If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms.
If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty.
Conflict is almost unavoidable on mass "social networks". Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree. The only way to keep your sanity online is to live in a bubble, just as you do in real life, self-selecting which people to congregate with in rooms.
You may ask, having said that, why am I here in the HN comments? That's a good question, and the answer is obviously that I'm insane.
Does anyone find it weird that the author of the article claims that we actually need online arguments to "hone our thinking" or some such nonsense, but then immediately goes into an extended analogy about hostage negotiations? I don't know why we all need to become online hostage negotiators. If you want to learn something useful from a different perspective, go offline and read a good book.
The author says, "Taking a disagreement offline can work, but it should only ever be seen as a second-best option." Why???? Everything else the author said suggests it's actually the best option. I really don't see the point in online arguments. Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience. In fact I fully expect the same (non-)outcome in any replies to my comment.
Nothing gets resolved in offline arguments either. That isn't the point. The idea of a non-factual disagreement is that both sides get to make a case and state their perspective, and everyone learns from it.
You self-selected to be here on hn, just like the rest of us did. In a sense, this is a bubble of a certain kind of thought and perspective. But it's a really big bubble that has some diversity.
I think the key is to avoid situations where you're constantly exposed to vehement disagreement. On hn we mostly respond to posts individually and get into various disagreements along the way. I think this is far preferable to something like a political discussion site, where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again.
> where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again
Funny, I would describe HN as the same.
I'm on HN because the topics interest me as a computer programmer. But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that. Some of those within the HN bubble think very highly of themselves, but they may not be aware of the utter contempt that many outside the HN bubble have for "the orange site". (By the way, I could share a little CSS to add dark mode support and a few other tweaks to HN, if anyone is interested.)
If the participants are doing a good job of explaining where they're coming from, then yes. If they're just talking past each other, or worse, angrily insulting each other, then of course the answer is no. At that point it's no longer really a discussion at all, it's the online equivalent of monkeys throwing filth at each other, and it debases all involved.
> > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again
> Funny, I would describe HN as the same.
Sure, some hot topics will keep coming up until the end of time. Copyleft vs permissive licences, for instance. I think that's fine though, and the ongoing discussion isn't pure retreading, it will evolve over time as the surrounding circumstances change.
A discussion forum like HackerNews shouldn't aim to be the equivalent of StackOverflow where there's a single authoritative page for each question, and duplicates are rebuked and shut down. That approach makes sense if you're trying to build a question/answer repository, but a discussion forum is something different.
> I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that
My opinion is no more well grounded than yours, but I disagree. HN discussions very often have input from experts. Anecdotally I think this happens less often on other forums. HN also has uniquely good moderation.
> HN discussions very often have input from experts.
Who are predictably downvoted!
I think the upvoting/downvoting mechanism by itself makes discussions unnecessarily competitive and hostile. Here's a crazy alternative: make the order of comments random and rotating. Of course you could still have flagging and moderation to remove bad comments, but otherwise get rid of the voting. You could still have nested conversations (though the UI for this is really bad on HN when the conversations become long), but the comments at each level would also be randomly ordered.
The theory is that the "best" comments rise to the top and the "worst" to the bottom. In reality, that rarely seems to be the case. It's typically a combination of popularity, controversy, accidental timing (some variation on "first!"), and the existence of replies to the comment.
Let me chime in on the voting issue (or I think what you mean is mob voting issue?)
Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it. But due to randomisation, it doesn't get enough traction. Note that this problem will become bigger the more top level comments you get.
This is the same problem with democracies also. Everyone gets to vote but the outcome might not be the best.But the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems.
Do you know any platforms which have successfully done the randomisation thing?
> Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it.
This seems like a rarity. The vast majority of HN discussions don't have this situation, and it seems odd if the only purpose of HN voting is to upvote "celebrity" comments. There are much better places to follow the comments of celebrities than on HN.
> the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems.
I strongly believe this is actually the least bad form of government, and vastly superior to elections, which are glorified high school prom royalty pageants.
> Do you know any platforms which have successfully done the randomisation thing?
No, though I have no idea what "algorithm" Twitter uses to determine the order of replies in a thread. (Probably not totally random.)
I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people. A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form. It's not important however, because I agree it's unlikely and I do see where you're coming from (I also share your sense of cynicism about democracy).
I don't use Twitter that much but I hear that twitter is really toxic. Assuming some part of twitter tweet section is random, does that inspire confidence that such a system might work.
> I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people.
That's my point though. A celebrity like Torvalds will likely get upvoted, but in my experience, non-celebrity knowledgeable commenters often get downvoted by people who are much less knowledgeable.
> A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form.
I don't think any system guarantees betterness. :-) But random seems to be at least pretty fair and least subject to abuse.
> Assuming some part of twitter tweet section is random, does that inspire confidence that such a system might work.
There are different parts of Twitter. The Twitter timeline is definitely not random. It's either reverse chronological or "algorithmic", depending on your settings. But any given tweet can have any number of replies, and I don't know how Twitter determines the order of display of replies to a tweet. But it's overall a very different format from HN, so comparisons are difficult.
I see. My only contention would be that abuse is stopped but use is also equally degraded (due to randomness).
But I see what you're saying. Some combination of voting and randomness might br worth it. Also, another thing is maybe some sort of sentiment analysis can help (abuse mainly comes from trolling, virtue signalling etc).
I don't know, if ther was a way to figure out what value a comment adds (or inverse), then that, combined with voting and some sort of randomness might make the system fairer and better?
One could use Thompson sampling. Every comment starts with 1 up and 1 down vote. The total number of up/down votes determine a beta distribution. When displaying comments, draw from the beta distributions for each comment, and present them in that order. High quality comments drift reliably to the top over time, but other comments have their own chances at the top to accumulate votes and better determine their place in the stack.
> But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere.
I think this is better expressed as “people almost everywhere else are terrible.” Its not that HN is better (although the crowd here is learned, intelligent, and generally aspires to professional behavior), its that most places online with more than 20 average daily users are trash.
> I could share a little CSS to add dark mode support and a few other tweaks to HN, if anyone is interested.
I've resolved several online arguments that started in response to opinions I've shared. The methods the article mentions are methods I've used, usually because they seemed like natural ways to chill the situation.
I'm not sure I've ever changed anybody's mind online, but I try to always keep in mind that that is not my goal. When others disagree I try to make sure my opinion is understood, and I try to understand their opinion too.
One benefit to online argument over in-person is that it's easier to take time to reflect on my own reactions to others. I can take time to decide how to react. In-person it's often impossible to do that.
I agree with most of what you wrote - I like being able to choose when to be "in the bubble" and when to not be in. I think we'll really benefit over time as people learn how to use these different forums better.
I'm sorry, but where's your argument here? Virtually every stable system humanity has ever devised is stable precisely because that stability is adversarial.
Your argument against people becoming hostage negotiators relies, as far as I can tell, on this being an extreme state for humans, and therefore totally unsustainable, but like... why? It's like arguing that bridges can't stand up because they are subject to extreme forces from all sides.
The sanity to which you speak is actually just passivity, In the hostage negotiator analogy, it is what happens when the hostage negotiator hangs up before the negoatiation is over. In the bridge analogy, it is what happens when one of the forces acting on the bridge stops acting on the bridge.
Sustained human existence is work, your proposed sanity preserving option is just nihilism, and it is unsustainable, or at least mutually unsustainable with existence.
> Virtually every stable system humanity has ever devised is stable precisely because that stability is adversarial.
Where's your argument here?
> Your argument against people becoming hostage negotiators relies, as far as I can tell, on this being an extreme state for humans, and therefore totally unsustainable, but like... why?
No, my argument against people becoming hostage negotiators is that it sounds very stressful, unpleasant, and dangerous. I simply don't want to do it. Kudos to professional hostage negotiators, to be sure, but it's not a job most people want. At least professional negotiators get paid, I assume.
> It's like arguing that bridges can't stand up because they are subject to extreme forces from all sides.
Why are you comparing people to inanimate objects? I'd rather not be walked on, thank you.
> Sustained human existence is work, your proposed sanity preserving option is just nihilism, and it is unsustainable
This is a weird attitude. Humans have existed for thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years. All without online social networks. We could ditch them all and be fine. Arguably better than now.
> Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience.
I've found this to be less true than perhaps it used to be, particularly in places like HN. I don't think you'll change anyone's minds overnight on a big issue like climate change or racism, but I regularly see people share insights and perspectives in a reasonable way. Over time, these add up into real change, even if you don't see it happening in the course of a single thread.
I have certainly changed my own positions as a result of civil discussions. it never happens after a single exchange, but over time people can be convinced.
> Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience. In fact I fully expect the same (non-)outcome in any replies to my comment.
Consider that it might be to the benefit of the reader to hear all the different possible ways of expressing the different arguments and counter-arguments, even when the participants themselves don't budge.
Also, I often find that while I don't usually change my opinion in the middle of an argument, it still helps me to have the weakest areas of my opinions highlighted so that I know not to invest too strongly in those aspects as time goes on. After reading a compelling counter-argument online and then seeing first-hand evidence of the strength of that counter-argument later on, I think I'm much more likely to change my opinion.
During an argument I think it actually benefits all participants to stick to a consistent viewpoint and defend it as strongly as possible to make sure that its strengths and weaknesses are fairly represented.
> During an argument I think it actually benefits all participants to stick to a consistent viewpoint and defend it as strongly as possible to make sure that its strengths and weaknesses are fairly represented.
My feeling is that a "debate" format — under which we can include online comments and replies — is actually one of the worst ways of informing people, and vastly inferior to other educational methods. I was serious when I said "go offline and read a good book".
Debates almost invariably become a show. It's about entertainment, about "scoring points", winning and losing. But the biggest loser is always the truth, which becomes lost in the back and forth. Debates encourage taking sides. They encourage the mistaken view that there are only 2 sides to every subject.
You can try very hard to avoid these pitfalls, but it's important to note that they come with the territory. Debates inevitably fall into these pits without very hard work. It's just not a great format for information and education. But a lot of people enjoy them immensely, which is why they happen, regardless of value.
The online arguments I get involved in are resolved often. Because I try to have them resolve. Plenty of times it's totally easy to resolve an argument. It can go like this: you spend some time thinking, realise that the person you're arguing with is correct, then you say "Oh, I see your point now. I didn't realise x which is what lead me to think y. Thanks for helping me realise this mistake and gain a better understanding of the issue."
to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive.
This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community.
Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Michael Sandel called 'skyboxification'. Everyone sorts into their own group, often commercially, rather than having shared experiences with people from different walks of life.
The promise of the internet was that it would be easier for different people to have these interactions. It's sad that in reality it has devolved into a shouting match (it should be noted very often between people who are actually alike and engage in some Girardian terror of small differences, rather than between genuine strangers)
There is a middle ground: alone is not enough, and too much is too much.
IMHO every really useful-and-not-harming work happens thanks to a small group of workers (where a little bit of 'conflict', let's say disagreement about a given subject, is often useful because it creates emulation).
A major promise of the Internet may be to alleviate the need for such a group members to be in the same place at the same time.
This is a common misconception, idiote was often used interchangeably with citizen and should be understood as a citizen operating in his capacity as a citizen (and not say in a formal poltical or emissary function) but by no means one who wishes to disengage from the polis. As for Socrates, as he is at pains to emphasize in the Apology, he was no 'idiote'.
Regarding conflict, I think it's certainly true that some ideas are so poorly understood that it can be useful to have someone else approach the same idea from a different perspective, so as to 'pin it down' as it were. Martin's 'The Opposable Mind' is a great discussion of this dynamic, the book describes a single person changing their mind on a topic deliberately so as to 'grasp' it but a similar dynamic can work with two people.
Of course, disagreement doesn't necessarily mean conflict if the rules of civil discussion are agreed upon. I wish we had a way to filter our bubbles by what we find acceptable behaviour when disagreeing as opposed to what we agree with.
Agreed. As for the reason I’m on the comments here, it’s because this place selects for slightly more intelligent than average commenters and a community that does a good job and maintaining a reasonable tone.
Everywhere else I run a plug-in that removes all comment sections from the web and I don’t use social media.
Another tip: Prior to going to a shopping website (such as Amazon), I go to my Firefox browser settings, and I disable all images. This keeps me from buying useless junk via addicting recommendation algorithms, and removes the temptation very well. I also never go to one of these websites, unless I know exactly what I am planning on buying. In other words, I make a paper list of things I need to buy before I get onto one of these sites.
That plugin is for desktop browser. My biggest distraction is the phone actually. And firefox for phone doesn't support it yet. Somebody should really port it. Grease monkey also doesn't work on mobile browsers.
What a great idea. I have myself disabled colors on the screen to avoid those addictive contrasts.
I also try to do a phone fast every Sunday, where I give my phone to my wife and just live without it for a day. It's amazingly rewarding. You should give it a try :)
> I also try to do a phone fast every Sunday, where I give my phone to my wife and just live without it for a day. It's amazingly rewarding. You should give it a try :)
Amazing :-)! You know this is exactly the correct way, to reset your brain, to be motivated, so that you can work hard! I will definitely give it a try! Thank you :-)
> That plugin is for desktop browser. My biggest distraction is the phone actually. And firefox for phone doesn't support it yet. Somebody should really port it. Grease monkey also doesn't work on mobile browsers.
I do not know if this is helpful for your situation, but I keep my laptop [Windows 10 Professional] always on. I always keep my Synology NAS on. I usually remotely access these devices on my iPhone or my iPad. I prefer the iPad though. I essentially VNC in, and I then get on the internet via Firefox Desktop with extensions loaded.
Sometimes the remote connection is not an ideal situation. I keep a Rock Pi X, with a Windows 10 variant loaded on it, with me, when I am out and about. I have it configured with the Desktop browser extensions that I like to use and I basically VNC in: https://liliputing.com/2020/10/the-59-rock-pi-x-is-like-a-wi...
A smaller form factor like a Raspberry Pi Zero with an Ubuntu variant may be a better option, though.
> Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree.
You've crossed the digital divide here and misused the word "bubble" in the process. It's not anything like a "self-selected" group of like-minded people in a room. It's more like a group of people snookered into working for a pyramid scheme. At worst-- as with Qanon-- it's like a cult.
And even cult de-programmers-- people who know the "creation myth" of a cult, know its tactics, know its adherents, and are skilled and patient enough to "snap" cult members out of their stupor-- know not to physically put themselves in the midst of a cult for any extended length of time. Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone.
There's something creepily similar about the people who helped build online bubbles outright banning their children from using the devices/social networks they helped to create. They do that because the systems they built are quite literally the opposite of self-selecting.
> Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone.
Where did you learn about this? I'd love to be better informed.
One rule that I have is that if I need to repeat or rephrase a previous comment without adding anything new, I need to stop the conversation.
1. Comment by me.
2. Response by someone else.
If my reaction to 2 is to reiterate 1, that's a sign that the conversation isn't going anywhere and it's better if I don't participate further.
Also, if you're on twitter, facebook or reddit, you need to heavily restrict your input and output and not take part in arguments altogether. Or just not be on those platforms in their current form.
I sometimes comment to show a bit of effort, when I agree with someone, like yours superbcarrot, something more than an easy upvote. Not everything has to be a discussion.
If you have to repeatedly do this, sure. I guess everyone has a different threshold. People with customer facing jobs have a lot of practice with this.
This sort of stuff is why I refuse to participate in "traditional" social media, which is clearly unhealthy. I refuse to take my mind to bad places, where it could become unhappy. I simply cannot afford to be unhappy.
If I want to want to watch YouTube videos, I search for such videos on a traditional search engine via video search and get the YouTube link. Then I do a sentiment analysis on the comments of the video. If the video has greater than or equal to 10% of the comments containing negative sentiment (whether it be mildly or strongly negative), then I don't watch the video. If I decide to watch a video, I use youtube-dl.
Likewise, I use an Nvidia Jetson with a webcam to monitor my emotions when surfing the internet. I simply do not go to pages that take my emotions for a spin. I have found that social media always makes me unhappy, ultimately.
While I can technically create my own scripts using AI, I tend to utilize others' scripts, as programming this stuff is not the best use of my time. This sort of stuff is almost always exclusively posted on GitHub. I do not use a ton of packages. I do have to keep this concise (check my profile for my email, which I will keep available for a couple of days).
-Video: It should be noted that all video hosted in the cloud can usually be downloaded, one way or another, using scripts. I have an ongoing, organized, paper list of video types/genres that interest me and keep me happy, which I try to stick to. I frequently update it though. I know when to give myself neurochemical "hits", from the stuff I accumulate online, from reading books like "The Molecule of More" and "HØY PÅ DEG SJÆL: ENDORFIN SOM MEDISIN" (HIGH ON YOUR SOUL: ENDORPHINS AS MEDICINE) [I used a cloud service to translate it into English...I find out about various books in different languages via deep searches using foreign language keywords via DuckDuckGo.]. For video searches I use DuckDuckGo video search: https://duckduckgo.com/video?ia=web# (with "site:youtube.com" [without quotes] in the query box)
Here are some scripts I use. I really do not use many scripts.
I have Plex (and other database/recommendation engines) on my computer, Synology NAS, and Nvidia Shield TV Pro. I transfer the videos typically to my NAS and stream them on the Shield via Plex. I can also access all of this via my NAS and stream on mobile data via Plex, for example, on my phone/tablet, as there is also a Plex app.
-Nvidia Jetson: I use an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit (32GB). Likewise, I do not use many scripts. I just started using it. I generally use an Intel Realsense camera as a webcam. However, sometimes I do use a standard Logitech webcam.
Thanks for the detailed response. I too generally feel bad using most social media (doomscrolling, etc..), but there's probably a lot of other things I do on the computer that make me feel bad, I just have not noticed.
I've written a simple script to record most of what I do on my computer (ie what I type, what windows/tabs have focus, etc...). Correlating that info with Emotions monitor seems like it could find patterns I'm not aware of. Not sure if I'll get around to do that but you never now.
the video has greater than or equal to 10% of the comments containing negative sentiment (whether it be mildly or strongly negative), then I don't watch the video
This seems a rather arbitrary limiter of the content you're willing to expose yourself to. What makes you think a high negative sentiment percentage in comments indicates a video that will make you unhappy?
A specific video's commenter base is nothing like a representative sample, that could be used to make predictions.
If I decide to watch a video, I use youtube-dl.
Why? Youtube comments aren't put in your face. It's very easy to watch a video without watching the comments.
I simply do not go to pages that take my emotions for a spin. I have found that social media always makes me unhappy, ultimately.
It's your life and I won't attempt to tell you how you should live it, like many others here will.
As for me, I think being sad and even angry is part of the human experience, part of being in touch with reality, and I wouldn't sign up for a "keep you happy 100% of the time" machine.
In a sense, I'm serving a higher (less immediate) happiness.
> This seems a rather arbitrary limiter of the content you're willing to expose yourself to. What makes you think a high negative sentiment percentage in comments indicates a video that will make you unhappy?
That is the point: clearly it is a very arbitrary limit. I do that on purpose. If I want to expose myself to negative feelings and emotions, I do that in real life with real, actual people.
This is the definition of sentiment from Merriam-Webster:
a : an attitude, thought, or judgment prompted by feeling : predilection
b : a specific view or notion : opinion
Videos prompt feelings. Comments give serious sentiment clues.
> A specific video's commenter base is nothing like a representative sample, that could be used to make predictions.
I am not using this to make predictions.
> Why? Youtube comments aren't put in your face. It's very easy to watch a video without watching the comments.
Social media platforms, in general, in the most basic sense, play in to your hopes and fears, to keep you on there as long as possible. It is a form of abuse, and for children, it is literally a form of child abuse. Even the sidebar that is displayed on YouTube videos (whatever it is called), that "suggests videos", does this.
These platforms know what your hopes and fears are, based on your data, and especially things like your likes. This "psychographic research" via Cambridge University and obtained from social media data from 2013 resulted in the technology that was Cambridge Analytica, for example. Things like your IQ and sexual orientation could be determined by your Facebook likes alone.: https://www.wired.com/2013/03/facebook-like-research/
>As for me, I think being sad and even angry is part of the human experience, part of being in touch with reality, and I wouldn't sign up for a "keep you happy 100% of the time" machine.
As I said, that is why I talk to actual human beings, for exposure to negative thoughts/feelings/emotions. I just refuse to have social media play into my emotions. Instead, if I want exposure, besides actual real life direct human exposure, I read the newspaper or an actual book.
Am I unusual in that I find that the "suggestions" on all these media platforms are boringly predictable and rarely offering anything really interesting? I watch a video about "A" and I get 10 suggestions of other videos about "A". Big deal. They aren't very compelling.
Or, on shopping sites, I buy a chair. You'd think maybe I'm outfitting an office and get suggestions for a table, a desk, or stuff like that? No, I get 10 suggestions for different chairs.
Maybe it's because I use ad blockers and clear cookies frequently, so they don't have anything to really work with. But it seems that even the first guesses they take are pretty devoid of context.
> Maybe it's because I use ad blockers and clear cookies frequently, so they don't have anything to really work with. But it seems that even the first guesses they take are pretty devoid of context.
Yeah, I use uBlock Origin, along with other extensions. I also block 3rd party cookies.
Maybe I should add some context: I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes.
I just cannot afford to be stressed out by stuff on the internet, as I need to be successful with my ambitious plans in life. Having these ambitious plans also keeps me alive, as it keeps me motivated.
Let's imagine we have a group of 100 people and we want them to reach consensus on a controverted topic. Let's apply a divide and conquer approach: pair people 1 on 1, and if they can agree (even if the agreement involves different resolutions depending on personal preferences), you join them with another group of 2 and repeat the process.
Now, why doesn't this work? Well, this could work if people's opinions were static and perfectly stated on the first try. But in practice, and even under an ideal setup, people will be changing opinions too fast to ever be able to reach an equilibrium. They might realize that what they previously stated doesn't really match what they believe, or they didn't consider certain things that, when revealed, will now be considered important.
And even more, this is if they were actively trying to reach a consensus while being patient, listening carefully, properly considering other people thoughts, expressing their own in a very precise and faithful way and being able to keep all that information in their heads and prioritize without bias. Which is not realistic.
At this point, we might as well say that the problem is that the more people and points of view you introduce in a discussion, the more precise the consensus needs to be, and precise consensus is unachievable in a continually changing scenario. So, when we believe there's consensus on something, then it must be because either the problem is simple or vague enough, or the consensus itself is vague and imprecise. Which is fine too: vague consensus is not useless, nor it does make sense to reach perfect consensus for everything each time, but that's what we would be lead towards if we all tried to have "better arguments online"... which is never reached anyway at a big enough scale due to the issues previously described.
(yeah, we don't need arguments to reach consensus, you can learn from what others say without agreeing with them, but... I don't even agree with myself, I'm gonna delete th-
If it’s 100 random people off the street serving as a fair representation of the larger population there are some fair assumptions you can make.
1. Half that population, 50, represent people who abhor originality in any form. This could be due to low intelligence, poor focus, loneliness, or a variety of other reasons. This group will accept any opinion that binds people together, such as knowingly false appeals to popularity.
2. About 12 of the people left over are narcissistic. They do not have a personal opinion on any argument. Instead they will identify that former 50 and do what they can to influence them, which often means fighting with other narcissistic people to build tribal factions of echo chambers.
3. About another 12 people are outsiders. They don’t care about any of the arguments presented. They will sit in a corner and do whatever the fuck they want. These are the hermits and are social as necessary for resources.
4. About 8 of the people are super objective. Weighted distribution of evidence and data matter most. These are your scientist. Nobody listens to them. These people are a pain in the ass to the sheep and wolves.
5. About another 8 are influencers. They spread ideas around and keep people informed. Sometimes they might even offer an original contribution, but it’s rare.
6. The final 10 people are comedians.
Really though, the actual subject of any argument provided to that population is irrelevant. The motives of the various participants dictate the acceptance, validity, and attention of any subject.
A combination of anecdotal observations and observed metrics from various intelligence/IQ/personality tests. These numbers are half derived from real numbers and represented in a way that matches my personal opinions of the world and not the data from which I sourced them.
Another way to think about those numbers:
Those 12 people who ignore everybody and do whatever the fuck they want... those are your soldiers or crime lords. If provided proper direction and motivation they are the ones who actually get things done.
Those 10 people left over as comedians. About 4 of them are your natural leaders.
I think learning to ignore posts that are or will become toxic is a helpful skill to learn. I have similar feelings about certain newspapers &
articles too.
As for discussion, no one ever wins an argument in my opinion. So whenever a discussion looks like it's heading that way the best thing to do is to drop it. Discussion is at its best when it's two open minded people politely exploring ideas
People have this instict that "silence is consent".
Which makes sense in some circumstances. Like, when the whole group is paying attention to the same speaker, the speaker says something, there is an opportunity to object, and no one objects... you could conclude that either everyone agrees, or perhaps the speaker has so much social power that no one dares to object. -- So the idea is backed by either consent or power.
This doesn't work on internet, where millions of people keep saying millions of things, and there is simply no time to respond to all of that. So you see something that was said, publicly, and no one objected... but that doesn't imply consent nor power.
On the other hand, you can have an idea that 99% of people agree with, and the 1% would think twice to oppose it under their real name, but with anonymity someone is going to write "lol, if you think this you are a moron", and it's their comment that will likely remain unopposed. And one such person can make such comments on thousand places each day, if they are sufficiently obsessed with the topic.
Our instincts are built of some assumptions that no longer work on internet. One possible approach is to learn new skills. Another possibility would be to design online interaction so that it better matches our instincts. (For example, any comment would disappear after one day, or after it was seen by 50 people.) This could potentially be interesting, but there is little financial incentive to explore this, because companies optimise for advertisements and virality, not user experience.
> People have this instinct that "silence is consent".
Absolutely.
Part of my impulse to speak up IRL comes from the example of the activism to tackle HIV/AIDS. Literally, silence meant death. That left a huge imprint on me.
There a few times in my life when I didn't speak up, didn't act. And it fills me with shame.
Examples (of failure) help:
At a music festival. Mid '90s. Two white guys were harassing two black couples. I thought one of the white guys was going to get physical. I was so flabbergasted. I had no idea what to do. I was also in no physical condition to get into or break up a fight.
I saw a young parent assault her kids. Like punches, not spanking, Kids had signature abuse victims response. I should have called the cops.
Young gay couple were being harassed in a movie theater. I didn't act.
Old white dude at a public townhall talking about "those people" and advocating Jim Crow laws (in Washington State! in the early 2000s!).
> Our instincts are built of some assumptions that no longer work on internet. One possible approach is to learn new skills.
Absolutely.
My IRL impulses are sabotage online. I've been on social media since the late 80s. (BBSs, CompuServe, BIX.) Trolling and smack talk have always been part of the medium. It was fun. But now it isn't. It just keeps getting worse.
Next book on my reading list is Adam Grant's Think Again. Some of the recent book promotion interviews (eg Vox Pivot) have been great.
Chris Voss' Never Split the Difference, how to use "radical empathy" in tough situations, is really really good. I'm now looking for workbooks, training, or something. Like role playing exercises to practice.
A lot of your examples describe physically violent situations, or at least the threat of one. I also struggle with how to respond.
My parents raised me to never engage in physical violence at any cost. I was the scrawny nerd in school and was bullied a lot. My parents encouraged me to talk my way out of these types of things. As an adult, my instinct is to de-escalate verbally and if that fails to withdraw.
My wife on the other hand was raised in, how do I say this, a less nurturing environment. Her instinct is to respond to violence with violence. She doesn’t care if it’s a 6’5” club bouncer, she’s down to fight (she’s 5’2” and 110 lbs soaking wet) if she feels threatened physically.
We had a situation a while back where a drunken, crazed woman shoved my wife while she was holding our baby. It was completely unprovoked.
I got in the middle of them and tried to talk the aggressor down from the ledge. Of course, reasoning with a drunk person is basically useless. The drunken woman then shoved me.
My wife knew I wouldn’t restrain the person physically so she handed the baby to me and proceeded to beat this person to the ground. I’d never seen someone get beaten up this badly.
All I wanted to do was withdraw, but with this person’s emotional state there was no telling if they would follow us and try to engage physically again, potentially risking harm to our baby.
I still don’t know how to reconcile what happened. Like, instinctually, I still think withdrawing was the right choice. But, conversely, there were too many unknown variables in how that could’ve worked out.
The best I could do to rationalize what happened is that we all have different reactions to the fight or flight mechanism. I flee, my wife fights. Sometimes maybe there isn’t a “right” answer and it’s all on a spectrum of gray-ness.
In the moments after that situation, my wife berated me for failing to engage physically in a physical altercation that threatened our child. I felt an immense amount of shame. In the days that followed, she started to understand my position and reasoning and now says I shouldn’t feel shame.
Just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in struggling in how to deal with physically violent situations.
Yeah. I like your way of putting it. It's true that online and how people interact can be quite misleading. It's a really good point on how we can build better systems to match our instincts
Anyone who has spent a substantial amount of their free time on internet forums will laugh at this article with cynicism.
It's not wrong per se but I've found most people come to online forums to blow off steam or waste time, not to have fair conversations or arguments. Also, you see the exact same debates over and over. It becomes tiring.
My solution has been to just post less responses on forums, and to suppress the urge to argue with someone about the same topic I've argued about hundreds of times before. I still fail at it but I have gotten better.
Completely agree that willingness to walk away is crucial.
I'd suggest, too, that two of your points combine: people rationalize to themselves that they're on forums to have fair, intellectual conversations, but actually unconsciously are looking for that opportunity to blow off steam.
What is needed is a discussion system, that works like a Shipyard, with the preordained goal that consent must be found. The various threads/sub-threads of the discussion which hold substance form the ribs of the ship, meanwhile elements that are valued as "relevant" to all, are auto-marked as a floor-contribution and back listed.
The set of a society topic, that interests all and all can contribute - is not a topic by definition.
I felt a great disturbance in the Add-Force. As if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
The problem with following a system bound by the logical rules of modern philosophy is that modern philosophy itself is an ineffective tool for making real-world, moral decisions.
It's no accident that the most respected public intellectuals are all economists, linguists, (former) politicians, activists, authors, Canadian clinical psychologists, or even gay, bipolar quiz show hosts...
I agree with you about the "preordained goal that consent must be found" but I'm not convinced that a technical aspects, like Arguman, can help here. You need the humans in board.
Don't try to persuade people. Most people don't want to be persuaded. Get people to think and think about your own views. You may find either of you are wrong, or both, or neither, but you may learn something.
This (good article) from The Guardian, who in their ludicrously-titled "Comment is Free" section and others ban discussions on any articles and opinion pieces they fear dissent on.
In keeping with that - I note there is no comment section on this piece...
> their ludicrously-titled "Comment is Free" section and others ban discussions
It’s a reference to a landmark essay by a previous editor, CP Scott, and it’s more about sticking to the truth than publishing other people’s opinions:
> A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
Titbit: the section name comes from the quote "Comment is free, but facts are sacred" by C. P. Scott, past editor of the Manchester Guardian.
> In a 1921 essay marking the Manchester Guardian's centenary (at which time he had served nearly fifty years as editor), Scott put down his opinions on the role of the newspaper. He argued that the "primary office" of a newspaper is accurate news reporting, saying "comment is free, but facts are sacred". Even editorial comment has its responsibilities: "It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair".
As stated by siblings, there's a specific reason it's called that. But they used to all have open comments sections. They didn't start shutting down replies for articles because of civil disagreements. Generally they're shuttered based on the expectation, in turn based on experience, that people will be absolutely fucking horrible in the comments. That's not always the case (comments may just be pointless), but most of the time it is -- eg, what's the point of allowing comments on, say, a Nick Cohen piece when a large % of those will just be vicious personal attacks on the writer? Shuttering is a blunt instrument, but why go through the hassle?
There are other explanations than that 'they fear dissent'. There's what you say, and there's how you say it. It reflects poorly on a serious publication if their comments section is full of insults and slurs, regardless of whether the comments support leftwing or rightwing causes.
It reflects even more poorly on a serious publication when the top comment points out all the errors and bias in the main article. They understandably don't like that.
The Guardian used to have a fantastic set of talkboards which they closed almost ten years ago to the day:
“We didn't have any other viable option on Friday other than shutting the boards down without warning. None of us think that is good community management, and the reason we have been in this thread is because we regret that we had to do it this way.”
I guess the name of the game is “comments supporting our journalism and from which we can extract value from without incurring liability or bad publicity”.
To me, the thing that really makes online arguments different than in person ones is that I'm usually not trying to persuade the person I'm directly replying to, I'm trying to present an alternate viewpoint to the other people who might see the comments. This happens all the time in FB groups for my neighborhood. Somebody will say a ridiculous NIMBY thing that sounds good on the surface, and I know I can't persuade them based on years of knowing their online persona, but I feel a need to reply in case somebody who doesn't have an entrenched opinion reads it.
Sure you can try to have a proper discussion online, but too many people want to DESTROY people with FACTS and LOGIC. Or in practice ad hominems, false equivalencies, and just about every other fallacy in the book. If a topic is remotely controversial it's just about impossible to have a discussion that would make any sense at all.
HN is really the only place I even bother to write a comment, on the whole people seem to be at least have a somewhat charitable interpretation of other people's comments.
That last sentence is what's critical to having decent conversation with people in general. You may think their opinion/point is wrong or they might just completely misunderstand a topic, but give them the benefit of the doubt. If you're just stating your opinion versus giving your point of view and asking other to give/clarify theirs, you're probably doing it wrong. Anytime I'm in an argument I just treat it as a way to get a different point of view, even if I don't subscribe to it. HN is great for this.
One thing that works in my experience is to find common ground first, meaning find things that both agree on and then take it from there. It sometimes create a joint problem solving mode.
Yes definitely. I try to find some more generalized, non-controversial statement that we both agree on. It's easier from that point to figure out what exactly we disagree on and why.
It also serves as a litmus test. If the other person isn't even willing to take an agreeable tone to something that's not controversial, then I know I'd be spending my time more wisely by doing something else.
Yes. I see that very often with tech-minded people when they take the kind of pointed logical reasoning that works best when discussing a technical solution in an issue tracker, to other media. With responses that start like "I strongly disagree..", bringing the other immediately in a position of defense.
If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty.
Conflict is almost unavoidable on mass "social networks". Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree. The only way to keep your sanity online is to live in a bubble, just as you do in real life, self-selecting which people to congregate with in rooms.
You may ask, having said that, why am I here in the HN comments? That's a good question, and the answer is obviously that I'm insane.
Does anyone find it weird that the author of the article claims that we actually need online arguments to "hone our thinking" or some such nonsense, but then immediately goes into an extended analogy about hostage negotiations? I don't know why we all need to become online hostage negotiators. If you want to learn something useful from a different perspective, go offline and read a good book.
The author says, "Taking a disagreement offline can work, but it should only ever be seen as a second-best option." Why???? Everything else the author said suggests it's actually the best option. I really don't see the point in online arguments. Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience. In fact I fully expect the same (non-)outcome in any replies to my comment.