Reading @bruces annual thing made me realize why I had an instinctive aversion to letter dot wiki. The mannered faux-genteel 18th-century republic-of-letters vibe is too jarring for me. The Well is 35 years old but feels fresher (both form/content) than this “Dear Joe” larping.
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If you’re highly conscious of the need to be civil, the presumption is that you have potential reason to be uncivil, but are being noble and stoic in service of a Higher Truth. I think this is bs. Good conversations are civil as a side effect of genuine mutual interest.
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Worthwhile conversations are a barbell. Either the two parties share enough common ground and mutual curiosity that no explicit commitment to civility is necessary OR are openly hostile enough you need something like a courtroom due process for adversarial debate. Middle is dumb.
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One sign: when I’m actually in conversations where I have no worries about being uncivil, I feel free enough to troll, jeer, joke, bluntly and roughly disagree, use mild insults, get a bit mad, etc. It’s not ceremonial pageantry with polite forms masking shallow engagement.
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I suspect people who gravitate to these things of being based ancient statues in denial https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1216800623321997314?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1216800623321997314 …
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The Well is like a historic building. Letter wiki is more like Caesar’s Palace in Vegas, but trying to pretend it’s actually Caesar’s Palace in Ancient Rome.
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End of conversation
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