michael_nielsen

It’s possible to violate, but usually requires considerable skill and a lot of established context. For similar reasons, online argument & judgement often fails.

You may be amused: I explicitly think in terms of a “Julia exception” (I swear I’m not making this up): you so consistently argue in good faith that it’s possible to argue productively with you even within the rather restrictive confines of Twitter.

For most people - even people I like a great deal and who I find it easy to argue with in person - Twitter (esp at 140 chars, less so now) encourages you to strip out all the little allowances that are actually crucial for good argument.

And, of course, in general good argument requires a lot of good faith norms to be present and enforced. These are not present in many parts of the Internet, and hard to conjure up quickly. Thus “Yes, and” is often a good default starting point. And it’s a wonderful mode, anyway!!