The Urge To Destroy

Explicating a vice and why fighting on the internet is addictive

The vices of others are often puzzling. One vice that I don’t possess is alcoholism, and I find it rather difficult to get in the head of an alcoholic—hard to understand what it’s like psychologically to be unable to limit oneself to just a small amount of alcohol. Another far more severe vice is being opposed to effective altruism, and that one’s even more puzzling :). This will be my best attempt to discuss a vice of mine. It will involve the embarrassing concession: I get deeply irritated when people are wrong on the internet:

I was recently speaking to my wonderful mother who expressed confusion about why people spend so much time arguing on the internet. She was puzzled by the alleged addictiveness of outrage—she’d certainly never felt the need to prove someone wrong, least of all a stranger on the internet. My mother has never made a FaceBook comment for precisely this reason!

There are two related reasons one feels the urge to endlessly go back and forth with mistaken strangers on the internet. Part of it is a naive hope that because they’re wrong in such a basic and straightforward way, if you can just explain why, they’ll get it. Historians report that this has happened at least once in history, but it is far from the default.

But part of it—and this, in my case, is a part I’m not proud of—is the urge to destroy.

Suppose I go out and write a long blog post about, say, the anthropic argument. I explain everything as clearly as I can, having carefully read through the relevant literature on the subject and come to a view. Some commenter comes around without the faintest clue what they’re talking about, and writes a lengthy, confused, and arrogant comment about how the argument is wrong for some incredibly basic reason—likely one that was addressed at length or that demonstrates a basic confusion about how anything works.

I partially want to explain why this person is wrong. But also partially, I want to destroy them. I want this moron to come to see just how stupendously wrong they are, for all bystanders to see the breathtaking extent of their error. I want to eliminate their smugness—someone that stupid should not be allowed to be that confident! I want them to know that they’re as wrong as I know they are.

It’s not just being wrong that causes this desire: it’s the combination of being hugely overconfident, hugely wrong, and long-winded. It’s one thing to write out a ten word comment, but the person who writes paragraphs and paragraphs, each filled with abject confusion, is almost maximally infuriating.

I’m not generally a very angry guy. In fact, I think I’m unusually calm—I can’t recall getting more than mildly irritated at anyone in person in the last year, though there may be cases I’m not thinking of. But this gets me quite irate—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ground my teeth in response to a confused commenter of some sort posting a lengthy comment. Sometimes I even consider turning off comments, because it irks me to such a great degree. When I don’t turn off comments, I often spend far too long in a state of rage, responding to some idiotic commenter.

For example, someone recently wrote an article criticizing the anthropic argument. They argued that SIA, if right, would imply that the existence of a rock in front of you would give you evidence that there are infinite rocks, as the odds of any particular rock existing are higher if there are more rocks.

This article enraged me!

First of all was the tone—sneering, condescending, and wildly overconfident. It included sentences like:

In the philosophy kingdom, there is a cute toy called the SIA (Self Indication Assumption). It’s at the top of Adelstein’s toy box.

I’m not going to defend this principle as it is just blatantly obvious - it is intuitive and obvious to anyone who reflects on it. Adelstein has also compiled 27 intuition pumping syllogisms arguments for the SIA which prove it to be the case.

(The author seems to think that any argument that involves appealing to obvious principles in support of a conclusion is just producing intuition pumping syllogisms—which ought not convince).

So far, I have demonstrated through my powers of logical deduction and bare assertion, that the existence of Rocky PROVES that Beth 2 rocks exist across all possible worlds.

So, the existence of Rocky gives us an infinitely high credence that Beth 2 rocks exist across all possible worlds, and this can easily be explained on theism, but no such explanation exists on atheism. Therefore, Rocky is infinitely strong evidence for God.

Second was the mindblowing wrongness. This is an objection that everyone thinks of when they first hear about SIA! Its wrongness has been explained in various places including, for instance, a published paper of mine, and this article. If you want to see the concise explanation, see the comment that I left on the article.

Anyway, I left a very long comment explaining just how wrong the author was. The response was more confusion, and then more confusion in response to a different article of mine. I eventually blocked them, for their comments simply annoyed me too much.

In an ideal world, people being wrong on the internet wouldn’t annoy me. Lots of people are wrong the world over, and I spend little time fuming about that. But somehow, the unique combination of overconfidence, ignorance, and longwindedness manages to be infuriating like little else.

As I say, this is a vice, neither good for me nor others. I suspect it is a vice had by many people (mostly men).

This is especially bad if you have a big blog. There are inevitably huge numbers of confused people, and you can’t respond to them all. The impending wall of confused comments beneath my articles leaves me itching to respond to them all, but stressed out because the process of responding is itself unpleasant and there are too many to reasonable address.

We successfulish bloggers are really the most oppressed group in society :).

As I say, this is clearly a vice. One should wish well to all, not want people to be annihilated by argument. As Ezekiel 18:23 says “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” My aim in this article is to explain, for those who have never felt the urge to fight on the internet, why outrage, and fighting on the internet is so addictive: it is because of the urge to destroy.