Aurich said:
You thought their argument sucked. But instead of really addressing why you mostly proceeded to try and personally shame them, and made the bulk of your post about personally insulting them.
I did address why, via a comparison. To rephrase, I believe an argument that can be boiled down to "I personally think your point isn't immediately comprehensible to a layperson, therefore the obvious conclusion is that you're making things up" is not a great way to make a point in a forum where topics of specialist expertise routinely come up.
Subjectively, I understood that people's heckles are up, but I still hoped for more curiosity and less judgement about why some folks might be more reactive than others. SteveF's reply to me felt way more reasonable in that regard.
Aurich said:
Yes, I thought they could do better and should not be proud of posting something so dismissive and insensitive. My words were strong, as were my feelings, but I did not intend that as an attack. I do see how it could be construed as such, so I'm sorry for that.
Aurich said:
You told them they couldn't trivially understand your point.
I told them that their argument implies they think the point is invalid because and only because they couldn't trivially understand it. At no point was I intending to impugn their intelligence.
Aurich said:
You said I'm not saying you're an unnamed group wink wink, you just make terrible arguments like them.
No, I literally said I was not doing that - no winking - while pointing out the fact that said groups routinely use the exact same argument to gaslight people who call out dog whistles. I want people who are not from those groups to know this so they can avoid doing that. I wouldn't bother saying that to someone I believed was from one of those groups. Indeed, SteveF's reply to me reiterating broadly the same perspective did not do this, it is avoidable, and I felt like I got my point across.
I get how that sort of "bad people also say this" criticism always looks like a guilt-by-association play, which is why I decided to put "I am not accusing you of being one of those people" in italics. Maybe I'm wrong, but I sincerely think that here you are allowing your dislike for my position to affect how you read the tone of my post.
Aurich said:
I thought the post you were responding to made a very reasonable point. I don't agree it was a bad argument at all, I think it was actually extremely accurate in what it was pinpointing.
I know you do. I understand the point, and it's valid and true in a broad sense. It also implies less empathy for people who have been made anxious (oversensitive, even) by far-right trolls than for anyone else, up to and including those trolls (as long as they don't go mask-off and/or send some polite DMs about how misunderstood they are). That makes me sad. I also get that a lot of people are tired of all of this nonsense and would rather not see it at all, and many of those folks just don't care. Again, sad, but perfectly understandable. I still think the argument sucked.
Aurich said:
You can disagree, I'm not declaring a winner. But your response was an emotional outburst, not actually a counterpoint.
This is a reasonable interpretation, but it isn't factually true. Yes, I was emotional - but that was not the sole content of my reply. We're all human here, but at numerous points in this thread (and others before) it has felt a like you're not willing acknowledge when your own humanity and fallibility kicks in with regard to people who don't agree with you.
Aurich said:
And if you honestly cannot understand how that's personal even after I've tried to lay it out, then I would say that I agree, you're probably not a great fit. Because you demonstrated a level of discourse that we are not interested in hosting, and I do need people to understand why.
I now understand why you thought that. It wasn't intended to be and I've done my best here to persuade you of that. To the extent that I might post in future, I'll try to take a few minutes' pause between writing something and posting, so I can take a break and check for sense.
What I can't do is soft-serve my thoughts on what a sad mess of misunderstanding, talking past people, and seeming double-standards this thread has been. By the most recent example, Galvanic has been repeatedly goading and personally insulting another poster, albeit mostly in a passive-aggressive rules-skirting fashion, and you've so far let that slide. Galvanic has also been - uncharacteristically - agreeing with and/or defending you. I don't have enough data to conclude that this is anything more than a correlation, but I can see that you have not made any comments to them about the level of their discourse, and it's been characteristically dismal.
