What you said came more across to me as “don’t waste your time at all with discussions that have no real world impact”, I wanted to say more that I think it’s fine to enjoy them (or cinnamon, which I don’t think anyone thinks make rolls a fruit, it just tastes good), just as long as you’re aware it’s mostly just an intellectual sport, and you’re not at a UN summit on the future of the world.
Oh, maybe you were referring to my Alice/Bob bit, instead of the bit about not using debates as a point-scoring competition. Can you clarify the part you’re talking about by quoting?
If you’re saying you like debates with retrospective point-scoring as a sort of sport, I disagree about adding that scoring being a positive thing, because of the effect it has on the debates.
If you’re saying the Alice/Bob bit has Alice being too serious because debating Substack posts is fun, the point was that:
Alice doesn’t want to talk to Bob because “having Substack subscriptions” doesn’t make you interesting—but Bob thinks it does, which means there’s probably nothing interesting about him.
Bob is saying “we’re discussing the stuff I read” instead of finding something of mutual interest, and without understanding how you’d even go about finding something of mutual interest in an efficient way.
What you said came more across to me as “don’t waste your time at all with discussions that have no real world impact”, I wanted to say more that I think it’s fine to enjoy them (or cinnamon, which I don’t think anyone thinks make rolls a fruit, it just tastes good), just as long as you’re aware it’s mostly just an intellectual sport, and you’re not at a UN summit on the future of the world.
Oh, maybe you were referring to my Alice/Bob bit, instead of the bit about not using debates as a point-scoring competition. Can you clarify the part you’re talking about by quoting?
If you’re saying you like debates with retrospective point-scoring as a sort of sport, I disagree about adding that scoring being a positive thing, because of the effect it has on the debates.
If you’re saying the Alice/Bob bit has Alice being too serious because debating Substack posts is fun, the point was that:
Alice doesn’t want to talk to Bob because “having Substack subscriptions” doesn’t make you interesting—but Bob thinks it does, which means there’s probably nothing interesting about him.
Bob is saying “we’re discussing the stuff I read” instead of finding something of mutual interest, and without understanding how you’d even go about finding something of mutual interest in an efficient way.