# Thoughts from the Elm community on Intentional Communication **URL:** \ **Category:** Community Building\ **Created:** [October 12, 2018, 12:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-from-the-elm-community-on-intentional-communication/99332 "2018-10-12T00:03:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 20
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2019, 3:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-from-the-elm-community-on-intentional-communication/99332/20 "2019-09-18T03:00:33Z")
> [@angus](#): > > Positional discussion (aka ‘argument’) on Twitter is largely pointless. You have to take it for what it is – a passing comment that’s based on a pretty random thought. That’s … what Twitter _is_. And it’s plenty fair to criticize that viewpoint, or I wouldn’t have bothered posting it. I certainly don’t post things on Twitter so that everyone can nod their head along and say “yep Jeff you’re right again boss excellent work keep it up”. > As I told people, I just don’t think about unions.. basically _ever_. Pretty much all I know about unions is [based on the movie Norma Rae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Rae) (which oddly enough a lot of millenials have never even seen, though it is quite famous and won academy awards). I certainly read all the replies (well most of them) and there were some good points in there, stuff I hadn’t considered, even beyond “it doesn’t have to be about the money”. **That is easily the most I have thought about unions in my entire life.** So if we go back to the original goal… > That’s not really the goal, though, to _completely_ change someone’s mind. In the ideal case: > > - your positions on issues become more nuanced over time as you gain a greater understanding of the complexity involved and realize how many tradeoffs and exceptions and different ways to view the issue there are. > - you can effectively argue the “opposite” site of an issue, even if you don’t agree with it, to prove you understand it. > > In the average political discussion, if you’ve added even one data point or narrative that gets to people think a little more about their position and appreciate the nuances of the situation better … that’s about the best you can ever do. > > Changing people’s minds? 😆 that takes decades. Often the whole world has to change around people before they’ll do that. … I still don’t really _agree_ that unions make much sense in tech as a whole, but I certainly appreciate the nuances a lot better. And I _definitely_ appreciate that the whole union topic is highly charged and contentious, way more than I knew. “Learning intent” doesn’t really make sense; you don’t know what you don’t know, pretty much by definition. But if you look at the platform as .. > Twitter is a place to share off the cuff, ephemeral thoughts that may or may not make sense .. versus .. > Twitter is for peering deeply into the soul of individual people through certified statements that go on their permanent record .. you’ll have a _very_ different experience. --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/thoughts-from-the-elm-community-on-intentional-communication/99332)._