I thought many here were contrarians - and the positive side of a contrarian is that they can see both sides of the issue and the negative side is that they ten

I thought many here were contrarians - and the positive side of a contrarian is that they can see both sides of the issue and the negative side is that they tend to be prone to trolling. It appears there is a lack of seeing both sides on this issue - which, to me, means there is something else going on. It's a kind of philosophy. It's more than politics. I think it may be about what Truth actually is. For example (and I'm feeling my way here, forgive me my more philosophically minded friends) that what we are people are clashing about is what is true, useful and socially agreed upon to believe in. It's like the social contract - if we somehow all accepted that behaving in society was untrue and so stopped operating in society, it would collapse. So there is an accepted truth that living in a society is a useful and helpful thing. The same with sexual stereotypes. There may be some data here on both sides (The Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Surgery ones come to mind), but it's neither useful nor helpful to society, and so if someone says X is untrue then society will emphatically say it is true. You, a human living in society, will defend where and who you live with. Politics is somewhat about the organisation of society. What most people on both sides of this debate cannot see is that they are arguing about something more fundamental. Now - with a cheery hello to my future employers who will hopefully (I'm a data scientist) be using some advanced data software to tie up my contrarian HN posts with my actual identity, I'm not at all surprised the employee was fired. It goes against the culture that he is in. I do believe the discussion should be had, and repeated, debunked and defended like you imagine a real debate to work like.