I think that the way to not get frustrated about this is to know your public and know when spending your time arguing something will have a positive outcome or not. You don’t need to be right or honest all the time, you just need to say things that are going to have the best outcome. If lying or omitting your opinions is the way of making people understand/not fight you, so be it. Failure to do this isn’t superior rationality, it’s just poor social skills.
While I am not a rule utilitarian and I think that, ultimately, honesty is not a terminal value, I also consider the norm against lying to be extremely important. I would need correspondingly strong reasons to break it, and those won’t exist as far as political discussions go (because they don’t matter enough and you can usually avoid them if you want).
The “keeping your opinions to yourself” part if your post is certainly a way to do it, though I currently don’t think that my involvement in political discussions is net harmful. But I strongly object to the idea that I should ever be dishonest, both online and offline.
I think that the way to not get frustrated about this is to know your public and know when spending your time arguing something will have a positive outcome or not. You don’t need to be right or honest all the time, you just need to say things that are going to have the best outcome. If lying or omitting your opinions is the way of making people understand/not fight you, so be it. Failure to do this isn’t superior rationality, it’s just poor social skills.
While I am not a rule utilitarian and I think that, ultimately, honesty is not a terminal value, I also consider the norm against lying to be extremely important. I would need correspondingly strong reasons to break it, and those won’t exist as far as political discussions go (because they don’t matter enough and you can usually avoid them if you want).
The “keeping your opinions to yourself” part if your post is certainly a way to do it, though I currently don’t think that my involvement in political discussions is net harmful. But I strongly object to the idea that I should ever be dishonest, both online and offline.