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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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People do this to me almost literally every time I post.

I think what you are referring to is the inferential gap, not malice. People from a different hivemind than yours will have so much different context than you that the words you write won't mean the same things when they read them. Replies will look bizarre and non-sequitur and like they're ignoring things you already said.

You just have to have faith and be charitable in assuming that people are trying to make constructive replies and the inferential gap is making the two of you talk past each other, and try to work it out using smaller words. If your response to someone making a bizarre reply that seems to miss the point is to say 'that person is being dishonest', then you'll preferentially disregard all communications from people outside your filter bubble until you eventually can't even talk to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

I agree with you and I think people treat you with unnecessary disdain here for your politics. That said, you and Hlynka are quite different in that I think you’re able to engage in much better faith with users you strongly disagree with, even when you occasionally get too mad (and so do all of us).

In general, I agree with you (and will miss him), but Hlynka definitely was pretty bad about this, far worse than people are toward you—people repeating dozens of times in a single conversation that they don't have the view imputed to them, and his response is essentially just to repeat the assertion.

I think what you are referring to is the inferential gap, not malice.

No, I'm not referring to an inferential gap. Dude literally sees fit to tell you that you're lying about your own opinions and then make some up for you. Check Prima's example, there are others. Thanks for the twee little lecture, but you'd have been well-served to acquaint yourself with the discussions in question before delivering it.

When people talk about Hlynka disregarding other people's posts, they're talking about stuff like this. There's no "inferential gap" here - he's just flatly accusing people of lying about their own positions, and ignoring their pleas to the contrary. I'm not sure how else you could interpret it.