Walter Lippmann once said: Where all think alike, no one thinks very much - How important is this motto to Flutherites?

just out of curiosity, do you write all your own details or do you copy them from somewhere?

@Likeradar, I agree. The details on these questions seem a little “pat”.

To answer the question, I feel that though many of the flutherites do agree on certain topics, a healthy debate can still occur. We often “respectfully” (well, most of us) disagree, and because of our wide variety of backgrounds, the level of conversation can be quite spirited.

@Likeradar You’ll find, in time, that Matt is that rare breed of very smart with something to say, and also a real mensch. Like all of us, some of the things he copies and pastes (I still don’t know why he likes wikipedia, sigh) – but when you “talk” to him you’ll see that he actually knows all this stuff.

Most of all, he is a decent, generous and wonderful human being. If only there were more like him, the world would be a much better place.

@Zen I wasn’t questioning Matt’s wonderfulness as a human being. Just wondering where he came up with the wording for his questions.

@Likeradar I didn’t say you did. I just wanted to talk about Matt. :-)

I should imagine Lippman’s statement wouldn’t hold very true on Fluther or there wouldn’t be much Fluthering. Instead there would just be a series of comments such as “True,” “You’re right,” “Absolutely,” and “Yes.”

Not very interesting, that.

I know that when I’m engaged in a discussion with someone here who has a differing opinion, I’m much more careful and thorough about how I present my arguments. I usually discover a great deal more about the strengths and weaknesses of my opinions than I would have were I not challenged.

It’s like a “natural selection” of ideas: adverse pressures weed out the weak and favor the well-adapted. In an ideologically homogenous group, weak thinking survives and flourishes.

It causes quite a stir when someone shows up on Fluther voicing opinions that we’re not used to seeing here, and our first reaction may be to wish they’d go away or be made to leave. But I don’t see their presence as a bad thing (as long as they adhere to the guidelines, of course).

@Harp I completely disagree.

@Zen I completely disagree.

See? Booorrriinnggg!

@Darwin @Harp I was completely kidding, as I’m sure Harp realized. Not quite sure what to make of Darwin’s comment; haven’t read enough to know what you mean.

I don’t know. What does everyone else think?

@Harp It’s like a “natural selection” of ideas: adverse pressures weed out the weak and favor the well-adapted. In an ideologically homogenous group, weak thinking survives and flourishes

That’s so not true, and I can prove it using an example taken from evolutionary biology. How did RNA come into existence? Put a bunch of microbiologists and biochemists (a rather homogeneous group) into a room, and a bunch of theories come out – Metabolism first theories, Autocatalysis, Clay theory, Lipid word, etc.

Even within that very select group of highly educated individuals, theories postulating that RNA originating somewhere else (|extraterrestrial) come up.

Open the discussion to a general audience(heterogeneous) and gawd enters the picture..so the conversation quickly moves away from RNA(the problem at hand) to gawd,and how creationists and their theories(dogma) are not given any consideration.

The same thing happened here in a conversation about “today’s fashion”. There are many legitimate complaints – lack of originality, practicality of the design in everyday life, how most women do not resemble the 5’10 size 4 teenage girls designers create for, etc.

But that wasn’t what most arguments boiled don too, it was about how today’s fashion offended traditional valllueeess. We are not even reading from the same book, let alone page.

@HarmonyAlexandria I completely disagree with your complete disagreement! The intellectual environment benefits from allowing all ideas to be championed to the fullest extent possible. It’s like a criminal defense trial: the satisfactoriness of the outcome depends on having the best possible advocate for both sides. If the defense attorney is incompetent , then the accused will end up behind bars (and he may very well belong there), but the question will always remain of whether justice was actually done.

In this marketplace of ideas, having all ideas get a thorough airing may slow things down and frustrate some, but it leads to a more satisfactory and robust conclusion in the end.

Did anyone actually read the question? Isn’t it about how important a certain motto is to flutherers?

I’d have to say not very important, since no one is even talking about it.

I’m also not sure what the details have to do with the question.

Are we being asked if flutherers engage in critical thinking? Or if critical thinking is important to flutherers? Or whether this motto applies to fluther? Help me, Matt. I really don’t get it.

@Likeradar Matt is a professional author. That might be why his questions seem so “pat”. You would not be the first person to suspect him of plagerism, it used to happen every once in a while on The Website We’re Not Allowed to Talk About, but his questions and replies were consistently thorough and well-written there, too.

@Zen – To explain myself:

If everyone on Fluther thought alike discussions would be boring. A series of identical posts would surely result as in:

Post 1: I completely disagree.

Post 2: I completely disagree.

Post 3: I completely disagree.

And so on.

Hence little thinking and thus boring.

Yes, I got that you weren’t serious. Neither was I.

@Darwin K.

@Darwin – I agree :P

@3or4monsters – Actually, in this case, mattbrowne is copying and pasting (as well as citing the source). But I do agree that his questions and answers are quite well considered.

@fireside I stand corrected. Thanks!

@Harp The intellectual environment benefits from allowing all ideas to be championed to the fullest extent possible..

It’s a waste of time and resources that could be used doing more productive things, like solving problems instead of discussing them.

Mistakes will be made, that’s a given, if they turn out to be grievous errors, we go back and correct them. Even taking course correction costs into account, it’s still cheaper and faster.

protracted debate also leads to compromises and tabling to avoid conflict, which quite frankly is the losers solution to everything.

@HarmonyAlexandria Taking your excellent advice, I’ll take leave of this protracted debate and go solve the problem of what to have for dessert.

@Likeradar – There was some related criticism in one of my other questions. Here’s my reply which includes the issue of copying definitions or some other text snippets.

Like I did on wis.dm I try to create about one third of my questions in a way that allows everyone to contribute. But that’s it. If the expectation is all of them, then Fluther is probably not the right community for me. On wis.dm we had categories like “culture” and “science and technology” and “environment” (the creators called them scenes). I was most active in “science and technology”.

Because 2/3 of my questions are advanced I often use definitions copied from somewhere on the web (in most cases Wikipedia as Zen pointed out). On wis.dm there were always 4 entry fields, 3 identical to Fluther and a fourth for the URL of the source. I could just post a Wikipedia link in the details field but it’s my experience that many people don’t like to switch between two browser windows or tabs too often. If this is important to you I can copy both a definition or some other snippet and paste in the link as well.

I like questions like ‘How reliable are our alarm clocks – When will the length of a day be 26 hours?’ and I think it doesn’t really matter how much knowledge I already have. The real question behind this is ‘Why are people surprised that so many things we take for granted do change?’ The whole universe is changing constantly. Even our Sun has ‘bad moods’ and can mess up things here on Earth. There are “weather” forecasts for solar winds which many people are not aware of. I think it’s great when people are willing to open their minds. It’s great when people realize that science can be a lot more fun than rote learning of formulas. Yet for that you need brain teasers. You need to stimulate the reader. And then very often you get highly interesting discussions. And every discussion is different. If given the choice between ‘What is the color of Paris Hilton’s new dress after she got out of rehab?” and “Why should we all be more interested in math?” many will pick the first one.

I’m not saying there’s no value in observing celebrities struggling with drug problems. But hey, there are far more important issues like how can we keep the homes of all people warm, when the barrel of oil costs $250. Therefore I’m using a question format that sometimes includes statements. A question needs to stimulate both the left and the right part of a human brain (the same holds true for convincing other people).

So yes, I’m sometimes copying definitions, because I think it’s a waste of my time to create one using my own words. I use my time to create unique comments like this one.

@mattbrowne Go Matt!

@daloon – You asked “Are we being asked if flutherers engage in critical thinking?” and my answer is “no”. I already know that most of the people I met on Fluther engage in critical thinking. My question about the “importance” is related to some of my observations made during certain discussions (which are by the way almost identical to wis.dm or some of the science fiction forums I visit occasionally). Discussions turn into heated debates, which of course can be a great thing. Sometimes they get very emotional, which as such is also fine. However I found that some reactions (if you read between the lines) are more like “how can this idiot think like that” which might get put in different words to avoid this being seen as a personal attack (for which the moderators might intervene). I think we all need the occasional reminder (myself included) that our reactions to certain comments we read in online forums could be “hey, this is his or her way of exercising critical thinking” instead of “hey, now I will prove to you that you are totally wrong or stupid”.

I just like the way Walter Lippmann put this into words, share the quote with you, and turn it into a question that allows us to have a debate and engage in criticial thinking. I’ve said this before many times. I really like Fluther. I really like to stick around. I found the warm welcome at the beginning a wonderully human thing to do :-)

@3or4monsters and @fireside – See my reply to @likeradar above.

Just read this and it made me think of your question.

@Zen – Thanks for sharing this article! I think many people who like science fiction are sometimes perceived as oddballs. But it has its benefits in real life too. No company in the knowledge industry can survive without innovation. Back in 1996 and 1997 when some of us IT guys were still playing with the first CERN http servers I suggested our company needed a search engine for our growing intranet. While some liked the idea, others thought it was totally crazy. It was a time when many had not heard about Altavista (Google wasn’t even born) and thought the Internet was about surfing and fun. I gave an internal presentation about the power of every employee creating content on the intranet and many shook their heads thinking I was promoting anarchy and chaos. I said this will become huge in a few years and search has a great future turning the old “information retrieval” idea of the seventies into something really big. Talk about oddballs ;-)

@mattbrowne – I don’t see any problem with drawing from external sources in your questions. What I might suggest is including what you want to focus on in your question, but then also including a link to the original source. it doesn’t have to be anything obtrusive. Generally I just use the word source, linked to the original and make it samll. It only takes another couple of seconds to add [dash-dash-quote-text-quote-colon-dash-dash]. Like so: source

Then people have a choice of whether or not to read more, but also don’t feel as though you are trying to claim the thoughts as your own.

@fireside – Will do. Thanks for your support! I’m capable of creating lots of original content and don’t have to claim the thoughts of others. This was never my intention. I guess many people on wis.dm were aware that I’m a fan of Wikipedia. Nothing beats a clear and concise definition of a term or a concept, which had undergone a rigorous editorial process (like the one Wikipedia has). Maybe a combination of a small copied snippet plus the link as you described is a good compromise. As I said, some of my advanced questions require more context and some people don’t like opening new windows by clicking on links while others have no problem with that. Thanks again, for your suggestions.

@mattbrowne – yeah, i don’t see anything wrong with providing as much context as you want. Simple things like linking to the source do help avoid confusion, but I agree that any relevancy is usually better spelled out than only linked. You are obviously a deep thinker, nothing wrong with that.

@mattbrowne: Ok. I totally did not get that out of your question. Now, if I have it right, it seems you were asking about style of discussing here. As in, do we try to keep a reasonable tone and stick to “critical thinking,” or do we engage in ad hominem attacks as an acceptable mode of discussion. Or maybe you were asking a more technical question, to find out how we compare critical thinking to other modes of “discussion.”

I feel certain you’ve noticed, by now, that critical thinking is very important to fluther, and that the moderators rove the questions to find outbreaks of ad hominem attacks, so they can squash them before they grow.

As to the other question: to state the obvious, if we can stick with critical thinking, we can address the issues, and keep personalities and hurt feelings out of it. This is helpful if you are trying to build a community with any cohesiveness. If you allow ad hominem forms of “argument” then people will start to call each other names, and keep on doing it, unless there are some adults around who can show them how critical thinking really is better.

As an aside, when I was on Askville, I found a number of these digressions into name-calling, and they annoyed me no end, since I really was interested in the topic. I would try to urge people to address issues and not personalities, and I may have had some influence, but if I did, it was miniscule.

Matt, I’m still not sure if I’ve understood what you are after. I don’t think I’m that obtuse a person. I have my moments, but usually I get something out of the material.

It would help me understand you much better if you would be a little more to the point in your questions. I think it’s all right to shine a bright light on what you are after, instead of hopeing people will get into it. I don’t think you need to worry about starting discussion. People here barely need a nudge, before the snowball of discussion is rolling downhill, getting bigger and faster with every revolution.

But that’s just me. I don’t know if anyone else has the same problem. And if they don’t, then forget it. One person is not enough to be worth changing your style for. I’ll just ask my naive questions, and see where it goes.

@daloon – Style might have a little to do with it, but it’s more about attitude. I’m sorry that some of my questions create a certain amount of confusion.

You see, I also need to remind myself that in many cases the mental reaction to reading a comment should be “Thank you for disagreeing” or “The negative feedback I just received is actually a gift”. Some time ago we had a discussion on wis.dm about Bush and Obama (like so many times before). Now I’m a moderate liberal as you might have guessed and I’m opposed to all extreme forms of right-wing politics. But the discussion we had on wis.dm wasn’t really a discussion, basically more like how superior many of the liberal approaches are and it also didn’t trigger any new ideas. We basically reaffirmed our beliefs. Hey, great to have the correct opinion. When a Republican entered the discussion (he was also more on the moderate side but still) all of a sudden we were actually making progress. It wasn’t about converting. It made us challenge our assumptions. We weren’t thinking alike anymore, and suddenly we were thinking “much more” as Walter Lippmann put it. Sorry, again about the confusion I might have created. Does my last comment help?

@mattbrowne: Oh, now I see. Thank you.

As to that, I have to say I disagree. I disagree because the premise is wrong. There is no situation where “we all think alike.”

I once participated in a conversational salon that met every month. We were all extremely progressive democrats. Didn’t matter. We always had a lot to talk about, no matter what the topic was.

Here’s why. When you set up a conversation as a debate, pro or con the premise, you can lose steam, especially when everyone takes one side of the issue. Debates like that are the wrong model, though, for conversation. We have discussions here, not debates. There are no winners and losers, just people contributing to the pool of knowledge.

The you do this is by asking people for their personal experience with the issue. That is guaranteed to be different, and, more importantly, it is not debateable. Experience is experience. If I try to tell you that, no, that’s not what you experienced, I look like an idiot. Everyone will ignore me after that, because clearly, I have no clue.

This is also a way to get around religious arguments. Who still cares about arguing about whether there is a god or not? We all know what we think, and for most, there’s little room to change.

Instead, we should be talking about our experiences that lead us to believe what we believe. It is only in the context of experience that we can begin to understand why a person believes what they believe. And if we tell our personal stories, no one can impeach them, and no one can argue with them. Still, we get a lot out of it.

It’s not always that way here. We do have our debates. Personally, I try to stay away from them, because I’m not interested in that. I don’t think it’s helpful. Every once in a while I might drop in, and I might play naive (or maybe not play, because even if I think I know, I’m not sure I know the answer to the question). When people explain the history, and get to the roots of their ideas, things get more interesting.

So even amongst those who ostensibly agree, there is so much variation in beliefs, and in history, that it doesn’t make sense to call it agreement. As always, we are exploring our differences, and if you look at it my way, those are endless.

@daloon – You are making a very good point about the “talking about our experiences” part. I would still argue that our experiences, our culture, our upbringing and so forth influence our way of thinking. But you are right that very often in debates we tend be too much focused on the “different opinion” part, instead of “different experience” part.