2.5-year-old political keyboard

[oldernow]

Playing with a 2.5 year-old grandchild today suddenly reminded me
of what seems to be most of the posts in USENET that I encounter
anymore.

I was working an octave-and-a-half toy piano of his, playing a
variety of tunes, especially those he's likely already heard.

He watched for a while. Then he turned it off and grinned.

How very typical USENET user! Incapable of nuanced verbosity, they
sink to arguing about which of two political parties is better,
and basically do so via insults between various renditions of
"Me good/right! You bad/wrong!", which is kind of the equivalent
of never going past an electric keyboard's potential but, rather,
wailing away on the two-valued on/off switch.

--
oldernow
xyz001 at nym.hush.com

[D]

I agree!

But the more interesting question for me is, how did it become this way?
How come we are no longer able to have thoughtful, interesting
conversation that develops the ideas of the participants?

Is it culture? The modern school system? Social media? Anything else?

Best regards,
Daniel

[oldernow]

Could it be that "we" were never "able to have thoughtful,

interesting conversation that develops the ideas of the

participants", but that a relative few have progressed
a nanometer in the direction of finally seeing that,
possibly stoking advances in taking personal biases
more into account, and more frequently realizing in
advance where better word choices/arrangements
might better suit mutual understanding between
given participants?

[D]

Intresting thought. I don't know... I mean I've had many wonderful
exchanes of ideas, with people with different opinions on things. The
forum for that was mostly mailinglists.

I also think back to my university days when studying philosophy. Many
good exchanges there as well.

Could it be that the nr of quality exchanges have remained constant, but
the surrounding excrement has grown, thus making it more difficult to find
the good stuff?

[oldernow]

On 2024-02-16, D <nos...@example.net> wrote:

> > Could it be that "we" were never "able to have thoughtful,
> > interesting conversation that develops the ideas of the
> > participants", but that a relative few have progressed
> > a nanometer in the direction of finally seeing that,
> > possibly stoking advances in taking personal biases
> > more into account, and more frequently realizing in
> > advance where better word choices/arrangements
> > might better suit mutual understanding between
> > given participants?
>
> Intresting thought. I don't know... I mean I've had
> many wonderful exchanes of ideas, with people with
> different opinions on things. The forum for that was
> mostly mailinglists.

FWIW, I think it might be more accurate to say a newer/previous
version of you had all that. You might look back at the same now
and think, "What the <bleep> was I thinking?"

> I also think back to my university days when studying
> philosophy. Many good exchanges there as well.

And how about when "you" were eight? ;-)

Is it possible to confuse one's personal experience of interaction
with what's happening at an impersonal level? E.g. "many good
exchanges (for me) in prior times" with "interaction between
people (in general) has declined"?

> Could it be that the nr of quality exchanges have remained
> constant, but the surrounding excrement has grown, thus
> making it more difficult to find the good stuff?

I'm liking that theory!

In fact, it turns out that political discussions that don't rise
above "number two" (parties/sides) seem like excrement to me.... ;-)

[D]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2024, oldernow wrote:

Ahh... so the magic nr is then 3!

[oldernow]

I'm more of an "another day, another magic number" kind of fellow.

*But* there've definitely been a handful that seemed more magical
over longer periods of time than others.