Intellectual Loneliness
<i>&quot;Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about.&quot;</i><p>From my experience I&#x27;ve found that to be true throughout my life. One of my best ways of learning is to be in discussion or debate with others but in practice it&#x27;s just so hard to achieve in practice. Both here on HN and elsewhere I often try to engage others in debate but to little or no avail, as discussion is often over before it&#x27;s hardly begun and everyone&#x27;s moved on to another topic.<p>For whatever reason, these days very few seem to want to expend the effort to get involved in long debates or intellectual arguments and I think that this is a terrible shame as we all need to hone our thoughts and ideas by bouncing them off others - and they don&#x27;t necessarily form immediately. Weeks may pass by the time we reformulate our thoughts in response to someone&#x27;s idea or proposition and by then it&#x27;s often impossible to respond at all let alone in any adequate way.<p>Nothing typifies this problem more than the comments to most websites - and posts to HN are no exception. Irrespective of the importance or relevance of a subject or topic, it&#x27;s all but discussed out and dead after 24 hours, and then after a week or two site moderators inevitably kill any further discussion by stopping new posts.<p>To me, closing further discussion on subjects is the antithesis of what the internet should be all about. Why closing ongoing discussion on websites is such a common practice has always been a mystery to me. (You&#x27;d think those running websites would want and welcome ongoing discussion but seemingly not.)<p>In many ways the internet has made intellectual loneliness even more acute, whilst it&#x27;s provided us with a fecundity of information and ideas upon which we may ponder it&#x27;s never really been good at letting us gain full intellectual enjoyment from those ideas through ongoing participation. Whilst we may participate in superficial ways through Twitter etc. we&#x27;re still lonely. For many, short term shallow participation isn&#x27;t a substitute for ongoing intellectual stimulation and fulfillment.