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The New Digital Literacy
Once upon a time winning arguments was considered important. It's why rich and powerful people sent their children to good schools to learn rhetoric and debate. The ability not only to understand the world but to formulate and present a good account, a good argument, or spot obvious bullshit, are all empowering life-skills.
That world is disappearing. We call it "post truth" or the "epistemic crisis". Reasoned arguments are being displaced by emotional assaults, partly due to modern politics, plummeting education and now the effects of "AI" which undermine reasoning.
It is devastating because few of us have a naturally high emotional intelligence. It takes a long time and lots of human interaction to build emotional intelligence, yet children experience ever less exposure to reality.
On the Internet and mass media is it's rare to find arguments based on evidence and reason since we've created soundbite discourse. We don't have the attention span any more. I have to write in short sentences. Even for intelligent readers. I accept that few people will read this essay to its end.
Our journey to trash discourse passed through through several phases in my memory. In the 80s the wittiest rejoinder won the argument regardless of truth content. In the 90s it was the snarkiest, most sarcastic and ironic interlocutor who claimed the cup. After 2000 the person claiming the moral high ground triumphed. After 2010 it was whoever painted themselves the greater victim or identified with the least privileged "intersection". Since 2020, in the Trump era it's simply whoever can be most openly fucking rude to their opponent. Rarely has truth or fact played much of a part.
Most of the values I was taught about truth, with regard to science and law - not even the moral content but basic engineering safety and common good - have vanished in this century. As we go into the next decade I notice discourse being dominated by those who can act the most sinister, creepy and scary.