site banner
gog  1yr ago (text post)   1883 thread views

Advice for disagreeable people

I am disagreeable IRL. Like, everyone I get to know well eventually starts avoiding me. I can find lots of advice for how to deal with other disagreeable people, but not much for people who are themselves disagreeable. Surely some of you lot are the same. Have any of you overcome this? If so, how?

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I wonder if you are in my boat. There a lot of issues now you can lose friends over having the wrong opinion on. I found that I could think for myself, building myself a patchwork set of opinions on various things from first principles, up until around 2017 or so. People would engage me and we had some spicy discussions but we could agree to disagree and move on realizing we still had common ground.

It has all gone downhill from there. It seems all social groups have an unwritten process where you need to check in as being on a right side of a bunch of selected issues. And if you aren't, the best you'll get is the cold shoulder and being treated distantly as an outsider.

I guess, for some people it's always been like this? Or harder times are bringing out tighter collective behaviors in those around us? Or something? I don't know what to do about it either, other than putting on a mask in all social situations and not having close friends or even acquaintances anymore outside my wife and kid.

And so, I suppose this is the way it has to be now, for a free radical sort of mind who sometimes veers on its own to places deemed too naughty by the current groupthink?

interesting idea re: time frame / right side of issues.

I felt freer to argue before 2017, but I was also much younger and people around me did not usually seem to have strong opinions

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats