" I don't know how Socrates did it. Having these discussions day in, day out." (link)
this after like 5 posts by him.
me: 11 emails/day average for over a year, plus forum posts and blog commenting, plus realtime chat (irc, aim). lots of realtime. more time on that than email including reading email (read maybe 5-10 emails for every post, hard to say exactly, and i would read pretty much everything very thoroughly at the time, too). this was b4 my blog. it only stopped cause i couldn't find enough new people worth talking to, and got bored of most of the old ones.
i changed my views too often to count. i don't anymore. because new arguments i haven't heard a dozen times are harder and harder to come by.
it used to be people complained that one day we'd argue, then by the next time we ran into each other to speak again, they would have come up with a new reason my view was wrong ... but i would have already changed it before they could use their argument. some people thought i didn't take my current views seriously enough, and were annoyed they couldn't seem to prove me wrong because i'd always switch views first.
now the consensus (same people, mostly, mind you) is that i'm arrogant and never consider that i could be wrong. "when was the last time you backed down in an argument?" they say. "when was the last time i heard a new one in public?" i retort. but they shrug and hate me. and if i mention that when talking to cool people (in private nearly always) i do change my views reasonably often, even today, they just take me for delusional if not a liar.
Messages (7)
Perhaps they just stopped taking you seriously?
I'm not sure I could explain a good argument why, but my current theory is that sometimes it's very good to admit being wrong about something and letting other people know that their help/ideas were appreciated.
It seems that when this happens, the relationships change (for the better) due to a sign of trust. Perhaps this sort of thing doesn't have to happen, but this is what I think currently.
I doubt that people hate you. If they wrote foaming-at-the-mouth insults, then you might rightly deduce that they hated you, but there are lots of reasons why people fail to get along well that aren't about hatred. There's a difference between having an emotional theory about someone and just finding that communication between you both isn't going anywhere creative and enjoyable. The second one is a good reason to distance and maybe come back later with new ideas.
Also, I think your theory of cool people is wrong. I think coolness (or, friendship), is subject-related.
Even if a person existed who had no bad entrenchments in any area, he would be isolated and alone unless he learned how to build lots of subject-related relationships with the inferior rest of the world. But as it's impossible to know such a thing even were it true, nobody should make such a dangerous assumption unless they really enjoy their own company and don't mind severely limiting their knowledge growth and being bored much of the time (because relationships are necessary for learning, and generally the most enjoyable way to learn).
hate = sematics. sheesh.
there is WV stuff that can enhance (or taint) entire classes of domains of knowledge. for example moral relativism effects countless subjects.
About "hate"... words have strength as well as content. If you use the wrong strength of words, people might misunderstand you and assume you mean it to exactly that strength.
Yes, worldview is important, but actions speak louder than words, inexplicit moral theories count for more than explicit ones, and categorising people as cool or not seems likely to lead to a skewed world-view where only about 3 people come out as cool, which amounts to a kind of practical inexplicit pessimism, in my view.
(because relationships are necessary for learning, and generally the most enjoyable way to learn).
Only if you want to have the same ideas, or viewpoints as the rest of the flock...
What happened to "The World"? The website is dead.