Why do I post about controversial topics?

[sparr]

Why did you post that thing? Why do you keep posting stuff like that? What do you expect to get out of this post? What are your goals in this discussion? … I get these questions a lot. Not as often as I’d like, but still often enough that answering them gets a little repetitive from my point of view. Here’s an attempt to do this once and for all, so I can link back to it the next hundred times I’m asked. I’m sure there are at least a few reasons I’ve thought of before but are not coming to mind right now, or motivations I have that I’m not yet aware of. I’ll attempt to update this post in the future, but for now I think this is a pretty thorough answer to the question.

I post about controversial topics in an attempt to ...

Figure out the appropriate way to live my life and make decisions that affect others. Engaging on these topics with other people can expose me to information I didn’t have, or lines of reasoning I didn’t or wouldn’t think of on my own, and let me take advantage of the capabilities and experience of many people other than myself. Explaining my position and reasoning gives an opportunity for other people to poke holes in it or to reinforce it with new information, supporting or dissenting arguments, etc.

Know how certain subsets of my social circles and society at large feel about these topics. Sometimes I might want to emulate those around me, because I haven’t reached my own conclusion or because the weight of my conclusion is less than some other more immediately pressing factor. Other times I just want to be better able to predict how groups of people are going to act and respond.

Discover when I am encountering cognitive dissonance that I haven’t previously noticed. I want it brough to my attention so that I can ferret out the root and eliminate it, usually by changing one of the two or more behaviors or thought patterns that are in contradiction.

Understand how specific people around me feel and think and reason about these topics. This is useful insight for building relationships, or valuable motivation for curtailing or ending them. It also informs decisions on whose insight to heed or ignore on other topics, by demonstrating who has various sorts of experience, reasoning abilities, and communication skills.

Enable other people, around me and otherwise, to know all of those same things above, about each other and about me. Although most of them can’t or won’t put most of it to effective use, some can, and most can use at least some of it. I’d like for people to be better equipped to make decisions about important things, which tend to overlap with controversial things. In particular, many people believe that most other people around them agree with their position(s) on religion, ethics, politics, consent, etc, and I want to give them a[nother] chance to realize when that belief is inaccurate.

Find parallels between topics that are not obviously related, for the purpose of attempting to better reason about one by taking advantage of time, thought, effort, and experiences related to the other.

Increase awareness of these topics as things worthy of consideration at all. Many people will go their whole life without seriously considering whether their actions are racist or sexist, whether the politician they voted for is helping or hurting them and/or their neighbors, etc. Before they can make better decisions about these things they need to confront the need to make decisions about them at all.

Convince some other people to change their minds in ways that make the world a better place.

Engage in deep conversation with people on important topics. Posts about puppies and recipes and sunsets do not lead to engaging intellectual stimulation, or even much interaction at all. Posts about projects occasionally yield conversation, less often anything of substance. A post about an important scientific breakthrough or a major world event can occasionally yield plenty of substance, but will usually fall flat, presumably because people are already having those discussions in the other hundred similar posts around the same time. On the other hand, a post about politics or racism or sexism or consent will motivate dozens of people or more to put energy into describing and discussing at length their position, mine, and others’. I want to talk to you, person who is reading this post and the ones it’s about, and for the most part these posts are the only place you seem to want to talk to me. Why is that?