Agreed on tracking that hypothesis. It makes sense that people are more open to consider what’s said by an insider they look up to or know. In a few discussions I saw, this seemed a likely explanation.
Also, insiders tend to say more stuff that is already agreed on and understandable by others in the community.
Here there seems to be another factor:
Whether the person is expressing negative views that appear to support v.s. to be dissonant with core premises. With ‘core premises’, I mean beliefs about the world that much thinking shared in the community is based on, or tacitly relies on to be true.
In my experience (yours might be different), when making an argument that reaches a conclusion that contradicts a core premise in the community, I had to be painstakingly careful to be polite, route around understandable misinterpretations, and already address common objections. To be able to get to a conversation where the argument was explored somewhat openly.
It’s hard to have productive conversations that way. The person arguing against the ‘core premise’ bears by far the most cost trying to write out responses in a way that might be insightful for others (instead of dismissed too quickly). The time and strain this takes is mostly hidden to others.
That’s a healthy hypothesis to track.
Agreed on tracking that hypothesis. It makes sense that people are more open to consider what’s said by an insider they look up to or know. In a few discussions I saw, this seemed a likely explanation.
Also, insiders tend to say more stuff that is already agreed on and understandable by others in the community.
Here there seems to be another factor:
Whether the person is expressing negative views that appear to support v.s. to be dissonant with core premises. With ‘core premises’, I mean beliefs about the world that much thinking shared in the community is based on, or tacitly relies on to be true.
In my experience (yours might be different), when making an argument that reaches a conclusion that contradicts a core premise in the community, I had to be painstakingly careful to be polite, route around understandable misinterpretations, and already address common objections. To be able to get to a conversation where the argument was explored somewhat openly.
It’s hard to have productive conversations that way. The person arguing against the ‘core premise’ bears by far the most cost trying to write out responses in a way that might be insightful for others (instead of dismissed too quickly). The time and strain this takes is mostly hidden to others.