Why online forums have bad behaviour

[Michael Selik]

On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 8:57 AM Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>
wrote:

>   If you dislike someone's behaviour, consider that they may not have a
>   well-thought-out or coherent rason for it; and, if pressed to come up
>   with a reason, we will employ all our faculties to *make up* a reason
>   (typically without being aware that's what we're doing!) that somehow
>   depicts us in a better light than others.
>

Since this was an assertion, I thought it'd be helpful to cite some
evidence. There's some very interesting studies of split-brain folks. If
the corpus callosum is severed, the right and left hemispheres cannot
communicate, allowing a researcher to talk to each hemisphere separately.
An action determined by the right hemisphere will be observed by the left.
If then asked why the action was taken, the left hemisphere will make
something up, completely unaware that it was not the one who thought of the
action.

I couldn't find a link to the research I'm referencing, but this Wikipedia
article is getting at a similar topic (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_brain_interpreter) and one could
probably chase down the original research via its citations.