Definitely yes. The tech scene would be doomed to descend to the level of tabloids.
That. Double so in the world of instant internet outrages, and triple so when you will be judged by your peers according to which side you take, including taking none.
The same can be said about emotional judgments. If you feel they are apes, you will handle them as such like if you think so. With logic, it is garbage-in garbage-out; but you can test for faulty premises, challenge the hypotheses (because it is illogical to just blindly believe), mercilessly kill those that not survive, elevate survivors to the status of theories. That itself should be enough to mitigate the ape-assumption’s impact. The important part here is to test even the hypotheses you feel good about, whichever side they fall onto.
Not questioning premises is illogical.
Which I consider wrong. If they base their opinions on wrong premise, they are misguided but it does not make them inherently bad people.
Anger is a good motivator but a bad advisor.
Not distasteful. Dangerous and treacherous. And feeling good, especially when it also feels rightful, and that makes it double treacherous.
Would it hurt more, either?
For rather relaxed/vague definition of “aggressive”, perhaps. “Persistent” may be a better word choice.
It also caused a lot of harm, maybe even more than of good. Serenity moves slower but steadier.
Many lab accidents were made way worse by people acting reflexively. The same quick pull-off that saves you from a minor burn can spill t-BuLi all over the hood and possibly yourself.
Serenity does not prevent you from recognizing wrongs. It however definitely helps with not overreacting, and with planning a more successful, more deliberate strategy. If it is your war - but if it is not, you wouldn’t get angered anyway.
Most will indeed do so and I expect it. I am investing the time for the few outliers.
Can’t say that it is entirely non-upsetting, but the level of upset is quite manageable.
Being disagreed with by a group feels bad; that is a built-in psychological mechanism for enforcing group cohesiveness by making conformity more likely. So that is nothing unexpected. Following that feeling is however also treacherous, like it goes with feelings in general, due to possible promotion of groupthink. And we have numerous examples from both war (Vietnam, for example) and industry/corporate world where it can end. The group can be wrong even if it is bigger than you.
One side doesn’t even know what they are for; they just exist.
The other side keeps insisting on confrontations and no dialogue.
I can identify with neither, and my lack of preexisting belonging to either means I feel no peer pressure from either side nor fear of being ejected from the group.
Of course, for some it is who is not with us is against us. Also something I cannot identify with.
Also didn’t say they are good, and mostly did not allow them to take hold of him.
This.
A rare skill that today’s leaders (and wannabe leaders) sorely lack.
Emotional things feel manipulative to me. And, trust me, I am not alone in that. It works for enough people that appeal to emotions is the basic rule of the public relations playbook, and it is what I consider wrong on people. That’s how wars are started, with consent and even cheering of people who heard too many emotional speeches. If it appeals to emotions, the default reaction should be one step back and reevaluation - the message can be either good or bad thing, even if it feels good.
Also, the overuse of appeals to emotions is wearing people down and making them cynical. And, also, compassion fatigue.
You don’t have to agree. I don’t even expect you to. I am talking to those who would agree but are too timid to speak up against the group. To break the groupthink, to show that it is possible to state that anger is treacherous.
The consequences of anger, and also of fear and other strong emotions, can be too far reaching to consider to be the best approach by default. Even if, and especially if, it feels righteous.
A skilled manipulator can use anger to play people like a violin.
They are everything but silenced! Without the threats, who would hear about them, who would care about what they say except relatively small circles? I didn’t know they even exist before all of this noise.
I don’t suggest the threats were fake; there are enough loonies out there to provide them and words, in the age of Twitter, are as cheap as they can go.
Good clip.
We can also not take the few so seriously, whatever side they come from. (The advice goes for both sides. Or, more accurately, all sides.)
If the threat looks credible, identify the source, and reevaluate the credibility. Then take an appropriate action, ranging from ignoring the threat to imprisoning the culprit.
What’s a chance of that? Isn’t the risk actually going way up if we get all noisy about the issue and expose more people (including the small fraction of loonies) to it? Isn’t it giving undeserved power to the threat-flingers?
(I had two in my life, longer stories (not counting those uttered in direct interpersonal communication in heated situations). Judged both to be noncredible. Still alive. Neither was of the vengeful-ex kind, those are a different class with higher inherent credibility.)
Not ignoring the problem can do exactly the same, the loud reactions can embolden the perpetrators as well as the silence could. Assuming most such threats are uttered by angered people (and we’re back to the anger issue), which Twitter makes easier by being immediately available, the probability of the person not cooling down after a while is also pretty low.
I am asking a friend from a university, a cyberbullying specialist, to tell me what are the expert thoughts on Twitter-mediated threats. The reaction that feels good may not be the best, as well as the one that logically seems the best in absence of quality data (see GIGO).
