Manual of etiquette for discussions on internet

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Manual of etiquette for discussions on internet




by Did67 » 02/02/17, 10:46

I come across this article on the website of the newspaper Le Monde. I copied / pasted and put it a bit into shape:


Reflection, empathy and anti-troll hindsight… the art of a successful conversation on the Internet

Here are some tips and tricks to understand the mechanisms of an online skid, and, if possible, to control it. To allow you, perhaps, to one day have a civilized discussion without capital letters and exclamation marks.

THE WORLD | 02.02.2017/07/41 XNUMX:XNUMX AM | By Violaine Morin

With the approach of the presidential election, and with all that accumulates on your pages and your accounts (political affairs in real time, Donald J. Trump, the socialist primary, Cyril Hanouna vs Arthur), your social networks look like to battlefields.

A high school friend who you have not seen for 10 years has come to derail your argument in favor of universal income. Your distant cousin posts photos of the anti-abortion demonstration. Your former ping pong teacher who has seen others and who knows life reminds you in capital letters that Mélenchon is the only one capable of making them all clear. How to exchange with all this world by keeping calm and calmly exposing your opinions, when everything conspires to get you out of your hinges?

We offer you an art of conversation on the Internet, necessarily incomplete, necessarily giving lessons: in short, techniques for training to keep calm online and get to have a discussion which, miraculously, could be interesting. To produce this text, we asked for the help of Thomas Gaon, psychoanalyst and founder of the Observatory of digital worlds in human sciences (OMNSH).

Let us first recall a sad reality: in real life as online, no one is really trained to practice real debate, in the purest sense of the term, that in which reason triumphs. It is not a question of intelligence, but of education. We are not trained in debate and we are surrounded by bad examples: politicians and film heroes "win" the debates they lead in a person's fight, not in a fight to gain the truth.

"A space for debate where everyone sets out their arguments to make reason triumph, which would follow rules defined in advance and where one could arbitrate the end of the conversation as soon as someone breaks the rule, that doesn’t doesn't exist ”, specifies Thomas Gaon. Except maybe in scientific journals. If you want to convince your entrepreneur buddy to vote Hamon or your depoliticized girlfriend not to believe the media on Fillon, without getting upset and without using fallacious arguments, the case is badly started. Better to know right away.

1. Beware of the "disinhibition effect"

Whatever you think, you are not quite yourself when chatting online. On the internet, you are a pure spirit. In "physical" life, conversation is marked by a power relationship, itself structured by the history of bodies and their representations. The attitudes we have in a conversation depend on how we feel about ourselves and in relation to each other. With some exceptions, if the other is taller, stronger, better dressed, you are likely to feel inhibition that will change the way you argue.

It is very unfair, and the Internet is there to offer another chance to speak to those who are socially inhibited. So much the better. But beware: the threat posed by the other's body disappears. This is one of the factors behind the "disinhibition effect on the Internet", a concept defined by the American psychologist John Suler. The absence of the body of others creates a feeling of protection close to that which one feels behind the wheel, where one does not perceive the consequences of what one does.

2. Don't Tell Yourself "The Internet Isn't Real Life"

Another uninhibiting factor in this life of pure spirit is the absence of all the signs of so-called "intra-verbal" communication: facial expressions and gestures, hence a tendency to "dehumanize" the other. This is what happens when you maliciously respond to someone on Facebook, even with a few smileys. If this same person was in front of you, you would no doubt have had more scruples.

In cases where you chat online with complete strangers, you also benefit from anonymity or pseudonymity: others do not know who you are. You more spontaneously let go of your aggression or your affection. Digital life is emotionally intense, sometimes more than real life. But at the risk of recalling the obvious, remember that nothing is lost in our digital world, but also that, if you cross the limit, you can be prosecuted and condemned, exactly as in "real life".

The lack of physical interaction also generates fantasies. In a discussion space, you often have little information about the other: their gender, skin color, nationality, illnesses. However, when it lacks information, the brain completes as it can, but especially as it wants, with positive or negative fantasies. This prevents having a nuanced vision of his interlocutor.

3. The Internet gives you time. Enjoy it

John Suler describes another factor of inhibition: "asynchrony". On the Internet, time is not that of a face-to-face conversation. The internet user can reflect and organize his arguments before stating them. This time is sorely lacking when you have someone in front of you and you dream of immediately finding the ideal distribution. The Internet erases the frustration that there may be in lack of skill, for those whose interpersonal skills are less developed.

Hence the "cobblestones", the very long and perfect answers that we publish on Facebook or in forums, where the series of numbered messages on Twitter. If you are better at writing than speaking, the Internet is your ally. Don't waste this chance to clearly state your arguments by responding hot in capital letters.

4. Beware of group effects

This is a point which is not specific to the Internet, but which characterizes group psychology in general: "engagement". When you start arguing in front of your boyfriend who is in a position of assumed troll, you are in a way engaged with your spectators (your Facebook friends or your Twitter followers, for example), which pushes you to go "up 'at the end', so as not to seem to back off, even if it means going too far.

Another notorious effect of the groups: the tendency to "howl with the wolves". This is what happens, for example, in situations of harassment. If a group of Internet users go after a single individual, everyone tends to follow suit.

The phenomenon increases in adolescence when the "peer pressure" is greater: a teenager is more sensitive to those around him and will tend to want to assert himself in relation to the group. The classic experience, Thomas Gaon recalls, is that of driving: a teenager on his own will behave more responsibly in the car than if he is with two friends.

5. Think for and by yourself


Paradoxically, a group also takes charge of a person's affects: their guilt, first of all, which is found to be "diluted" in that of the group. The more we are, the less we have the feeling of doing something reprehensible, including because the group protects individuals and avoids "swinging" a comrade.

On the Internet as in physical life, the group can also fulfill the fantasies of an individual. This is what happens when a shy person joins a very aggressive group, or sexist, or homophobic, in which he says nothing and is content to attend the show: the group exorcises his aggression for him and becomes a box of resonance of its own problems. When you join an online conversation where you plan to harass a feminist activist (it happens, and often), ask yourself what you are doing there. Even if you don't say anything.

6. Little risk of arguing with your family: so much the better!

Have you ever wondered why the Internet does not look like your family dinners, with such explosive potential? As a family, we preserve our ties.

If you do not have the same political opinions as your spouse, you have probably stopped talking about it, or you are about to do so. It is both an asset and a risk: in "physical" life, people stop themselves so as not to risk going too far and putting their ties at risk.

Online, the link is weaker. We take less risk and say things that we would not say otherwise. This space allows us to chat with people we would never chat with in life, and to discuss controversial subjects without risking the consequences of real life. It can be extremely rewarding, and extremely annoying at times simultaneously.

This is also why some people keep in their Facebook friends people who do not entirely agree with them, as observed by sociologist Dominique Cardon, specialist in digital life. We want the possibility of debate. If everyone agrees, there is nothing more to say.

7. Establish rules and try to stick to them

A word of advice: arm yourself before going down into the digital arena.

Since there is no online arbiter, you have to learn to be one. There is no judge who will point an argument of authority, an attempt to destabilize the opponent, a rhetorical argument, an attempt to win the public, in short, all these techniques to win at any cost an argument.

In a discussion, we should be able to impose the idea that logic and reason take precedence: if the other no longer reasons, he breaks the rule and the discussion is no longer useful. You can then go your way, since you are now a wise surfer who cares little about making his ego triumph (well done!).

Again, remember that networks and forums are not the place to have a debate of ideas, nor in real life, because none of us really play by the rules. On the other hand, it is an ideal place to have a forum, which has many advantages: you have time to put your ideas in order, you can check your sources and references, have access to different opinions. If our goal is not to win, but to present our ideas clearly, the Internet of 2017 offers an opportunity to build a quality case that, for many of us, does not exist anywhere else.

Violaine morin
Journalist in the World


Learn more about http://www.lemonde.fr/big-browser/artic ... V5UVdMj.99
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Did67 » 03/02/17, 14:14

Even if it does not seem to interest anyone, I add this reflection published today.

"Internet, a free market for ideas that can easily derail"
For Benjamin Loveluck, researcher at CERSA and Télécom ParisTech, the success of "fake-news" derives from liberal inspirations of the Web and its modes of organization.

What if the recent success of “fake news”, these false articles which proliferated during the American presidential campaign, was only the distant consequence of the political imaginations on which the Internet was built? This is the thesis suggested by Benjamin Loveluck, Monday, January 16, during a seminar at the Graduate School of Social Sciences (EHESS) entitled "Post-truths: digital utopias and ideologies".

For the author of Networks, Freedoms and Control: A political genealogy of the Internet (Armand Collin, 2015), researcher at Télécom ParisTech and at the Center for Studies and Research in Administrative Science (CERSA), “post-truth is a symptom of what we experienced in 2016, but the concept is to be deconstructed ”. Rather than a novelty, he decides to see in it the latest avatar of the very ideology of the Internet, that which he calls "information liberalism".

According to him, the Web has accompanied the shift from the classic liberal ideal of freedom of information to a new, more radical ideal, that of freedom of information itself. All information has the right to circulate freely on the Internet, regardless of its content, and the very existence of "fake-news" is the product. Result, for openness and free trade, "digital ideologies can contribute to the strengthening of ideologies".


Learn more about http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/20 ... BPBLSFx.99
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by dede2002 » 03/02/17, 16:43

It's not because no one answers that it doesn't interest anyone : Wink:

Here on this forum the majority of "Internet users" are (or make the effort to be) polite and respectful to each other.

And when "false information" circulates, many of us react and debate it if necessary.
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Ahmed » 07/02/17, 11:54

Even if I obviously subscribe to the essence of the comments of the article in "Le Monde", there is however one point which requires some comments.
Indeed, it is asserted that reason should allow us to move forward in the discussions and more or less reach an agreement. For my part, I find it quite normal that everyone's positions diverge. Of course, I'm not arguing for maximizing irrational arguments!
In reality, it is the notion of "reason" which is to be explored, because it is certainly not what it claims to be, a timeless reason, but on the contrary a reason constrained by its historical context, a reason that works. within a defined perimeter which excludes the rest ...
Fortunately, the logic remaining what it is, different opinions can successfully confront each other and no reason will come to unify them inappropriately. What explains these divergences of thought comes precisely from the vagueness of reason, this makes it possible to use them to build solid arguments and what distinguishes and explains the various visions, these are the initial presuppositions, rarely put forward (all the more more than they are often oblivious). However, these presuppositions are little reducible to reason and, therefore, rather stem from a belief or, if you prefer, a conviction which cannot be demonstrated (this does not remind you Godel?
I conclude from this that whatever rationality we want to use, there remains an inevitable moment of choice that reason cannot decide and that subsequent constructions, as solid as they are, cannot legitimize. Another consequence, in my very happy sense (in that it preserves us from doctrinal encystment), is that dialogue is likely (and only it is) to change the lines, in that it questions the initial postulates; still it is obviously necessary that the exchanges remain serene! 8)
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Did67 » 07/02/17, 12:23

Isn't there a misunderstanding around the word-drawer "reason" ???

When you write, there are two aspects:

- I express feelings, feelings, convictions ... I am a poet, I am a novelist, etc ... "The other" has nothing to say, as such. He can be charmed, he can feel something equivalent, he can love, not love ...

- I unroll a reasoning; I try to convince; sometimes to impose my arguments; there, the other is entitled to contradict ...

I understand what you mean: the reasoning that I unfold, sooner or later, if one digs its foundations, rests on convictions, a priori ... The absolute "Truth" not being accessible to anyone, one does not unfold only "relative truths". So subject to caution ... In other words, all our reasoning is, sooner or later, if we push it to the end of the end, a little wobbly.

And we don't like it!

We need "certainties" to move forward. Even if it means creating them. Or borrow them from a conveniently passing guru ...

The "reason" mentioned in the article is not this consciousness, in the sense of "knowing how to keep reason"?

PS: I am well placed to know that it is not easy, having often "slipped", with my convictions sometimes too strong! But who make me move forward ... So ???? Then I do not know. I know I don't know!
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Ahmed » 07/02/17, 12:47

The concern is that reason has been reduced to its operational aspect and if you want an image, it's a bit like the mottos affixed to the pediments of town halls: they play a diversion role, instrumentalized in a circumscribed role, under a general name.

In this sense, as you suggest, the subjective aspects that make up the bulk of our respective lives are removed from this unduly restrictive content and the use of this reason there inexorably refers to the only categories that it is capable of dealing with.

Certainties are useful as long as they are accompanied by doubt ... Not easy, for many!
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Did67 » 07/02/17, 13:03

There is: "I'm right!" And "we must always be right to keep" (which could no longer be translated as ... "let's relativize"!).
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Ahmed » 07/02/17, 17:48

The word "relativize" is interesting if we mean by that to distinguish between things * between divergent opinions, but it is dangerous if it means an interchangeability of all possible opinions, in which case everything is equal and therefore nothing is worth.
The ego does not necessarily imply seeking to overcome its adversary, because it is from its arguments that our own conception can feed (even if it is a contrario); it is therefore in everyone's interest to experience resistance to the other. Where the ego truly thrives is in the mere circularity of its contemplation, deaf to any confrontation.

* So take into account the basic postulates of your interlocutor.
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Did67 » 07/02/17, 18:39

Absolutely agree :

1) Let us relativize in the sense let us be aware that in my arguments, there is also a part of convictions, all is not "demonstrated truth"; that this is only true when in what in mathematics one calls well the "field of definition". And we have seen how Einstein, for example, exploded the obvious truths as soon as he freed himself from certain assumptions (the mass is constant). And its corollary: in what the one with whom I do not agree, there are particles of truths (or even, in its domain of definition, it is true).

2) The two aspects of the ego, which quite closely matches the "nothing is ever all black, nothing is ever all white" which is familiar to me, which we had already discussed.
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Re: Manual of etiquette for discussions on the internet




by Ahmed » 07/02/17, 19:59

I would like to quote two anecdotes to illustrate part of what I said above:
- At the bend of a wire Christophe expressed a shy reservation about one of my statements in economic matters, he did not insist because it is not his favorite field, but I thought that this point was indeed problematic, this led me to better understand it then, even if I never mentioned it, because of its rather difficult character (but it can come, beware!). So this did not lead me to reverse a judgment, but to make it evolve.
- Funny thing, a neighbor talking about an election seriously explains to me that whoever votes blank or abstains has only, I quote, "shut up" if the election results do not suit him (this which seems to me inevitable in these two cases). I find it difficult to explain more clearly the true role of this institution and its character of deception ... except that the educational efforts of my neighbor did not open his eyes, for lack of having gone so far. at the end of its demonstration!

Still talking about reason, let's reason by the absurd, imagine that its use leads to a univocal, necessary and demonstrable truth, in short a "mechanical" reason: wouldn't that be the worst thing?
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