I thought I'd share this screenshot of a friend's Facebook sharing. I partially read the Philosophical Salon article that he shared, (which can be found here) and I wasn't clear about the main idea, as I stated below: To give you an idea of my "two contentious parties" observation, here are some comments from the article: I'm not sure what this user's premises are for their last sentence. I've never watched The Sound of Music, so I'm confident that I'm missing countless amounts of context-revealing details. Maybe those details only reveal the author's opinion. Yet, I am increasingly curious about how commentors on supposedly civic websites create verbal violence towards other commentators. I suspect there are psychological and pathological phenomena unfolding in any party involved, but I can't affirm my suspicions effectively without quantitative and qualitative evidence. Next example: Whenever I see a comment designed like this one, I immediately assume the author is not thinking about what they're typing. There's no quantitative evidence and qualitative evidence for language filled with proven logical fallacies; such fallacies are unconsciously and carelessly used in attempt to win arguments in comment sections (To better understand what this phenomena poorly exhibits, look deeply into Edward Tufte's Six Principles here. I don't want to experience legal accusations for scanning my hard copy to post). I see this trend in conspicuous digital mediums. Facebook, news, and newer editorial websites constitute as conspicuous digtial mediums; I think all of these mediums are unconsciously consumed as absolute truth, which mass mediums seem to condition people to do. At any rate, below is another comment with kinder tones. For me, it still is rife with logical fallacies, but at least this author doesn't behave like the one I described above: For more information on logical fallacies, visit the website pictured below. I have a grant writing class in 15 minutes, so I will stop now. I hope this post gives you an opportunity to understand my observations of what I see on many websites.
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