Just been reading all your thoughtful posts in this discussion. Very interesting and edifying. Thanks.

I’ll swap my “Spock-like communication” for your “douchevoting” any day.

It’s comments like these that stop me from leaving. Thanks.

Low effort, low quality, empty, boring, vulgar. This comment has it all.

This whole argument (neatly summarized in the final line) is based on the premise that whenever someone gets pushback it’s because they’re wrong. I beg to differ. Anyway: sterile debate, I hear your points. Let’s call this a day.

Indeed. That includes those that are so popular around here.

found a thread about immigration with some fairly centrist takes

Indeed. !europe@feddit.org seems relatively uncaptured by ideology, but still, I basically got banned for wrongthink rather than for breaking any actual rules. Last time I checked, the particular mod seemed to have gone away, but I can’t be bothered begging to let back in.

I doubt they’d be as strict with someone who posted in disagreement with me, but that’s hard to know

That’s very diplomatic and generous.

Your thumb-typing ordeal was not (totally) in vain because I read it!

I posit it’s not only the fact that you can’t read body language or have to give your whole argument in mini essay form instead of conversational chunks, but the fact that the “dinner table” is actually composed of a flow of people with different motivations, dispositions and attention spans.

Probably the most interesting thing that’s been written in this thread.

Actually, I tend to ignore the low-effort bird-flipping posts. The comments that bother me are the ones that take the form of angry lectures dripping in sanctimony. That’s because they suggest that their author is so deeply ensconced in their bubble that they’re unused to seeing my opinion expressed openly. Given that my views are anything but extreme by the standards of the electorate, I find this situation pretty worrying.

They should indeed, if they care that much. I stand by everything I wrote, namely a bunch of banal viewpoints that are completely middle-of-the-road anywhere outside the bubble of Lemmy.

People classified as “progressive” make up 9-15% of the US population by one count (I believe another pollster put it at 7%). Americans here who are arguing with me are in fact arguing with the overwhelming majority of their compatriots.

What a low point we’ve sunk to. As I’ve said elsewhere, my opinions are totally mainstream and moderate - not by your standards, I’m sure, but by the standards of society. I’m not at all rightwing. I have voted mostly green for 20 years. You appear to be living in a bubble where you never cross paths with anyone who doesn’t share all your opinions right down the line. This is a totally unhealthy state of affairs.

The second. Anything that is technically unfalsifiable can be “proven” beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law, I understand that. Anyway, I find this subject stultifyingly boring, I don’t have anything else to say on it.

Sure, I understood your point. My point was that you are inadvertently making the same claim as the flat-earthers: “Don’t worry about that boring scientific consensus, this specific issue is different”. In science, there’s absolutely a value in tribalism, i.e. respecting consensus (being a woolly “centrist”) when one does not have expertise.

But again, my positions were not scientific but political. Here everyone can have their opinion about what’s “reasonable” or not.

This comment makes my point. I’m arguing that federated social media would be a more pleasant place, with more interesting contributions, and definitely a wider demographic profile, if less of the comments were aggressive and profanity-laden like this one.

Sure, I get that. On this particular question, it seems clear to me that no such “beyond reasonable doubt” exists.

I think the merits of the situation are more important than affiliation.

Do you not think this is what a flat-earther (or climate denier) would say? Before they shower you with factoids (“the merits of the situation”) that “prove” their point? On the contrary, I think that affiliation can be very important in such cases, because science works on the basis of consensus. If you disagree with the herd, then you should expect to have an uphill struggle.

In any case, here we’re talking pure politics, i.e. questions where the responses are conditioned by people’s personal values, and which (theoretically) are open to debate.

There are some issues there’s no room for reasonable disagreement on.

There’s always room for reasonable disagreement when the issue in question is a word whose definition contains an element of intent and is therefore unfalsifiable.

To me that feels like too much of a concession to the abusive mod. If they don’t want me in their community, fine, I will respect that. In the case of !europe@feddit.org, I can see the quality of the contributions. I know that mine would have raised the level. It’s their loss. And Lemmy’s, unfortunately.

Please make better use of your time.

In turn, I’m wondering if you’re going to have this much energy yourself after (say) another six months here! Thanks for the intelligent pushback you’re giving, I appreciate it.

All explained on !degrowth@slrpnk.net

But why should we accept that insults and mockery are par for the course? That’s my problem. Federated social media is no better (or hardly any better) than other social media on this point. Starting your own community of people you already agree with - to me that seems to totally defeat the point of political discussion. In democracy we should be able to talk civilly to people we don’t agree with. Done properly, it’s also more interesting.