Frank Kogan

In a well-functioning community, if someone doesn't have time to research a question or work out an idea, she can crowdsource the research, ask for critiques, inspire others to develop the concept. If someone misreads, others can correct the misreading. If someone's in repetition mode, others can prod her, or run with her ideas where she herself is staying stuck. If someone goes berserk we can intervene to talk that person down. If someone's getting bullied the crowd can subdue or isolate the bullying, can defend and encourage the person being bullied. My saying this may seem naïve in an online world of distraction and gamergate, and I understand where you might feel at risk at home or at work if everyone knew your truth. But strong communities don't need everybody to be in caution mode and don't need the truth to be squelched. The technology that puts us at risk also connects us. Colleagues and family and strangers can provide unexpected encouragement — so long as enough of them and enough of us see that something is at stake.***

Not that I'm within miles of expecting this to happen. My point is that it's a choice. We can't get a good conversation just by wishing, but we can by working towards one. Dialogue may be worse on Facebook, but you never thought it was all that good anywhere, did you.

I think you're overestimating fear as a motive, and underestimating inertia and obtuseness. As an experiment though, why don't you simply take your comment above and post it on Facebook? It's not really going to put you at risk among friends and family, or colleagues, or students. How would it? My guess is that what would make you hesitate isn't the fear of angry retaliation but rather that those who respond might want you to take time to explain yourself. And maybe your excellent bright friends might get a vague glimmer that you actually think their thinking is third rate — you do, don't you? even in better venues than Facebook, it is, isn't it? — and that you kind of expect them to try harder, just as if they were students or something.

A brief analogy here to Daniel Kahneman's idea of loss aversion: loss aversion isn't quite the same as risk aversion, since people are willing to take risks if they think they can regain what they've lost.**** But everything being equal — i.e., the odds — people will be twice as likely to act to prevent loss as they will to seize opportunities. There may be a biological basis for this: underestimating a threat is more immediately and catastrophically consequential than underestimating an opportunity. My feeling is that, at least hypothetically, we can outwait people's fear, reach the land of opportunity. We're more likely to persist in the face of our students' fears, though, than our friends' and inquisitors'. We're responsible for teaching our students, after all; whereas if we're getting along passably with our friends, why rock boats and upset apple carts? It's easier for friends to vote with their feet (or their fins, if we've rocked their boats). They can just leave. It's the hallway, after all.