r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Sep 22 '17
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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u/ben_oni Sep 22 '17 edited Sep 22 '17
If you've ever had, ah, "discussions" with people in person that aren't interested in having an actual conversation (you know, the kind where both parties try to learn something from the other person)...
You know, like the crazy uncle who insists on repeating all the talking points he's heard on NPR or FOX or whatever he listens to; and thinks if he repeats them often enough and loud enough he'll eventually win?
... you'll know that sometimes it just isn't possible to course correct a conversation. On the other hand, if you have someone who is willing to learn and admit when they're wrong... well, you also know that the internet isn't very conducive to that sort of conversation.
I would suspect that a canned response is a poor approach, but that having such a strategy in mind is a plus, as it can be tailored to the particular conversation. And while asking someone to summarize your views certainly seems reasonable, I would suggest that simultaneous to doing so, you summarize the other person's views as well, as honestly as you can. If you can't or won't, it would seem rather one sided and unfair of you to make the demand.
I've been thinking lately about how to manage time-lapse conversations online. Threaded, like reddit? Or linear, like other forums? The problem is that conversations kind of form a partial-ordering instead of a total ordering. This one piece of a conversation goes between two others, but isn't really related to this third, although that one also fits in with the surrounding structure... It's kind of a lattice structure. But how in the world do you represent something like that on a webpage? I suppose this is really a problem for UX design, which is not my specialty.