Memes

I'm gonna say some stuff that most of the people here probably know on some level, but considering this thread, I think it needs to be explicitly said.

Very few of the people who post comments on the internet are highly educated in whatever field they're making a claim in. Getting challenged by people who know next to nothing and receive all the upvotes anyway is an exhausting experience, so many well-educated people keep their debates private. If they are here, you probably aren't enough of an expert to recognize them. The simple, easy to understand takes are what get upvoted, and in-depth, nuanced ideas are almost always ignored or ridiculed. Most forums are full of people who know just enough to feel confident in making calls for radical action without any knowledge of how that action could be implemented or would play out.

Look through this comment section. Lots of vague, single-sentence arguments about being "capitalist," "communist," or "socialist," along with "leftist," "liberal," or "conservative," but I don't see a single one acknowledging that each of those words can individually encompass vast groups of conflicting ideas and have wildly different meanings in different parts of the world; a serious problem considering at least a few of the people posting in this thread aren't in the US. Very little discussion of substantive ideas like "people should be given a universal basic income of $15 a day," or "food stamps should be granted without application to anyone under a certain income threshold," or "social media servers should receive public funding and be administrated by an elected body." It's almost never more specific than "universal healthcare," or "abolish the police," Those might be the right direction, but when was the last time you saw people discussing things like whether experimental treatments should be covered, or the number and type of professions that should replace the current myriad of roles police are expected to fill? I seriously doubt if you randomly selected two self-described communists (or whatever ideology) on Lemmy and had them start making decisions together, that they would agree with each other on exactly how society should be run even half the time.

I'm not saying these conversations shouldn't happen, vague as they are. I certainly don't have the energy to write out long arguments 99% of the time. We all have to make our own way to finding deeper knowledge, and building a knowledge base of buzzwords can be a useful stepping stone. But far too often people stop once they feel they have a sufficient understanding of the buzzwords and then start talking like they know the answers. it's important to temper the depth of your convictions based on where you're having the discussion, where you're getting your knowledge. Are you watching youtube videos and reading unsourced comments, or are you reading research papers from institutions with a history of making accurate claims? Are you reading news articles from ad-supported papers, and if you are, are you checking whether those articles are making sources available for readers check on? Should I have bothered writing several paragraphs under a meme of a glowing red bird, and am I really qualified to tell people to be more careful with their discussions?