My Twitter-Discussion-Deescalation Policy

Twitter is great, and Twitter is terrible. While it enables getting in contact and starting loose discussions with a great number of people, and while it has certainly helped me broaden my perspectives and understanding of many topics, it also has a lot of downsides.

Most importantly, Twitter discussions, due to their immediacy of feedback and the fact that everybody is busy, often end up in shouting matches where "learning from each other while discussing a topic" (the actual purpose of a discussion) is forgotten.

Most importantly: Twitter can be very repetitive, and it can be very difficult to convey the context for complex topics - and nobody has time to repeat all the context in each Twitter discussion.

Today, I am recovering from a migraine attack that coincided with my kid having a cranky night, and as a result, I cut a few Twitter discussions short. The people on the receiving end of this "short-cutting" may rightly feel slighted, so I am writing this blog post in preparation for future similar situations.

There are some topics (often related to security or economics) about which I have thought for a reasonably long time. Particularly for security, we're talking about a few decades of hands-on experience with a fairly obsessive work on the topic, both on the theoretical and on the practical side. Rooted in this experience, I sometimes make statements on Twitter. These statements may be in conflict with what other people (you?) may think, and we may engage in a discussion. It is possible, though, that we will reach a point in the discussion where my feeling is "oh, in order to convey my point, I'd now need to spend 25 minutes conveying the context necessary for my point, and I only have a few hours in my day after I deduct sleep and other obligations".

At this point, I need to make a judgement call: Do I invest that time? I also need to make the call without having the most important context: Does the other side care about understanding me at all?

So if we end up in a Twitter discussion, and I reply to you with a link to this blog post at some point, please understand: I have run out of time to spend on this Twitter thread, and I need to cut the discussion short because conveying the necessary context is too time consuming without knowing that this is actually desired, and that our discussion is a mutual learning exercise.

If you very much care about the topic, and about understanding the perspective I have, I will happily schedule a 25-minute video call to discuss in person, and will obviously make an effort to understand your perspective, too. My DM's are open, ping me and I will send you a calendly link.