On Civility

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Re: On Civility

Post by Mountaineer » Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:29 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Thu Jul 21, 2022 9:35 pm
And KBG I reject your premise that civility is a good thing.

Whenever I read civility I translate it to civility bullshit. Any mention of civility is invariably a ruse to manipulate the unwashed into following a different agenda. A civil agenda. Purveyors of civility are bullshit artists.
Mark, I'm having a hard time understanding your viewpoint. I read several definitions of civility, most centered around courteous and politeness. Would you please unpack your statements about civility a bit more. Thanks.

... Mountaineer
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Re: On Civility

Post by flyingpylon » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:31 am

It depends on context, but Mark may have a point. While I don't think it's particularly productive to be antagonistic or nasty to other individuals, there is a lot of absurdity going on in the world that needs to be called out. Many times a call for "civility" is just another way of saying "Hey, the status quo is working fine for me so don't f*ck it up."

My way of saying a similar thing about civility is "decorum is overrated". We have people in government and society that pretend to prioritize decorum above all else to placate the masses while all kinds of heinous sh*t goes on in the background.
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Re: On Civility

Post by joypog » Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:37 am

If one does not like the current the misuse of word "civility", then don't accept the misbegotten definition and reject the term altogether. Otherwise, you've merely conceded the argument to your opponents.

Specificity is an important aspect of good argumentation.

Of course, specificity and careful parsing is unproductive if the real goal is to just rile people up. But at that point you've chosen to be uncivil.
Last edited by joypog on Sat Jul 23, 2022 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: On Civility

Post by joypog » Sat Jul 23, 2022 4:05 pm

When I was at college, I came across a magazine by the Young Republicans club. At that point I was politically apathetic, but I had been a dittohead in high school. As such I was about a sympathetic reader as one could hope for without actually being part of the team.

I flipped through the rag. It was a precursor to the "own teh libs" garbage you see nowadays. I remember thinking distinctly, this thing will convince absolutely noone. With that sort of farm system, I'm completely unsurprised that California has only gotten more liberal in the past two decades.

Drawing liberal tears (and cancel culture shoutdowns) are ultimately useless. They are utterly unconvincing and only makes the feel superior while doing nothing to advance the cause.

Civil discourse may be an emotionally unfulfilling form of discourse but it's the only one with a hope of having a chance to push the conversation.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Kbg » Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:52 pm

flyingpylon wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:31 am
It depends on context, but Mark may have a point. While I don't think it's particularly productive to be antagonistic or nasty to other individuals, there is a lot of absurdity going on in the world that needs to be called out. Many times a call for "civility" is just another way of saying "Hey, the status quo is working fine for me so don't f*ck it up."

My way of saying a similar thing about civility is "decorum is overrated". We have people in government and society that pretend to prioritize decorum above all else to placate the masses while all kinds of heinous sh*t goes on in the background.
Another observation, serious and major change requires buy in and consensus.

Name anything the “squad” or the tea party has accomplished other than bringing clicks to websites and other media?

There’s a huge difference between calling something out and changing it.

Effective persuasion is way more difficult than ragging on someone or something.
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Re: On Civility

Post by joypog » Sat Jul 23, 2022 8:35 pm

Kbg wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:52 pm
There’s a huge difference between calling something out and changing it.

Effective persuasion is way more difficult than ragging on someone or something.
Yup. I tried to say this with two posts (with multiple edits)...and you nail it in two lines.

Awareness is important, but it isn't the end-all-be-all...except on twitter.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Mark Leavy » Sun Jul 24, 2022 1:16 am

Mountaineer wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:29 am
Mark, I'm having a hard time understanding your viewpoint. I read several definitions of civility, most centered around courteous and politeness. Would you please unpack your statements about civility a bit more. Thanks.

... Mountaineer
Mountaineer, I think flyingpylon (great name, btw) probably captured most of what I had intended to say. Rather well, actually.

I don't decry civility in general. It has its uses and is generally the most powerful tool. I decry the purveyors of civility. Because under those blanket cries of peace! is the insipid message to not rock the boat and to not nail your 95 theses to the church door.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Mountaineer » Sun Jul 24, 2022 4:47 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 1:16 am
Mountaineer wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:29 am
Mark, I'm having a hard time understanding your viewpoint. I read several definitions of civility, most centered around courteous and politeness. Would you please unpack your statements about civility a bit more. Thanks.

... Mountaineer
Mountaineer, I think flyingpylon (great name, btw) probably captured most of what I had intended to say. Rather well, actually.

I don't decry civility in general. It has its uses and is generally the most powerful tool. I decry the purveyors of civility. Because under those blanket cries of peace! is the insipid message to not rock the boat and to not nail your 95 theses to the church door.
Thanks to all for your most civil responses to my request. Gentlemanly (unPC word in the Wokeism world ;) ) stated comments are, in my opinion, certainly more persuasive than rants, screaming matches, and ad hominem attacks. I too am not a fan of duplicity and manipulative behavior; my parents taught me, "honesty is the best policy". Or as Luther said, A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. A theologian of glory calls good evil and evil good.

... Mountaineer
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Re: On Civility

Post by flyingpylon » Sun Jul 24, 2022 6:31 am

Kbg wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:52 pm
flyingpylon wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:31 am
It depends on context, but Mark may have a point. While I don't think it's particularly productive to be antagonistic or nasty to other individuals, there is a lot of absurdity going on in the world that needs to be called out. Many times a call for "civility" is just another way of saying "Hey, the status quo is working fine for me so don't f*ck it up."

My way of saying a similar thing about civility is "decorum is overrated". We have people in government and society that pretend to prioritize decorum above all else to placate the masses while all kinds of heinous sh*t goes on in the background.
Another observation, serious and major change requires buy in and consensus.

Name anything the “squad” or the tea party has accomplished other than bringing clicks to websites and other media?

There’s a huge difference between calling something out and changing it.

Effective persuasion is way more difficult than ragging on someone or something.
Well if The Squad and the Tea Party are your examples, I’d say wait to see how it all plays out. That’s a very long game that’s still in progress.
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Re: On Civility

Post by vnatale » Sun Jul 24, 2022 9:55 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 1:16 am

Mountaineer wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:29 am

Mark, I'm having a hard time understanding your viewpoint. I read several definitions of civility, most centered around courteous and politeness. Would you please unpack your statements about civility a bit more. Thanks.

... Mountaineer


Mountaineer, I think flyingpylon (great name, btw) probably captured most of what I had intended to say. Rather well, actually.

I don't decry civility in general. It has its uses and is generally the most powerful tool. I decry the purveyors of civility. Because under those blanket cries of peace! is the insipid message to not rock the boat and to not nail your 95 theses to the church door.


100% agree with you.

Decades ago I was admonished in a church I was in to not bring up certain topics because we wanted to maintain "unity". For me, it was a false unity to not address obvious problems.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Kbg » Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:02 pm

flyingpylon wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 6:31 am
Kbg wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:52 pm
flyingpylon wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:31 am
It depends on context, but Mark may have a point. While I don't think it's particularly productive to be antagonistic or nasty to other individuals, there is a lot of absurdity going on in the world that needs to be called out. Many times a call for "civility" is just another way of saying "Hey, the status quo is working fine for me so don't f*ck it up."

My way of saying a similar thing about civility is "decorum is overrated". We have people in government and society that pretend to prioritize decorum above all else to placate the masses while all kinds of heinous sh*t goes on in the background.
Another observation, serious and major change requires buy in and consensus.

Name anything the “squad” or the tea party has accomplished other than bringing clicks to websites and other media?

There’s a huge difference between calling something out and changing it.

Effective persuasion is way more difficult than ragging on someone or something.
Well if The Squad and the Tea Party are your examples, I’d say wait to see how it all plays out. That’s a very long game that’s still in progress.
Maybe the trends but not the groups...their techniques don't stick and that's the point of my point. Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Malcolm X, Rand Paul (and many more). They make great news headlines and are loved by news outlets regardless of their editorial leanings, near zero lasting impact.
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Re: On Civility

Post by flyingpylon » Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:40 am

Kbg wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:02 pm
flyingpylon wrote:
Sun Jul 24, 2022 6:31 am
Kbg wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 7:52 pm
flyingpylon wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 10:31 am
It depends on context, but Mark may have a point. While I don't think it's particularly productive to be antagonistic or nasty to other individuals, there is a lot of absurdity going on in the world that needs to be called out. Many times a call for "civility" is just another way of saying "Hey, the status quo is working fine for me so don't f*ck it up."

My way of saying a similar thing about civility is "decorum is overrated". We have people in government and society that pretend to prioritize decorum above all else to placate the masses while all kinds of heinous sh*t goes on in the background.
Another observation, serious and major change requires buy in and consensus.

Name anything the “squad” or the tea party has accomplished other than bringing clicks to websites and other media?

There’s a huge difference between calling something out and changing it.

Effective persuasion is way more difficult than ragging on someone or something.
Well if The Squad and the Tea Party are your examples, I’d say wait to see how it all plays out. That’s a very long game that’s still in progress.
Maybe the trends but not the groups...their techniques don't stick and that's the point of my point. Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, Malcolm X, Rand Paul (and many more). They make great news headlines and are loved by news outlets regardless of their editorial leanings, near zero lasting impact.
How are you defining lasting impact?
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Re: On Civility

Post by Kbg » Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:46 am

flyingpylon wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:40 am
How are you defining lasting impact?
That's a seriously good question. Not sure I could write a short pithy definition.

The main thing I have in mind is that something becomes widely accepted. Love them or hate them a couple of things I would list that were not widely accepted and now are would include things like:

Slavery is bad

Civil rights are good

Political leaders should be elected

We shouldn't allow unfettered capitalism

Adults should be able to marry the same sex

Countries don't attack other countries to take their territory

In the US we are living with a political system where each side tries to jam it's agenda down the other's throat and none of it is sticking, nor will it unless the other side is persuaded to jump on board.

One of the few things these days with consensus is how to deal with China and there's a reasonable amount of good work going on to posture the US better vis a vis China's typical political, military and economic tactics. It's a rare day I would give Trump a nod on anything, but hat tip to the man for turning the corner on what needed to be done a long time ago.

P.S. Widely does not equal totally accepted.
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Re: On Civility

Post by flyingpylon » Wed Jul 27, 2022 5:00 pm

Kbg wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 11:46 am
flyingpylon wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:40 am
How are you defining lasting impact?
That's a seriously good question. Not sure I could write a short pithy definition.

The main thing I have in mind is that something becomes widely accepted. Love them or hate them a couple of things I would list that were not widely accepted and now are would include things like:

Slavery is bad

Civil rights are good

Political leaders should be elected

We shouldn't allow unfettered capitalism

Adults should be able to marry the same sex

Countries don't attack other countries to take their territory

In the US we are living with a political system where each side tries to jam it's agenda down the other's throat and none of it is sticking, nor will it unless the other side is persuaded to jump on board.

One of the few things these days with consensus is how to deal with China and there's a reasonable amount of good work going on to posture the US better vis a vis China's typical political, military and economic tactics. It's a rare day I would give Trump a nod on anything, but hat tip to the man for turning the corner on what needed to be done a long time ago.

P.S. Widely does not equal totally accepted.
Those are some pretty big things... do you really think they happened without people being "uncivilized" at times? Were they all the result of Strongly Worded Letters written on Congressional stationery?

It's pretty hard to change the status quo if you use it to set your boundaries. Sometimes "uncivilized" people or groups are just rabble-rousers, but other times they help shift the Overton window to a point that allows the more "civilized" to effect change. Both are needed.

On this forum we've had people of various persuasions that were simply trolls, others that had a caustic style, and still others that became unhinged when sufficiently challenged. Most of them seem to have disappeared, voluntarily on involuntarily. I suspect that many of the people that remain are either accepting of other viewpoints, are okay with other people being wrong, or simply don't care. That probably results in fewer posts and less participation overall.

I'd suggest that it takes more maturity and emotional intelligence to consider arguments from a wide variety of presentation styles than it does to demand that everyone meet a particular standard of civility lest their argument be cast aside. That's why calls for civility are often just thinly veiled attempts to maintain the status quo.
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Re: On Civility

Post by glennds » Wed Jul 27, 2022 5:44 pm

flyingpylon wrote:
Wed Jul 27, 2022 5:00 pm

Those are some pretty big things... do you really think they happened without people being "uncivilized" at times? Were they all the result of Strongly Worded Letters written on Congressional stationery?
I'll offer two relevant examples of change agents who resisted incivility; MLK and Mahatma Gandhi, the former taking inspiration from the latter.
Both used similar techniques to resist, protest and eventually defeat the status quo, against seemingly insurmountable odds. Their methods purposely avoided violence or destruction, and rarely villainized, attacked or mocked anyone personally.
The general term for their approach? Civil disobedience.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Xan » Wed Jul 27, 2022 6:57 pm

This thread has gone off-course: it was originally a good point by Kbg about being nice to each other here on the forum.

I think we can all agree that as far as actually changing the world, our discussions here are moot regardless of how civil or uncivil we are, so there's no reason to be uncivil with each other here.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Pointedstick » Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:08 pm

It's easy to play the civility card, and I definitely think that's part of it, but I also see something else as the root cause.

This used to be the Permanent Portfolio forum, back in its early years. We were a bunch of oddballs connected together by our shared interest in this unconventional portfolio, approaching the topic from different perspectives, but bound together by the PP. Together we learned about the PP--how it works and why it works; about MMR and MMT; the relationship between gold and interest rates; safe withdrawal rates plotted against volatility; and about other topics related to financial resilience.

But eventually consensuses arose and those topics got played out. Some people even exited the PP, moving into "PP-like" portfolios, or conventional portfolios with a bit of gold added, or even totally un-PP-like portfolios (I'm in this group)

We'd all developed social relationships and had fun so we stuck around. But we needed new things to discuss--this being a discussion board. So over time we moved more and more more into politics. And there, the relationships we'd built up discussing PP topics became strained.

It's easy to be civil to people in the same tribe, and in the beginning were still "PP tribe," but as politics took over as the dominant topics of conversation, some increasingly identified within this community as "red tribe," "blue tribe," "yellow tribe," and so on. Retaining civility when interacting with people who you don't identify as a member of your tribe is much harder. It's a skill that must be learned and nurtured, not an impulse that comes naturally. Many of us have faltered at times, myself included. But it's important, because civility is the social lubricant that allows people of different mindsets to interact without coming away wanting to kill each other, in the same way that real lubricants keep intermeshing machine parts from grinding each other into metal shavings. It's an integral part of making it work. Try running an internal combustion engine without oil and see how long it works!

I want to hold up Mountaineer as a person who I think gets it right. He and I agree on a lot, but also disagree on a lot, yet we can have interesting discussions that are unlikely to convince the other of anything, and it remains cordial and fun. IMO a huge part of it is because Mountaineer has always been civil, tolerant, and courteous to me, and this encourages me to treat him likewise. If we want to be able to discuss diverse and political topics without our social fabric degrading, we all need to do more of that.

So I think as a community we are faced with two options:

1. Return to being a single-topic community, rallying around the PP with a much smaller relative volume of content in the off-topic section. This way we see each other as tribe-members and civility comes naturally.

2. Acknowledge the need to explicitly work on our civility and tolerance skills, so we can remain a heterogeneous community of oddballs with weird opinions and political positions without coming away hating one another or descending into mockery, disingenuousness, or crabby negativity.

I feel like I understand now why so many single-topic forums explicitly prohibit political discussions. Threading that needle sure is tough. But our core of frequent posters is relatively small, so I think we can actually succeed if enough of those people choose to embrace civility when they discuss politics that they make it into a cultural tenet that's followed by others.
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Re: On Civility

Post by vnatale » Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:32 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:08 pm

It's easy to play the civility card, and I definitely think that's part of it, but I also see something else as the root cause.

This used to be the Permanent Portfolio forum, back in its early years. We were a bunch of oddballs connected together by our shared interest in this unconventional portfolio, approaching the topic from different perspectives, but bound together by the PP. Together we learned about the PP--how it works and why it works; about MMR and MMT; the relationship between gold and interest rates; safe withdrawal rates plotted against volatility; and about other topics related to financial resilience.

But eventually consensuses arose and those topics got played out. Some people even exited the PP, moving into "PP-like" portfolios, or conventional portfolios with a bit of gold added, or even totally un-PP-like portfolios (I'm in this group)

We'd all developed social relationships and had fun so we stuck around. But we needed new things to discuss--this being a discussion board. So over time we moved more and more more into politics. And there, the relationships we'd built up discussing PP topics became strained.

It's easy to be civil to people in the same tribe, and in the beginning were still "PP tribe," but as politics took over as the dominant topics of conversation, some increasingly identified within this community as "red tribe," "blue tribe," "yellow tribe," and so on. Retaining civility when interacting with people who you don't identify as a member of your tribe is much harder. It's a skill that must be learned and nurtured, not an impulse that comes naturally. Many of us have faltered at times, myself included. But it's important, because civility is the social lubricant that allows people of different mindsets to interact without coming away wanting to kill each other, in the same way that real lubricants keep intermeshing machine parts from grinding each other into metal shavings. It's an integral part of making it work. Try running an internal combustion engine without oil and see how long it works!

I want to hold up Mountaineer as a person who I think gets it right. He and I agree on a lot, but also disagree on a lot, yet we can have interesting discussions that are unlikely to convince the other of anything, and it remains cordial and fun. IMO a huge part of it is because Mountaineer has always been civil, tolerant, and courteous to me, and this encourages me to treat him likewise. If we want to be able to discuss diverse and political topics without our social fabric degrading, we all need to do more of that.

So I think as a community we are faced with two options:

1. Return to being a single-topic community, rallying around the PP with a much smaller relative volume of content in the off-topic section. This way we see each other as tribe-members and civility comes naturally.

2. Acknowledge the need to explicitly work on our civility and tolerance skills, so we can remain a heterogeneous community of oddballs with weird opinions and political positions without coming away hating one another or descending into mockery, disingenuousness, or crabby negativity.

I feel like I understand now why so many single-topic forums explicitly prohibit political discussions. Threading that needle sure is tough. But our core of frequent posters is relatively small, so I think we can actually succeed if enough of those people choose to embrace civility when they discuss politics that they make it into a cultural tenet that's followed by others.


As usual, outstanding, Pointedstick! I had to honor all you had here by reading it twice. Plus, I want to take some credit for getting you back here which then led to you offering us some hope that you may actually stick around. In all those months I spent going through the archives you were definitely one of the superstar posters of the forum.

You can count on me to embrace civility no matter what I am discussing. And, for you or anyone else to let me know if I ever cross any lines.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Mark Leavy » Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:56 pm

Pointedstick wrote:
Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:08 pm
2. Acknowledge the need to explicitly work on our civility and tolerance skills, so we can remain a heterogeneous community of oddballs with weird opinions and political positions without coming away hating one another or descending into mockery, disingenuousness, or crabby negativity.
Thoughtful post. And "hey!" waves hand.

Your comment above is the only part that eats at me. And probably because I just want better than that. I think that that prescription (work on our civility and tolerance) is probably the best approach in a community of average folks. A community that I have no interest in.

But, by any measure, this community is above average. And in such an environment, I believe that the proper response to "incivility" is better speech. And by better I mean intelligent, witty, scathing, truthful and trenchant speech. Pablum is for toddlers - and is needed on some forums. Forums of toddlers. But on a forum of adults - well, steel sharpens steel.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Kbg » Sun Jul 31, 2022 10:30 pm

Mark Leavy wrote:
Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:56 pm
Pointedstick wrote:
Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:08 pm
2. Acknowledge the need to explicitly work on our civility and tolerance skills, so we can remain a heterogeneous community of oddballs with weird opinions and political positions without coming away hating one another or descending into mockery, disingenuousness, or crabby negativity.
Thoughtful post. And "hey!" waves hand.

Your comment above is the only part that eats at me. And probably because I just want better than that. I think that that prescription (work on our civility and tolerance) is probably the best approach in a community of average folks. A community that I have no interest in.

But, by any measure, this community is above average. And in such an environment, I believe that the proper response to "incivility" is better speech. And by better I mean intelligent, witty, scathing, truthful and trenchant speech. Pablum is for toddlers - and is needed on some forums. Forums of toddlers. But on a forum of adults - well, steel sharpens steel.
+1 on on the compliments to PS

Mark I agree with you as well but I also think the folks who got the bounce didn't have much of what you mentioned.

To extend the metaphor...steel does sharpen steel along with a good stone. However, anyone who has sharpened knives or other sharp tools much knows that doing it wrong can actually make the thing duller or overly working the edge can break it and make the tool totally useless.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:11 am

Mark Leavy wrote:
Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:56 pm
Thoughtful post. And "hey!" waves hand.

Your comment above is the only part that eats at me. And probably because I just want better than that. I think that that prescription (work on our civility and tolerance) is probably the best approach in a community of average folks. A community that I have no interest in.

But, by any measure, this community is above average. And in such an environment, I believe that the proper response to "incivility" is better speech. And by better I mean intelligent, witty, scathing, truthful and trenchant speech. Pablum is for toddlers - and is needed on some forums. Forums of toddlers. But on a forum of adults - well, steel sharpens steel.
Better is good. But sometimes better isn't enough, because the solution lies elsewhere.

Let me continue with my ICE analogy. Is it possible to build an engine with such perfect selection of materials and such precise machining that it needs no lubricants at all, ever? Probably not. And if it was, it would be so fantastically expensive as to be a curiosity, not a practical machine for the masses. Imagine a department full of genius mechanical engineers working on the problem of how to make the materials and tolerances between parts so ideal that they can accomplish this impossible, unnecessary goal. We would chuckle a bit. Because with all of that intellectual firepower, they're working on the wrong problem. They could just add some lubrication and then move onto an as-yet unsolved problem. Wouldn't that be a better use of their talents?

I think labeling interpersonal civility as a tonic for children and average people is making the same mistake. On the contrary: civility is the way we can have these "steel sharpens steel": discussions in the first place. Let's not forget that the thrust of this thread is "what happened to those discussions?" Well, we stopped being able to have them because we cared too much about sharpening our arguments and not enough about keeping our debate partners from getting cut. Let's lean into that analogy: you improve your martial arts skills with sparring, but the goal is never to actually hurt your sparring partner. If you do that, you're doing it wrong, and training incorrectly.

And now something less abstract: in my job, I work with highly above average people on a daily basis. People whose idea of fun is to volunteer, for free, to perform professional-level software engineering for which they could easily be paid six figures--often in their spare time in addition to their six-figure software engineering jobs. Real geniuses. In my personal and professional experience, the more exceptional a person is, the more they need coddling, hand-holding, and the tonic of interpersonal civility to avoid shutting down, self-destructing, or losing all ability to be productive. Average people in my experience have much thicker skins than exceptional people. They're used to be being insulted, underestimated, and thought of as stupid. They've had the experience of failure, a lot. They have some armor. They're resilient and adaptable. But exceptional people are accustomed to success and being thought of as exceptional, so they don't have this resilience. They're sensitive and inflexible. To perform properly, they need people to re-arrange the world around them to be more comfortable and less upsetting. They can move mountains, but you have to first order their world so they can do it.

In other words, a community of intellectually exceptional people needs more care paid to people's feelings to avoid it exploding, not less.
Last edited by Pointedstick on Mon Aug 01, 2022 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mark Leavy
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Re: On Civility

Post by Mark Leavy » Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:29 am

Pointedstick wrote:
Mon Aug 01, 2022 12:11 am
In other words, a community of intellectually exceptional people needs more care paid to people's feelings to avoid it exploding, not less.
I like this perspective. There's some real truth to it. I'll have to think about it a bit to see if I agree that it is a "good thing".

It definitely is a good idea in the short term. But the only question is, is it a good approach from a long term - evolutionary stress perspective?

It may be. Thank you for the thought exercise.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Pointedstick » Mon Aug 01, 2022 10:45 am

You're welcome! I'm glad it was a thought-provoking argument.

From the "evolutionary stress" perspective, I think it's important to keep in mind that humans aren't solitary predators; a key part of our power as a species is our capacity for social organization, and communities evolve too. We humans instinctively band together to protect ourselves and each other from various sources of evolutionary stress at the individual level. See also: clothing, construction, and medicine. And this is a major source of our power! Even the strongest, sharpest, most capable individual is no match for an organized group of clumsy, intellectually average people wielding the power of technology (another thing you need social organization for). This is sort of the story of Homo Sapiens outcompeting the Neanderthals, in fact. Paleontological evidence tells us that individual Neanderthals were larger and more powerful than Homo Sapiens, and likely smarter too. But that evidence also shows that they lived in much smaller groups than Homo Sapiens did. They were social, but less social than we are. And as a result, we outcompeted them, conquered them, and took their women as mates, as evidenced by the Neanderthal DNA from the maternal line that many of us have. The fact that individual Neanderthals were likely sharper than individual Homo Sapiens didn't help them.

All of this is to say that I think an obsession with individual strength amounts to not taking advantage of us humans' biggest source of power: our communities. They are worth protecting, and we need them more than they need any individual one of us. So in my view, it's counterproductive to strengthen oneself in a way that harms the community one is a member of. But the two don't even have to be mutually exclusive anyway. It's absolutely possible to strengthen yourself without harming your community. You just need to decide to make this a priority in your life.
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Re: On Civility

Post by Kbg » Wed Aug 03, 2022 9:25 am

I should open a new thread called "On Argumentation" but I won't.

I found this gem just today, though after living through the board's Covid wars it is pretty much why I refuse to engage much with people who don't bring evidence or thoughtful opinion to a debate...anyway Occam now has a buddy in my mental processes named Hitchens.

"The second razor I use is the lesser-known Hitchens’ Razor. Named after Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) it simply states that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”. It helps me not get overly exhausted about people using theories in finance and economics that have little to no empirical evidence to support them....Hitchens’ Razor is by the way the best tool to gain peace of mind outside of finance and economics. The world is full of trolls who want to “own the libs” or seek attention by making outlandish claims. By applying Hitchens’ Razor, you don’t fall into the trap of trying to convince them that you are right with the use of data or logic. Whenever I hear these trolls, I shrug my shoulder and move on. They have no evidence to support their claim so I can dismiss their claims without evidence as well."

Of course in today's world politics often drives what people consider to be "good evidence" and it is really hard to sort that stuff out sometimes. As a result, I see quantitative evidence wherever possible to draw my own conclusions.
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Re: On Civility

Post by glennds » Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:57 pm

I have accepted that politics, and a certain view of politics will always be especially present on this forum.

Even though it is primarily an investing forum, it is built around the ideas of Harry Browne. Not only was he a politician, but the ideas underlying the Permanent Portfolio have a political undercurrent to them which is plainly obvious in HB's books. Examples show up in some of the rules - mistrust of government, preparation for calamity, hold assets in another country, hold not only gold, but physical gold at that, tips on secrecy and privacy.

So guess what? Some people will be attracted to the Permanent Portfolio because they are predisposed to these political ideas. I try not to use the term Libertarian, because it holds different meaning for different people.

Not to suggest everything in HB's book is political, because lots of it is just good sound financial advice, correlation theory, tax mitigation strategy, capital preservation. And as such, some people are attracted to the portfolio for purely technical reasons, even if they don't share HB's politics.

It's been discussed here before but there is more of a relationship between political views and investing that might meet the eye. I think it has to do with the worldview lens that our political ideas will sometimes create which carries over into investing.
Or more simply, it should be no surprise that a politically conservative person would be attracted to conservative portfolio strategy. And the PP is about as conservative as it gets, so there you have it.

On the topic of civility, I actually thought it had gotten better. I recall the worst of it being around the time of the 2020 elections other than some mathjak skirmishes in the other subforum. It got a little hot during Covid too.
If anything, for the reasons I offer above, I have noticed more of a tendency toward an echo chamber than anything else. I guess that's natural. Most people prefer validation of their views over a challenge to them. Personally I like diversity of views so long as there is some explanation of rationale to back it up. So kudos to whomever commented that a differing view with a coherent argument to back it up should be welcome to anyone who aspires to grow. I've had my opinion changed in the past based on what I've read here, and I'm sure it will happen again.

P.S. I'm kind of glad the two cats who were doing the parody routine are gone.. "as a long term Democrat... as a young black man...". The whole satire schtick of creating a caricature to pretend to be what you're trying to mock became more confusing than funny. Plus a disservice to any new member who was not in the know, more than one of which I saw fall into a trap of confusion.
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