I largely agree, though perhaps not with the twist at the end.<p>In my opinion, someone with a contrarian view has an added responsibility: the responsibility of one who possesses more truth than others, since that is what having a minority view feels like (and maybe is). One has a duty to consider others&#x27; difficulty in hearing that truth. If you use the truth as a weapon, you trigger resistance and discredit it, which deprives others of it for longer. This harms them and sets back the cause of the truth, even while expressing it. The greater the truth, the more harm in that case.<p>When one knows one&#x27;s view is unpopular there&#x27;s a temptation to be pre-emptively defensive. One laces comments with snark, ridicules the conventional, and so on, as a way to flip the dullards the bird in advance, since you know they will reject your truth anyhow. It&#x27;s like a Dostoevsky character who can&#x27;t help tweaking the nose of the person he&#x27;s talking to. Some even cultivate the art of packing as much snark into their language as possible, having given up on persuasion. I think it&#x27;s fear of being rejected that causes it, plus a desire to show off: see what a contrarian I am.<p>What happens of course is that people react badly to being provoked, except for a few who identify with your side and join in the provoking. To us this feels like the dullards rejecting the truth; to them it feels like we&#x27;re fanatics and assholes. Then we get a loop of anger and noise. Such discussions are all the same and learning is no longer possible.<p>The principle that the one who sees more (or thinks he does) has more responsibility is a way of keeping open a discussion in which people can still learn things and figure the truth out together. When one isn&#x27;t up to this responsibility, maybe one should be silent until one is, not as a matter of censorship but of continence.