Online, nobody is a "master", because everyone is effectively anonymous. Your reputation for being right does not help you, and each point must stand on its own. Without the reputation, though, good arguments are often lost in the noise.

I could be wrong here, I'm not really familiar with Taoist thinking, but the way I interpreted the quote above is that it is more about being master of oneself, i.e. in control of your emotions and reactions, rather than being a master of the subject in the eyes of others. It seems to me that the point is not to care about reputation or winning the argument because you have no control over others anyway.

The first part of this chapter is important for understanding the whole, I think (especially with this translation):

"Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn't try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself."

What this is saying (again IMHO ;-) ) is that in the conversation, you can't control both sides: only your side. You can't control how someone receives your words, or how they interpret them. If you try to press your case, you will cause things to occur which you may not anticipate and for which you have no control.

Therefore, if you are trying to assert some idea, rather than to clarify your own understanding, then you may actually create the antagonistic forces which you were originally trying subdue (cut off one head of the hydra and be rewarded with 2 growing).

This is one of the core principles in the tao te ching. The word tall has no meaning unless you compare it with short. If I draw a box and ask you if the box is tall, you can't really say. However, if I draw another box of a different size next to it, it is easy to distinguish which one is tall and which one is short. Similarly, if I draw a single box and call it "tall", you can get an idea of what "short" means -- definitely shorter than the box I drew.

In than way, declaration of one thing "creates" its opposite. If you make a declaration on the internet, it can create its own opposition. People who would never have thought about the issue, may come to defend the opposite point of view. The more you push your point, the more vigorous the defense. Had you done nothing, then nothing would have been the result.

In taoist literature, the middle point between 2 extremes is called the "pivot" point. There is a point between being "tall" and being "short". If I grow my short box, it will eventually cease to be short and start becoming tall (and in comparison, the other box will become short). That point is the "pivot" point.

This is a concept of "utility". Normally for something to be "useful" you must transition between an extreme and the pivot point. If you have a cup that is always full of water, then it is not "useful" (in the ordinary sense of the use of a cup -- it might still be useful as a weight ;-) ). If the cup is always empty, then it is equally not useful. It only has utility when the cup transitions between being empty and full. The same is true of spokes on a bicycle wheel. Which is more important: the wires that provide tension on the outside of the wheel, or the spaces between the wires? Without the spaces, there would be no wires: only a disk. And then there would be no spokes. It's important to alternate between spoke and space.

So, to answer the parent's question: from (my interpretation of) a taoist point of view, you need to be careful not to press your case because you will create your own opposition. However, if you wish to have utility in your argument, it is important to move from the pivot point, to an extreme and back to the pivot point again (possibly over and over and over again). How you do that is beyond my ability to answer ;-)

I used to believe that equal treatment of opinions online was a massive win, but I’ve come to realise that lack of reputation is one of the greatest challenges we face.

That a Nobel laureate scientist and a redneck can share equal space on a subject is a real problem.

I’m not suggesting anybody be censored, merely that all opinions on a topic are not equal and shouldn’t be treated as such.

Why is that true? Either show the logic and reasoning that allows anyone to come to that conclusion or don’t. I don’t care if it’s a Nobel prize winner or a redneck, it’s the rationale that’s important.

Because humans defer to authority by default. You don't, you recognise the fallacy but how many people question their doctor's diagnosis?

The BBC in Britain has adopted the policy you suggest for a few years. They try pretty hard to show 2 opposing views in interviews.

It falls apart when all the experts align on one side of an issue, which is unreasonably common in these days of brexit. Yet, equal airtime is given to someone who is not an expert, lacks knowledge of the system being discussed, but has an opinion.

Humans do a great many things by default that are directly in opposition to determining truth. Look at any list of common logical fallacies. Every single last one of them is something humans do by default. They're intuitive and emotionally persuasive.

There is little similar between what was suggested by the person you're replying to and any policy which simply throws both opinions out. What he was describing was engaging with the content of an argument, not its speaker. This is proper. This is how things should be decided. "Who gets on TV" is an antiquated limitation which generated the difficult situation where someone has to make that call, and the unrelated constraint of needing to break for commercial or move on to the next topic in order to keep the audience engaged or keep to a programming schedule exacerbates it. The way the medium is used makes it impossible for a positions justification to be explained, only the position with no justification can be presented. This simply should not be done, but is the sort of thing which due to technological limitation was done out of desperation for a time. Commercial interests, of course, still motivate this approach, but those commercial interests, I think we can both agree, are not intimately tied to the ability of the medium to assist the audience in coming to a nuanced understanding of available views.

There is a very big difference between the ideal situation, where in every instance you have infinite time and access to all possible relevant information, and the practical situation with limited time (not 'oh I can't pay attention to one argument for 45 minutes' but 'if we do not do something before Tuesday, hundreds could die') and resources. It is not incorrect to discuss the ideal situation, because it will always be present and always provide the limiting constraints on the practical case. While you can be in a position where you could argue 'we should trust the expert because we have exactly and only 2 choices and his authority is better even though he can not explain it', even in that situation it must be admitted that what you are doing is wrong. It is a wrong thing which is being forced by circumstance to be done. In the ideal case, you are guaranteed truth. In the practical case, you try to do the best you can. In the practical case, the redneck might have a point (farmers, for instance, had been talking about global dimming for years before scientists gathered the data and became concerned... we were able to reverse it, but not before the pollution from England caused the jetstream to shift and led to several years of intense drought and famine (remember Live Aid? That was global dimmings work) in Ethiopia. Then you have cases where a doctor says other doctors should wash their hands between doing autopsies and delivering babies. He was not right because he had authority. In fact, the argument against him was that he was not respected enough in his field and that it was insulting to suggest that the doctors killing women and children left and right were actually at fault. Those were the more respected members of the medical community. We were saddled with leaded gasoline for decades because the community of research chemists all agreed it was safe and did so for financial benefit and based on very 'common sense' arguments (lead is so heavy! It will fall to the ground and not travel far from the road, how would it get in the air?). When a toxicologist reported the danger, he was met with insult and told he was entreating on chemists territory. Because people trusted the authority of the professional research chemists, he got ignored. Because of them having their authority trusted, they could not afford to even investigate the truth. If they lost that authority, and the trust, they would be done. All unnecessary and a tragic bit of scientific history every researcher should know. Those authorities are just people. They can be just as selfish, mistake-prone, prideful, etc as anyone else. It is not reason to dismiss them. It is reason to expect them to present you with solid evidence, solid argument, and to NEVER ask you to 'just trust them'. The same applies for the redneck. If he provides solid evidence, solid argument, and never asks you to 'just trust him', you review his argument and evidence exactly the same.

Thank you for that, that’s exactly right.

One particular reason is that more knowledgeable individuals are less likely to have careless omissions in their reasoning.

Most real-world problems are over-constrained or under-constrained, and a missing axiom (as much as you can have axioms for things as fuzzy as the real world) can give bogus results without being immediately obvious.

It depends on the subject being discussed. If it is something that the redneck is experienced in, I'd go with the redneck, and vice-versa.

If it is something that I do not expect neither to have detailed knowledge of, I'll base my trust on the transferability of the domain. So, for example, a nobel price winner in physics will still have a reasonable understanding of chemistry, and thus cooking.

I'd simply expect a scientist to have finished 4-8 years more in school, and to have spent several decades with smart and learned people. Again, depending on the subject being discussed.

There is also the case to be made that a Nobel price winner will have a reputation to uphold. Going on the record saying silly things will hurt him more than someone that has no reputation. Though I'm less inclined to this reasoning, as this assumes that reputation is something important to the Nobel prize winner.

Why defer to authority? Because it's the authority's day job to thoroughly understand and evidence their own opinions. Everyone else has another day job that isn't dependent on committing full focus to the logic behind their opinions on a topic, so it's inherently never going to be as well reasoned an opinion as that of a model authority. Obviously there are exceptions, but on a grand scale, this rule of thumb works extremely well.

Being a Master relies not upon anonymity nor reputation.

Instead, it is a state of mind reached through experience and enlightenment, endowed to one by those whom seek same.

The text doesn't mention reputation. It does however explicitly states he doesn't try to convince others.

I've been thinking about trying a forum with no usernames or reputation system, just trees of comments with varying root topics. Not sure how to filter the garbage though. I'm thinking let it happen, and figure out various ways to hide it, without erasing it, later.

There used to be a Tor onion forum like that, "talk.masked". It was linked from Core.onion (eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion). I believe that it was one of the first onion sites.

As I recall, nothing was ever deleted. It was classified, and you could filter as you liked. But I don't remember specifics.

The owner took it down some years ago. Because the trolling had become intolerable.

https://www.kialo.com/ comes close to that description. Identities and reputation arent immediately visible in the argument tree.

You mean 4chan?

Your right and everybody feels like Steve Jobs online and demands change today.

That doesn't actually fit with my experience of online discussions.

Indeed! I have always preferred the Thomas Cleary translations (he's done a lot of chinese literature), but this Mitchell translation is REALLY good. I'm a convert.