts of this make sense to you, and which don’t?
@oh That all seems correct to me, but it elides the original problem of them making clearly false statements. They bear the responsibility for that. Reasonable people can disagree and that's fine, but when some people are just ignoring evidence that's right in their face and refusing to provide any justification for doing so, further communication is impossible.
@oh this is better than what I came here to say. Isaac I believe you are generally sincere but aren't devoting enough effort to analyse other people as imperfect people, so you appear as paranoid. Where paranoia is someone thinking everyone is working many more levels deep than he is, and as they actually are and attributing consciousness and intention to people who have none in this regard.
People seem to be trying to establish basic norms of information exchange with you and you overread that.
It's like if you're talking to someone and you're not sure what language they speak, you start simple, but then the person thinks "I'm clearly a native speaker, they must be doing some mind control attempt on me, or attempting to degrade me, or something, initiating drastic action"
When I fact they aren't as smart as you or haven't devoted the effort to know what you know, and so we're adopting a low effort but "safe" strategy of "chitchat" to figure you and your culture out. That's a common strategy to improve both sides predictive ability of each other - to expose each side to overall irrelevant communication of each other so that the baseline for normal/abnormal can be set. Even if its inefficient.
@Ernie Hmm, I'm not sure how that's relevant? What communication norm am I failing to pick up on? What chatchat have I misinterpreted?
@Tasty_Y Reasonable, but I can't really avoid it if I want to be active on Manifold. I have to justify my market resolutions when people complain, even if their complaints are nonsense.
@oh I can’t tell if you want my input, since you blocked me on your main account. I was not acting in bad faith, and I’d genuinely like to help end this dynamic.
@oh The claim that I define any disagree with me as "bad faith" is exactly such an obviously false claim, easily disprovable with basic knowledge of me. Just look at my various change my mind markets, my twitter feed, etc.
You're welcome to provide suggestions.