I think people are genuinely retarded. Dip fed dopamine hits by careful programming, turned into mindless yes-men by MSM. Psychological science has advanced to the extent that programming people to behave in predictable ways is now an engineering exercise.

In old fashioned debate, the idea wasn't to 'win', but to come to a deeper understanding of the issue. People would regularly argue the opposite position to the one they held, just to see where it took them. That's a method I take to heart, and I try and see / understand issues from many points of view. The end result is I become hyper aware of the flaws in any argument, the 'holes' in data or logic that I instinctively avoid when arguing the point.

But that's not what we are taught anymore. We are taught to shout down, to quote the talking heads and to gang up. Whoever shouts the approved ideas the loudest wins.

So tiresome, and the death of our civilisation, as it infests science.

But rewind to 1995 and you are about right. When Unis were on Karen and Janet, and AoL hadn't yet made the 'net accessible by any fuckwit