The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

Mz6 writes "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance," says Epley. The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers. Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time."

Comments

well, let's test it then

[Toreo asesino]

"I love Linux. It's great."

Serious or sarcastic? 10 euros for correct guess.

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[muyuubyou]

Was that sarcasm? or are you just being a smartass?








</sarcasm>

It's Vim's fault

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Actually, most flamewars are caused by Vim being much worse than Emacs.

Re:It's Vim's fault

[just_another_sean]

I'd chime in here but I'm still waiting for Emacs to load so I'm not sure which one I like better yet.

Re:It's Vim's fault

[ArsonSmith]

With statements like that your sarcasm is just too obvious. If you were to switch Emacs and Vim around you may have a better flame starter because there are some mutants out there that thing Emacs is better for some bizzar reason.

I honestly think they are trolls because I have never met someone who actually used Emacs for more than the 10 seconds it takes to find out how much it sucks.

The Illuminati

[ettlz]

Since the end of World War 2, a clandestine, shadowy organisation known colloquially as "The Illuminati" has been secretly instigating and orchestrating all major flamewars. Conflicts such as the Tannenbaum Crisis, and the ongoing battles at comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy were all sparked by this bunch as part of their twisted plan to control the world packet flow through decreasing the SNR on the Internet, and when it finally collapses, replace it with their evil commie New World Protocol. Fight the evil!

You know who they are.

They know who they are.

Don't you people ever read Indymedia? It's all in there!

Re:Paranoia in theory

[lbrandy]

Man, all these jokes about the difficulty in detecting sarcasm are so funny!

You're an idiot. :)

[PIPBoy3000]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

At work, I find myself peppering my e-mails with these damn cute smiley emoticons even though I feel like a teenage girl (which I'm not, even on the Internet). Sometimes I'll respond with a terse message that basically says "I fixed your damn user error", and then add a smiley face at the end.

I think it means that I'm secretly passive-agressive, trying to cover it up with cute little characters.

:P

Re:2 Rules:

[dJOEK]

I'm taking the 50/50 chance here that you are a Simpsons fan:

"There is no emoticon for what i am feeling!"