#if it isn;t obvious: i have no idea the specifics on how the gods in dnd work. im making it up as i go lkjdfg

[noamuth]

19. Has your OC ever had an experience with the paranormal or the divine? What happened? Was it a one time encounter or is it a normal part of their life? Did they find it terrifying or thrilling?

Hmm...

I guess a good question would be, what counts as paranormal in a world where magic, mythical creatures and supernatural entities are just a fact of life?

"Paranormal" is a maybe for right now. There is a possibility in a place like the Underdark that he might have heard of the occasional wandering ghost--one such being the rare adventurer who manages to avoid a violent, bloody death, but becomes lost in the tunnels and succumbs to starvation or thirst, their ghost forced to continue their confused search for an exit while never able to stray far from their body.

And of course Clerics are no strangers to Necromancy, although typically the dead are saved to be used as battle fodder, so unlikely for Dalamus to see, given that he never left the city.

So the paranormal is.. unexpected, in the sense that Dalamus rarely, if ever, saw it in the city, but he knows it exists.

Divine, though... Divine is interesting.

A little context (my summary, anyway): Elves trance rather than sleep. Nothing says that they cannot sleep, but most things rather say they do not (or do not need to), and trance instead. It is understandable to prefer trance over sleep, but Dalamus is capable of sleeping. He just does not like it.

Most elves reincarnate after they die, and during their trances (which is more like self-guided meditation, a skill rather than a state of being) they relive memories of their past life/lives. These past memories peter off at about age 100, at which point the elf is considered socially to be an adult and their "dreams" become about their current life and memories.

But Drow do not seem to get these past memories in their trances, and instead see nothing, or the occasional "dream". Lolthite drow look for signs from Lolth in these "dreams" to guide them. Whether they are actually messages or signs from Lolth probably depends on whether the particular Drow has the favor of Lolth, such as Priestesses.

Lolth has only ever affected Dalamus' dreams superficially, a sort of presence brushing against his subconscious, likely incidentally rather than any purposeful contact, being that he just happens to be in close proximity with other loyal Lolthites who Lolth might rather influence. But it was enough for Dalamus to now notice the absence of it on the Surface, and out of desperation he continues to seek out signs of Lolth in his "dreams". It is very unsettling for him, too quiet. It feels like abandonment. (Because it is).

The other brush with the divine is something Dalamus is not even aware of, himself. But it came in the form of glowing, silver moths which guided him to the final passage out of the Underdark, and again visited him one night in the forest when he felt crushingly alone. Eilistraee prefers not to interfere directly or deprive anyone of their right to choose their own path, but tries to help lost Drow find safety.

[laboratorium2d]

The Canons of Trump

For obvious reasons, I have been following the news, and the news as refracted through social media, very closely since mid-spring. Unavoidably, this has meant that I have been subjected to a much higher than usual dose of Trump nonsense, and nonsense Trump takes. He says and does stupid and terrible things on a near-constant basis, which are then surrounded and amplified by a fog of overinterpretation. There is much less there there than meets the eye.

Over the last four painful years, I have developed some rules of thumb for making sense of Trump news. Most of them are designed to keep me from overthinking things. I offer them up in the spirit of helping us make it to November, and to help in the process of driving Trump and Trumpism from public life.

Trump Speaks Only to His Base

"MAGA loves the black people" is not meant to persuade African-Americans that they should be Trump supporters. It is meant to persuade Trump supporters that they are not racist. The optics of driving off peaceful protesters with tear gas are not bad, in his view, because his supporters want peaceful protesters driven off with tear gas. Suspend all your normal reactions as a citizen or as a human being; they are not a useful guide to how he and his base think. Corollary: when Trump talks about suburbs under siege, remind yourself that this is what people who don't live in suburbs think people who do are afraid of.

Dominance Politics

Josh Marshall: "[T]he entirety of Trump’s political message is dominance politics. ... Trump attacks, others comply and submit." David Auerbach: "[F]or him, the only acceptable outcome is the one where he wins and you get screwed. ... Trump always defects because he wants to maximize how much worse you do than him--not because he wants to maximize his own payoff." Trump always pushes the button.

The Cruelty Is the Point

Trump's policies are unnecessarily cruel, not by accident but intentionally. Tearing migrant children from their parents is his signature policy, precisely because it is so terrible. Trump's natural meanness is a perfect fit for supporters who want their government to violate human rights. (Source: Adam Serwer)

The Stupidity Is Also the Point

Most Americans are not idiots. But most Americans devote very little attention to politics. Nuking hurricanes and injecting bleach are astonishingly terrible ideas. But they sound plausible enough to someone who is barely listening. Trump is an idiot savant of political communication because his limited intelligence matches many people's limited attention. His inability to formulate complex thoughts comes across as authenticity.

Trump's Razor

Josh Marshall: "[T]he stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts" is probably correct. Too many examples to list, but nothing tops, "If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any." Trump doesn't believe that tests make him look bad by finding cases; he believes that tests make him look bad by causing cases.

Ten Minute Increments

Maggie Haberman: "He will say whatever he has to say to get through ten minute increments of time." Trump does not think ahead. There is no long-term plan when he speaks. He likes rallies where he can riff and ramble for as long as he likes. He likes friendly interviews. In any other situation, when he is being pressed for any reason, he will say anything that comes to mind that seems like it will make the immediate problem go away. His notorious word salad is one coping mechanism; so is making big but impossibly vague promises.

Trump Is a They, Not an It

Kenneth Shepsle's "Congress is a 'They,' Not an 'It'" argues that it is a category mistake to attribute intentions to a multi-member body. Legislators voting for a bill may not share the same purpose, or even the same understanding of what it does. Reader, I am here to tell you that the same thing is true of the shambling mess of rage, impulses, and distractions that is Donald Trump. A Trump tweet might reflect his own deliberations, but just as often is something he saw on Fox, or someone said to him on the phone, or something that Dan Scavino wrote.

From God to Fox to Trump

There is a close correlation between whatever is on Fox News and what Trump says and tweets, often in real time. If something seems like a non sequitur, look for a source upstream.

Trump is Chaff

Leon Wolf: "Donald Trump is the political equivalent of chaff, a billion shiny objects all floating through the sky at once, ephemeral, practically without substance, serving almost exclusively to distract from more important things – yet nonetheless completely impossible to ignore."

Low-Pass Filter

A low-pass filter blocks signals that change quickly, only significant long-term changes get through. This is the opposite of how the press and social media work. Social media amplify things that are already being shared widely right now, and journalists compete online by trying to be first. But most Trump tweets, quotes, and leaks are noise. It's okay to ignore the latest bit of chaff; anything important enough to pay serious attention to will be repeated, many many times.

Trump Doesn't Want to Be President, He Wants to Be King

Trump's vision of leadership isn't so much authoritarian as medieval. He wants people to bow down and praise his royal splendor, his brilliance, his feats of prowess. He doesn't have a cabinet or political allies; he has courtiers and nobles. He doesn't understand or care how bureaucracy works, even when he would be far more effective working through it. His daily routines are straight out of Hilary Mantel's portrait of Henry VIII.

Toddler in Chief

Daniel Drezner: "I'll believe that Trump is growing into the presidency when his staff stops talking about him like a toddler." Drezner (now in book form) gets at two points. First, Trump behaves like an ill-behaved small child: bad temper, poor impulse control, short attention span, demands for praise, constant need to be the center of attention. Second, his staff see their job as nannies.

The White House is a They, not an It

Jay Rosen: "There is no White House. Not in the sense that journalists have always used that term. It's just Trump— and people who work in the building. That they are reading from the same page cannot be assumed. The words, 'the White House' are still in use, but they have no clear referent." Other administrations worked hard to send a unified message. Not this one. Trump doesn't even tell his own staff clearly what his policies are, and he frequently changes his mind, so the presumption that a statement from a White House official--even from Trump himself--reflects official policy does not hold.

Working Toward Trump

Historian Ian Kershaw observed that (especially in contrast to the workaholic Stalin) Hitler was just about the last person you would expect to be able to lead a bureaucracy capable of waging a world war and carrying out the mass murder of six million. He was lazy, easily bored, and cultivated administrative chaos. Instead of waiting for clear and specific orders, his supporters "worked toward the Fuhrer": they tried to anticipate policies he would approve of. (More detail here.)

Dignity Wraiths

Josh Marshall: "Rosenstein’s public reputation, which was formidable, has been destroyed. He now joins a legion of Trump Dignity Wraiths, men and women (though mainly men) of once vaunted reputations or at least public prestige who have been reduced to mere husks of their former selves after crossing the Trump Dignity Loss Event Horizon." Corollary by Josh Barro: "[Trump] has stripped only the dignity from people who surrendered it willingly."

To the Cornfield

The Twilight Zone: "They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because, once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror." Trump takes every revenge he can on those who criticize or undercut him. His underlings live in fear of his displeasure, praise him elaborately in public, and generally abase themselves to avoid being sent to the political cornfield. As a result ...

The Republican Party is a Personality Cult

The phrase is Ezra Klein's, but William Saletan said it first: "Donald Trump is the GOP’s warlord. The Republican Party is officially a failed state." On the one hand, Trump is the GOP: Never Trumpers and Trump critics have been effectively sidelined and deligitimized as not real Republicans. On the other hand, the GOP is Trump: the official 2020 platform of the Republican Party is, in its entirety, "the President’s America-first agenda."

[snarktheater]

Comic Book review — Wonder Woman Rebirth

Happy Wonder Woman Day! I wish I could be talking about the new Wonder Woman movie, but since I'm not getting it in theaters for a couple more weeks, I have to resort to a back-up solution.

Luckily, I mentioned at the end of last year that I'd been reading a lot of comics, especially Wonder Woman comics. And with the completion of the fourth story arc in the Wonder Woman run since the DC Rebirth started, I feel like it's a pretty good time to look back at what the comic has been about, what it's done, and why I love it so much.

First of all: I'm still far from a massive comic book aficionado. I know about comics because I basically live on the Internet (and also, let's face it, because of Linkara), but I'm not really following either the evolution of the DC Universe or the Marvel comic universe. So I'm always happier to catch a series as it starts, especially if it starts anew.

The Wonder Woman Rebirth fits that bill. Part of the DC Rebirth initiative that started a year ago, which didn't fully reboot the universe but did force a clean slate (and some retcons) on most of the properties, it's a series that clearly has roots somewhere, but is written to be accessible to new readers. Like me. Well, kind of. I did read part of the Gaile Simone run before this one, but there's been a universe reboot between the two, so I think it doesn't count anyway.

Another thing: I said it's the fourth story arc, but the comic was actually published with two parallel story arcs at once until now, and all four have built up towards a single storyline.

So we have four story arcs. On the present-day side of things, we have the aptly-named "The Lies" and "The Truth". And in the past, we have "Year One" and "Godwatch". The present-day storylines are more intricately tied together, while the past storyline are independent from each other and mostly connect to the concurrently-running story…to an extent.

The Lies and The Truth are, as the naming scheme implies, two facets of the same story. Diana realizes that something's wrong as her past and memories become confused as a result of the DC Rebirth events, and her investigation leads her to uncover…well, a lie. A pretty big one. Then comes The Truth, where she tries to uncover…well, what the truth really is. Wow, am I being vague with this recap. But really, there's little way of explaining it beyond that.

Year One, meanwhile, follows Diana's first year as Wonder Woman, complete with Steve Trevor crashing on Themyscira and Diana leaving to the "world of men" with him, knowing that she can never return. Of course she does this with a reason: signs have appeared that Ares, the god of war, had escaped from his prison, and Diana must stop him.

Godwatch, finally, follows the backstory of, well, Godwatch, an antagonistic organization that appears near the end of The Lies and is our primary villain throughout The Truth. The comics still feature Diana, of course, but she's not aware of who's pulling the strings of the fights she's involved in. This may make this story arc seem trivial, but it it not.

Why do I love this four-part, twenty-four issues story? Well, on the surface, it's just really well-crafted. The plots intertwine, setups are made that pay off long afterwards and feel natural and no element feels out of place in hindsight. The world surrounding the Amazons is built with precision and with a fresh take that divorces them from Greek culture specifically and gives them a more universal edge. The main characters are fleshed-out and well-rounded, featuring Diana and Steve, naturally, but also Etta Candy, reimagined from Steve's assistant with an unrequited crush to his superior officer (on top of being a black woman, which I understand is the case since the New 52 reboot), Barbara Ann Minerva, the villainous "Cheetah" being now a scientist with a fascination for the myth of the Amazons and a feminist streak…

…and Veronica Cale, the head of Godwatch, who has a troubled past of her own and is really just trying her best. Plus, a few more characters to round out the cast (and of course, a bunch of Amazons in the early issues who stay very relevant afterwards, in spite of everything).

But it's not just that it's a well-crafted story. This run has themes, and they're good, and I want to talk about them. And I'll split it in two broad categories for the sake of structure

Queer and feminist themes

I'll start with this one because…well, it's more incidental. Although it's really important too, don't get me wrong. But it's more…there, rather than something the story is trying to make a point about.

And really, it's long overdue. Diana comes from a society of only women. She's the most famous superheroine in existence. If anyone's story should primarily focus on women (and it does, if you look at my list of protagonists) and feature some pretty major queer women, it's this one.

And this series delivers on that front, too. Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons calls her general Philippus "my love", Etta Candy and Barbara Ann "Cheetah" Minerva are implied to be a couple when the latter isn't busy being a monstrous demigod, villain Veronica Cale and her associate Adrianna are definitely intimate and Veronica's daughter Isadore "has no father"…it's all there. And of course, there is Diana herself:

Diana of Themyscira is canon bi in this series. And I do mean bi, since she also has a thing with Steve Trevor and apparently a romantic past with Superman, although that one I think is due to earlier comics that we get the sense the writers here would have happily done away with.

And the greatest thing (especially considering the writer is male) is that all this representation of queer women is done without a single objectifying scene of any of these women. The one more thing I could ask for at this point are trans Amazons, really. But still, that's some giant steps forward.

It's not just queer representation. The story, as I mentioned, is focused primarily on women. Diana's gang includes herself, Steve, Etta and Barbara Ann, and the latter is the first she can even talk to outside of Themyscira, while Etta is definitely her closest friend. The first antagonist of The Lies is Urzkartaga, the god who cursed Barbara Ann to be Cheetah, and he's a literal misogynistic god with a cult of literal misogynists. So that's one obvious message there.

Also—and I'd be remiss to mention it—that head of that cult, Cadulo, gives us my favorite Steve Trevor moment.

So, you know, no big deal. Let's just have every single protagonist in the series denounce aspects of the patriarchy and fight literal misogynists.

The bigger antagonist of the entire story arc, Veronica Cale, is on the opposite end, in that she's humanized thanks to the Godwatch prequel stories and given motive for standing against Wonder Woman (spoiler: she's more or less coerced). Bonus point since, when the coercion is lifted, she immediately stands down instead of going on being evil for no reason, which I almost expected to happen but never did.

And you also have some racial inclusiveness. On top of Etta, as I mentioned, the Amazons are moved out of Greece and are now multicultural, and a few prominent figures (like Philippus, whom I already mentioned, and a woman who appears to be the Amazons' chief scientist). I'm not going to say it's the most balanced ratio I've seen (because…it's not), but considering how many "iconic" characters we're dealing with here, I think the books are faring remarkably.

Truth and compassion

Linkara defines Wonder Woman as the "spirit of Truth", and I think that's the best way to describe her. I realize that sounds like a meaningless, pompous title, but it actually captures what she's about fairly well.

Outside of the obvious (her lasso makes people tell the truth), the idea of Wonder Woman as the spirit of truth is also well explained in her post-Crisis on Infinite Earth backstory (which is also shown in that video I just linked), where one of the powers she received is to "open men's hearts". Which, no, isn't about romance—I think.

It's truth, but it's also all that derives from it. Above all, something I think is best explained in the recent annual issue of this very series:

Understanding. And with it, empathy and compassion. Which defines Wonder Woman's heroism. To me, the Big Three of DC's universe, at their best-written, convey very identifiable and humanist messages (in the classic sense of the word, not in the "shouldn't feminism be called humanism if it's about equality?" nonsense).

Batman is the heroism humanity can achieve (and note that I'm not talking about edgelord Batman here like in Batman v Superman, I'm talking about the guy who adopts a whole gaggle of children because he can't see anyone else grow up alone like he did), through wits and resourcefulness (and, admittedly, money). Superman is the value of humanity; what makes a god-like being like him heroic is that he is human and understands humans (again, not something we see in the Snyderverse much), and cares about them. And Wonder Woman is the in-between, the demigod (not necessarily in-universe) who embodies the best values of what humanity can be.

There's obviously some intersection, and probably also better ways to phrase it (let's be real, there's probably an essay's worth of discussion in what I just said in a paragraph), but that's the gist of it.

A few very popular frames from Wonder Woman are the one that shows Batman could never identify a weakness for her, and another where she says she doesn't have a rogue's gallery like Batman and Superman because "when I deal with them, I deal with them". Both of these are cool and badass, but they omit the reason why both of these things are true (in theory if not always in execution, because, again, inconsistent writers): her primary weapon is compassion and understanding. At her best, she solves the problem that drove her villains to villainy in the first place (which is exactly what she does in this series with Barbara Ann as Cheetah), and only resorts to force as the final resort, like with Urzkartaga. And that brings us to the resolution of this story.

Minor spoilers in the next few paragraphs.

It turns out that the big villain behind everything Diana had faced throughout this story wasn't Ares as she thought—he never even left his prison on Themyscira. Instead, it's his sons, Deimos and Phobos (terror and panic), who want to usurp Ares as the god of war. See, when Ares was bound to his prison, he was allowed to see the madness that war brings, so he doesn't really want to be released.

So Diana has to stop Phobos and Deimos, literal gods, from killing their dads. How does she do that?

Yup.

End of the spoilers.

It's the same thing with Veronica Cale, though I won't go into details over why. Diana deals with her enemies by understanding them. Even Urzkartaga is defeated through Diana's empathy, not for him, but for his victims.

On a greater level, the final battle of the story sends a powerful message: that truth, understanding and compassion are greater than fear, anger and violence. They are far more powerful tools to solve a problem. And that's a pretty powerful message to send, especially in a superhero comic.

And that's what Wonder Woman being the spirit of Truth means to me, why I love this comic series, and incidentally, why she's my favorite superhero across the board. Oh, yeah, did I mention that she's my favorite superhero? I might have wanted to start with that.

Happy Wonder Woman day, everyone. And now I'll go back to anxiously waiting until I can see the movie, while hoping very, very hard that I won't be disappointed by it. But if I am, I'll know I can go back to these comics to find the heroine I love.

Also, if you're interested in checking these out for yourselves (and you absolutely should), Comixology is currently having a Wonder Woman Day sale until June 5, which includes the first seven issues of this series, so go take advantage of that!

[vishers]

I watched The Hard Parts of Open Source by Evan Czaplicki not too long ago and my socks were blown right to the moon! I had never heard of Czaplicki before (although I have met a couple of Elm enthusiasts) and I'm really wishing at this point that I'd come across him sooner.

Czaplicki's engaging, humble, and winsome throughout. I feel like it's somewhat rare for me to come across a talk like this and by the end of it really feel like I've found someone who could legitimately be a role model for me. He wants to solve hard problems in tech but he doesn't want to beat people over the head. He thinks he has a good way to solve something and he's OK if you think you have something better. And more than that he wants to engage with you over your ideas kindly and generously, understanding that you likely came to your conclusions because you're solving for different constraints than him, not because you're a cotton-headed ninny muggins!

The talk itself is a sweeping engagement with techno-social realities that I think is relevant far outside of the purported subject area ("Open Source Communities And The Challenges They Face"). We live in extraordinarily polarized times. Online communities dial all our instincts up to 11 and let them loose upon anonymized but still oh-so-human victims. We need something that will help course-correct the way we deal with each other, and quite frankly the problem isn't largely how we deal with each other in person but how we deal with each other online, whether in an Open Source Community or Facebook Group.

The thesis of the talk, not to bury the lead, is that exactly that. Online spaces are "viral" by design. They seek to evoke the most extreme of our feelings constantly so that we can't help but feel the need to return to them all the time. The barrier to entry back into them is in most our pockets and those little moments of boredom can be translated into delivering the perfect rebuttal back to that idiotic curmudgeon DenverCoder9. This viral design employees the most sophisticated behavioral technology on the planet to ensure our engagement and the parties responsible for designing them have a deep distrust for regulatory forces of any kind. Simply put, there isn't an effective countervailing force out there to fight this. So Czaplicki suggests that at least in the spaces we engage in we might be able to employ some of the same behavior technologies to alter the way we engage with each other at least in those areas and hopefully find some way to counter the use of these technologies for nefarious purposes (like rigging elections).

An Outline Of The Talk

The talk as a whole is structure liked so:

Open Source communities are emotionally taxing, especially on the creators of the thing being gathered around who are often secondarily in charge of them. Czaplicki believes this is because of certain normative behaviors that exist in Open Source communities (or online communities generally).

Czaplicki has noticed that this problems seems to be almost unique to online spaces and believes that this can be traced back to two fundamental emphases in cyber culture:

Absolute freedom is an unambiguous good. Any attempt at control must be met with at least suspicion if not outright hostility.

Engagement has arisen as the most obvious profit center for businesses, and incredibly effective behavior technology has emerged to make engagement something possible to manipulate.

These two points are intertwined. Czaplicki believes that Engagement is unambiguously controversial but that the primary tools we have for changing technical realities all emphasize Freedom over all else and so we don't have an effective toolset with which to fight Engagement.

The thesis of the talk, then, is that Online spaces are viral by design, ratcheting all human responses to max constantly. They're design this way because doing so because it makes a profit (As MLK said: "Every condition exists because someone profits by its existence.") and making a profit is the natural end of unrestrained Freedom.

But the very tools being used to control us (Behavioral Technology as elucidated by Nudge) could be used to construct online spaces that are as pleasant to be a part of as can be expected of diverse communal spaces.

He calls this Intentional Communication and takes the time to outline quite a few pragmatic suggestions to the design of online spaces that he thinks would help to Nudge interactions in the right direction.

Some More Detail About Specific Points

Open Source Community/Online Spaces Anti-Patterns

In terms what makes Open Source Communities difficult, he outlines some painfully familiar [[][anti-patterns]].

"Why don't you just…"

This is the all too familiar chime in from the peanut gallery, generally by someone fresh to the project, who just can't understand why this behavior or that design decision was made the way it was. They're generally convinced that in the 5 minutes they've been here they've seen the obvious solution and can't understand why it wasn't done 4 1/2 minutes ago.

Part of the problem this makes for maintainers is that in reality every one of these comments needs a careful, measured, and friendly response, or you'll immediately be labeled as a jerk. Documentation can be helpful on this point but there's only so much you can write to anticipate every new complaint. On even moderately successful projects the rate of these suggestions coming is also likely to overwhelm the paltry volunteer force you have built up around you, especially if you didn't take the time to painstakingly document every single design decision you made or how you've prioritized your time.

"On whose authority?"

The title of this section comes directly from a post written to the Clojure community from someone who was "Done with Clojure", at least in part because it's seen as a 'closed' language with almost all control over it's development and direction directly in the hands of its original creator, Rich Hickey. The anti-pattern is trying to capture the notion that "authority" is generally viewed as suspicious and in most cases probably inhibiting. Individual empowerment to the ends the individual desires to be empowered to is the ultimate goal of technology in this worldview.

"All discussion is constructive"

In other words, flat is better and tone doesn't matter. This is so consistent in online spaces (and more technical organic spaces as well). The idea that it's the responsibility of the listener to interpret the message rather and respond based on the pure logical content rather than the responsibility of the speaker to be careful about how they word things and present the information in a way that's sensitive to all of the concerns present in the moment, whether factual or sentimental.

More than that it's about the idea that everyone deserves a seat at the table all the time and that they can express themselves however they see fit, and that it's our responsibility to hammer at our opponents until they cry 'yield' at us and admit that we're right (or we do so instead).

The quote I loved here is:

Constructive discussion is about mutual understanding, rather than mutual agreement.

I want that to be part of my life all the time. Recognizing that discussion is first and always about mutual understanding and only potentially about agreement is powerful to me.

Who fears regulation and why do they fear it?

Czaplicki traces a really interesting thread with the help of a documentary called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and a book called From Counterculture to Cyberculture to try to explain why online spaces in particular have been so rife with these sorts of anti-patterns. The idea is that, in both a New Age sense and a technical sense, we have become as gods in our power to manipulate the environment and each other to accomplish the ends we wish to. Old forms of power like Governments, Religions, and Societies have failed to produce the utopia we wish to live in, but we now, through the technology, have the power to create that utopia ourselves, and will do so digitally. But in order to do so, the one thing that cannot be violated is our Freedom. Freedom is the right by which we may use technology to shape our future in the way we see fit. Any controls placed upon us (especially controls by the failed hierarchical structures) will inhibit that and thus must be resisted.

This emphasis on Freedom is evident in every major online space I can think of. Community controls are just now starting to be in vogue but they're still seen largely as impediments by many and as inadequate by others. And still the companies putting them in place seem reluctant for the most part. This is in part because of the emphasis on Engagement as a profit center for companies but also because of the participants beliefs that we can shape our future only when we have total control.

Let's talk, then, about Intentional Communication and how it could be a tool to make more effective online spaces.

What Is Intentional Communication?

The idea of intentional communication is essentially the realization that the same tools that have been used to increase engagement for the purposes of selling things could instead be used to encourage us to communicate in more productive ways.

For instance in online conversations in open source communities conversations could open with a declaration of intent that suggested to the person what kinds of communication are appropriate here. Are you here to learn? If you are, what's your background? How long have you been using Elm? What other languages do you know? Once you've answered that then you can ask your question and since you've provided a good deal of context a question that could be easily misinterpreted without that can now be understood.

Then, when answering the question the person answering can likewise be guided. They can be encouraged to restate the question, give their answer, and provide citations. They can be encouraged to thank the questioner as well. This can go in a cycle until both indicate that they're satisfied.

I love the idea that in this cycle the concept of 'Yelling angrily' isn't reachable.

You also don't have to forbid free self-expression either. You just need to create a context for that.

This idea can then be extended to other contexts. You can apply deescalation nudges like encouraging people to not respond too rapidly. You can apply writing style nudges like checking for wordiness. You can protect against communities being dominated by a few individuals by throttling posts by the same person. You can allow people to react to contributions in more productive ways by giving them more options regarding how to react than just a thumbs up or thumbs down.

My Takeaways

As I said in the beginning, this talk really blew me away. I got every book from the reading list from my library and devoured them. I want to do something to further the development of Intentional Communication. I think our ability to communicate with each other is a major crisis in our times. The Internet has made this worse, not better. Unbounded economic growth targets have united with unprecedented behavioral technology to produce a society that's constantly simmering just below the boiling point. I don't know where I'll go with this but at the very least I think more people need to engage with this.