What’s on your mind?

"@Michael I apologize. I erroneously believed you were equivocating about the meanings of "projection" and "prediction". I can see now you were being precise instead. I believed you to be misinformed, but now I can see that your position is highly nuanced. I can also see that you care about the environment. However, I feel I was unfairly labeled a troll. It's true that I do troll social media looking for writing prompts. However, I try to keep my comments polite, but admit to occasional snark. In this case, I addressed my assumptions about a person without actually knowing the person. I'll pick up the rest of what I have to say on my blog."

 That's the trouble with social media. You're really talking to people you don't know. It's easy to fall into tribalistic tendencies. And that's what people seem to be doing. Social media is like high school all over again. Thoughts tend not to be addressed at deep levels, and people fall into habits of using cheap shots and poor arguments. An article in Scientific American discussed the difference between arguing to win and arguing to collaborate. It's the first type of argument that has taken over social media.

I find myself wondering what goes on in people's minds. I try to be objective but what I believe to be true, other people believe to be false. I know why I believe those things to be true, but I can't understand why others don't come to the same conclusions that I do. I suspect that they are being misled. I even suspect a certain social classes or political groups of misleading people. Am I a conspiracy theorist? I don't think so. But, I haven't found any other explanation, so I'm still looking. I realize now that I' won't learn how people think on social media. Here, the desire to belong to a group, to impress others, to be clever or cruel, seems to rule.