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> The topic doesn't matter Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments

> The topic doesn't matter Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks that were void of other content were down voted on HN. But long-term I compare it to reddit and agree with the method: I can still go to reddit if I want wit (I often do). I (ideally) come here for high quality technical content.

reflexive 10y ago
I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion. Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.
- JonnieCache 10y ago
  I love that functional programming matters in the real world whereas immigration doesn't. Never change, HN. EDIT: bring back erlang day! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stilist/3348380060/in/photostream/lightbox/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/stilist/3348380060/in/photostr...
  - viraptor 10y ago
    That's not what the parent comment said. They only claimed "pretend to understand politics -> easy", "pretend to understand specific advanced tech -> hard", "HN is great, because comments mostly come from people trying to understand things". You jumped to conclusion about what "matter in real world" actually means that wasn't in the comment.
- ctchocula 10y ago
  Compulsory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/
- cabalamat 10y ago
  > This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion. This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone to Crony Beliefs ( http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ ) than almost any other field of discussion.
flashman 10y ago
I'd wager that we're all more qualified to talk about tech topics than political ones, which is what leads to emotion and bad arguments.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  That's not what Aaron Schwartz thought. But bravo dang, your timing could not be better given your blackout will be in effect on the anniversary of his death. That will put paid to all that pesky politics around freedom, innovation, abuses of power and ignorance by those in high office of all persuasions. Next thing I know, anything related to GNU, feminism in tech, policy discussions around encryption, the necessity of the space program, censorship or any of the hundreds of "political" topics will be killed off. It seems to me that HN are of the opinion that they must infantilise the reader and that any robust debate, no matter how well reasoned, will be cut off.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    Aaron Swartz died on January 11.
JdeBP 10y ago
> I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. There's a severe danger that you would lose. For a commentary on emotionally charged and intellectually devoid arguments about a technical subject, I give you http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235). But that's not the whole of it, by a long chalk. There have been "the OS Wars", "the editor wars", "the archiver wars", and others. One particularly extreme example that I personally encountered was a group of people in comp.os.os2.advocacy . They did all of the petty and stupid Usenet tricks such as rudely and impatiently splitting paragraphs and sentences to reply to all of the individual words. Much of the level of "argument" was the sort of thing that I'd expect from six-year-olds in a playground: parroting, insults, and general childishness. I didn't read the newsgroup for the better part of a decade. When I went back to look at it I was astounded to see that the group was still at it, in (as far as I could tell) the same threads with exactly the same content-free taunting and rubbish. Going back to that newsgroup again today, and picking stuff at random, here's an example of this sort of discourse. From 2011! * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy/t7MV8bE0b0I https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy... Here's a comparison thread randomly selected from the 1990s. * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy/kL1ECv5dIjI https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

reflexive 10y ago

I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion. Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.

JonnieCache 10y ago
I love that functional programming matters in the real world whereas immigration doesn't. Never change, HN. EDIT: bring back erlang day! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://www.flickr.com/photos/stilist/3348380060/in/photostream/lightbox/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/stilist/3348380060/in/photostr...
- viraptor 10y ago
  That's not what the parent comment said. They only claimed "pretend to understand politics -> easy", "pretend to understand specific advanced tech -> hard", "HN is great, because comments mostly come from people trying to understand things". You jumped to conclusion about what "matter in real world" actually means that wasn't in the comment.
ctchocula 10y ago
Compulsory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/
cabalamat 10y ago
> This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion. This is true, but I suspect the biggest reason is that politics is more prone to Crony Beliefs ( http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/ ) than almost any other field of discussion.

flashman 10y ago

I'd wager that we're all more qualified to talk about tech topics than political ones, which is what leads to emotion and bad arguments.

chris_wot 10y ago
That's not what Aaron Schwartz thought. But bravo dang, your timing could not be better given your blackout will be in effect on the anniversary of his death. That will put paid to all that pesky politics around freedom, innovation, abuses of power and ignorance by those in high office of all persuasions. Next thing I know, anything related to GNU, feminism in tech, policy discussions around encryption, the necessity of the space program, censorship or any of the hundreds of "political" topics will be killed off. It seems to me that HN are of the opinion that they must infantilise the reader and that any robust debate, no matter how well reasoned, will be cut off.
- tomhoward 10y ago
  Aaron Swartz died on January 11.

JdeBP 10y ago

> I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. There's a severe danger that you would lose. For a commentary on emotionally charged and intellectually devoid arguments about a technical subject, I give you http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235). But that's not the whole of it, by a long chalk. There have been "the OS Wars", "the editor wars", "the archiver wars", and others. One particularly extreme example that I personally encountered was a group of people in comp.os.os2.advocacy . They did all of the petty and stupid Usenet tricks such as rudely and impatiently splitting paragraphs and sentences to reply to all of the individual words. Much of the level of "argument" was the sort of thing that I'd expect from six-year-olds in a playground: parroting, insults, and general childishness. I didn't read the newsgroup for the better part of a decade. When I went back to look at it I was astounded to see that the group was still at it, in (as far as I could tell) the same threads with exactly the same content-free taunting and rubbish. Going back to that newsgroup again today, and picking stuff at random, here's an example of this sort of discourse. From 2011! * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy/t7MV8bE0b0I https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy... Here's a comparison thread randomly selected from the 1990s. * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy/kL1ECv5dIjI https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...