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Comment by ezekg | Hacker News Reader

People don't know how to disagree anymore. It's disheartening, because I like a good disagreement and the deep debates that can come out of them ... that is, as long as the conversation is void of emotional temper-tantrums (and in a lot of cases these days, fear of cancel-culture.)

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On the internet, anyone can drop in and out of any conversation they want. Combine that concept with anonymity/the ability to disparage people you will never meet, and you've got a recipe for disagreements starting from positions of extreme toxicity.

I agree with you, but this is where it's worth pointing out that really ugly conversations occur on Facebook between people who are clearly identifiable and in many cases acquaintances.

What I find interesting is that Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936 covering this topic. Maybe that was the "beginning of the trend"... not really sure.

There needs to be trust for this. And there is always a power dynamic at play. Manager to employee. Or even employee to employee where one will eventually get promoted above the other.

Its actually really hard to agree to disagree. You need to have a situation where each person has the same propensity to concede an argument. Like a code review - just do what the other person suggests instead of arguing about it if it really doesn’t matter that much.

Idk if people ever disagreed politely? After all they had wars in the past. And feuds. And drunken brawls.

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