WRITING SKILLS Online writing has improved significantly since that paper was wr

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/01/how-well-can-you-communicate-over-email-or-blog-posts-how-about-in-person.htmlONLINE WRITING SKILLS

Online writing has improved significantly since that paper was written. We err. We fail. We get slapped around. And we learn.

Or at least, most people do.

The three biggest problems with online discourse are: a) that it’s very difficult to negotiate a contract on the meaning of terms, and as such, most debates are eristic or autistic. b) that the medium does not tolerate the level of exposition needed to convey vast differences in the categories and judgements that are under discussion. c) almost no one, even the very best people, are able to articulate their positions by other than allegorical means, or without relying on the assumption that the methodology underlying their reasoning, is merely a convenience, not a representation or means of identifying true statements. (My glossary is fifty pages long. and it’s not anywhere near complete.)

Conservatives are the worst offenders because they rely on sentimental, historical and allegorical concepts, which if fully articulated as human actions, are demonstrably true. But since they’re so poorly expressed, usually as post-religous moral statements, they are all but useless in debate.

FWIW: I am absolutely nothing like my online persona, and everyone who meets me in person comments on it. Interpersonal relations are, well, personal. Debate online is political – purposeful. If I learned anything from the 20th century its that Friedman’s and Rothbard’s antagonistic relentlessness was more successful than Hayek’s modest civility.