Comments on: Can we talk? Evolutionary psychology, Sierragate, and Borg vs Aquarius

By: Dianeira@girlsandnylons

Dianeira@girlsandnylons — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:40:14 +0000

Fine sentiment but if there´s one thing that Technorati teaches us itâs that it’s pretty dang hard to read something NOBODY else not reading or to say anything SOMEBODY else isnât saying these days?

By: Lars

Lars — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:56:36 +0000

> The conversation itself will have an impact, apart from any actions that arise.

It’s happening! And in fact, actions are arising:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/draft_bloggers_1.html

Good for Kathy Sierra, this kind of discussion has been needed for a long, long time.

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:35:21 +0000

Hmm. I agree that adolescent shouting happens a lot on the web, but you’re right, it’d be great if we could change that.

When the Iraq war was starting I found an odd forum populated by US Hawks and Arab Nationalists. It was full to the brim with insults and hate. As an experiment I started wading in pointing out that poster x was racist, poster y an anti-semite and so on.

The amazing thing was how quickly people backed away from their stated hatreds. Some would debate a little but most seemed to retreat in the face of someone prepared to express and enforce some social norms (you don’t get to go round being openly racist). I doubt I changed any minds, but it did clean up the space a little.

The other odd thing about this forum was that people disagreeing would start with insults and only move on to debating the issue once that failed. It was really odd, the only way to elicit an intelligent response was to begin with a volley of abuse and then make your point. If you only did one or the other you got nothing useful back.

Still, social norms on the internet are something we need more of…

By: psychology schools » Can we talk? Evolutionary psychology, Sierragate, and Borg vs Aquarius

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:57:21 +0000

[...] markomundo wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptRead, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day,something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one elsewould be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. … [...]