Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view.
I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones movitated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years.
> Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view
Strange, perhaps we have different motivations for debating? My goal is generally to learn and understand why someone would think a certain way in contrast with my own way of thinking. Their motivations for the exchange are irrelevant to this, if at the end of it they agree with me that's nice but it's not the objective. Personally my favorite occasions are when I'm proven to be wrong.
> I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones motivated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years.
This is the part I'm finding confusing, the entire paragraph feels very hypocritical. How can you claim to be open to ideas while simultaneously dismissing the ones you deem unworthy? Is it that your own motivations don't matter but the ones you choose to speak to do? Superficial arguments don't matter when the goal is to understand the reason THEY believe something. If you believe you have heard it all before and choose not to spend your time on it then that's one thing, but you purposefully injected yourself into a discussion without adding anything other than a snarky comment that implied another poster was unworthy of being spoken to due to their more polarized views. How can you justify this?
