Abraham Lincoln intentionally filled his cabinet with people who held different and opposing perspectives. What's the point in surrounding yourself with people who only think like you?
Arguing for argument's sake is annoying, but echo chambers that reinforce agreement are force multipliers for inaccuracy, falsehood, and extremism. I'd rather be questioned than told I was wrong with no agency in my defense.
Isn't there a difference between ianai was describing and constructive discussions with people holding opposing perspectives? I feel like I am surrounded by people with different opinions from my own, which I'm thankful for, but none of them engage in the types of malicious behaviors that "the worst of the Internet in person" brings to mind.
Discounting any literal intent in their superlative, yeah, but aren't opinions relative?
The worst people of the internet differ based on who you ask. For me, moral absolutists and people who spew out hot takes and twisted arguments for likes are pond scum on the rational discourse totem pole, tied with ad folk.
For others, it's whomever fails their loyalty tests by not agreeing with every view they may hold at any given time.
Malice implies intent, and a lot of people don't see what they're doing as intentionally causing another harm. I find the most annoying people usually think that their behavior is excluded because they believe that they're /helping/.
Half of my family is conservative, watches only fox news, and considers all liberals to be "wrong about everything" because they have an entirely different set of basic facts about the world, different heuristics, different opinions, different ways of confirming those opinions, different understandings of fundamental topics, etc. Any time these two groups have a conversation it will probably feel like gaslighting because if you have any thought that relies on any base assumption, they will deny it and claim "that's not how the world works" and insist they know how things "actually work" and you will not be able to convince them differently even if you could demonstrate things right then and there.
If you are unwilling to accept scientific discovery as a significant indicator of something, then no amount of scientific work will convince you, and will just feel like someone trying to disprove your entire world view, while if you are unwilling to accept ideology and dogma as significant influences, you will feel like you are taking crazy pills as a large group denies reality in front of their very eyes
