2 ms·

I don't think you're a neo-nazi. The problem is that with the arguments being made, everyone has plausible deniability because they're only defending X because

I don't think you're a neo-nazi. The problem is that with the arguments being made, everyone has plausible deniability because they're only defending X because of his right to free speech, or because he's trying to fix the ethics in game journalism. But I believe that taking the comments, and stories getting votes, in the last weeks in aggregate, there's a statistical signal that requires mention. To add to the excellent example of pcj50: I think we've seen something very similar with the treatment the "Google diversity memo" story got. If you check the stories that were upvoted on HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=manifesto&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=manifesto&sort=byPopularity&pr...) you'll see that they're >90% in favour of what's written. Now there's obviously the possibility that this memo was simply right, and it was just the reasonable thing to support the author. But I'd like to point out that: - We saw the same, repeated, deference to "free speech", i.e. an attempt to frame support for him as some sort of higher principle (similar to the previously-mentioned "ethics in game journalism", or even Saturday's right-wing rallies in Boston etc. also invoking "free speech"). - There was a tendency to invoke "science" in support of him, just as the comment that started this thread invoked some sort of autistic super-rationality as the root cause of some unspecified "non-PC" comments. This ignored both scientists criticising the memo's content, as well as the first argument brought up by every single opponent: confusing what is with what ought to be, or (in other words) the nurture-vs-nature debate. - The author's subsequent choice of associating mainly with a very specific segment of the media, namely men's rights and alt-right outlets. If I were asked to explain my views on react.js' licence by, say, Breitbart, I would refuse. There are other such incidents. I think this community gave much harsher treatment to Marissa Mayers, Ellen Pao, and Elizabeth Holmes than similar cases involving men, although there are obvious difficulties because each failed company failed in it's very specific way. Jason Kalanick arguably has more defenders than they had (but Uber is arguably the greater achievement), and Mt. Gox's CEO somehow never got the sort of personal focus that Holmes got. I wish I could come up with a way to measure these things.

Inconel 9y ago
I appreciate you taking the time to respond and agree with your point about the whole plausible deniability angle, and how problematic it can be. With regards to the algolia link about the "Google diversity memo" that was actually really interesting to me for two reasons. First, I too am somewhat surprised at the number of upvotes some of those articles received, to be honest some of them seem really poorly reasoned irrespective of how one might feel about the whole issue, and secondly, because despite visiting HN daily, and usually checking in a couple of times a day, I can't remember seeing many of those articles. Is there any way to tell how long they remained on the front page? I don't want to imply that programmers sit in front of their computers all day and slack off browsing HN, but it wouldn't surprise me if many people who are in front of a computer do check in quite often. In my case, I usually only check in during the morning while I eat breakfast, and at night before I go to bed. I don't have access to the internet at work, occasionally I'll browse on my phone during lunch. And I usually only go through the first 50 or so submissions. From my experience, the type of articles that stay on the from page long enough for me to see them, read the article, read the comments, and formulate a coherent response, are either articles that are super interesting to the community or somewhat controversial, since these get the most votes. This obviously biases the kind of articles I usually comment on. I only bring this up to express that their may be a pattern in my commenting that would suggest I'm trying to push a very specific agenda, I hope this isn't the case, but that this might actually be greatly influenced by the kind of content I'm exposed to based on it's position on the front page. You make a very good point with regards to the difference in treatment between some of the people you list. I've noticed myself falling into that trap personally, and I think it was partially due to none of those people being particularly sympathetic in my eyes. This made it much more difficult to spot any bias that may be occurring in the comments.

Inconel 9y ago

I appreciate you taking the time to respond and agree with your point about the whole plausible deniability angle, and how problematic it can be. With regards to the algolia link about the "Google diversity memo" that was actually really interesting to me for two reasons. First, I too am somewhat surprised at the number of upvotes some of those articles received, to be honest some of them seem really poorly reasoned irrespective of how one might feel about the whole issue, and secondly, because despite visiting HN daily, and usually checking in a couple of times a day, I can't remember seeing many of those articles. Is there any way to tell how long they remained on the front page? I don't want to imply that programmers sit in front of their computers all day and slack off browsing HN, but it wouldn't surprise me if many people who are in front of a computer do check in quite often. In my case, I usually only check in during the morning while I eat breakfast, and at night before I go to bed. I don't have access to the internet at work, occasionally I'll browse on my phone during lunch. And I usually only go through the first 50 or so submissions. From my experience, the type of articles that stay on the from page long enough for me to see them, read the article, read the comments, and formulate a coherent response, are either articles that are super interesting to the community or somewhat controversial, since these get the most votes. This obviously biases the kind of articles I usually comment on. I only bring this up to express that their may be a pattern in my commenting that would suggest I'm trying to push a very specific agenda, I hope this isn't the case, but that this might actually be greatly influenced by the kind of content I'm exposed to based on it's position on the front page. You make a very good point with regards to the difference in treatment between some of the people you list. I've noticed myself falling into that trap personally, and I think it was partially due to none of those people being particularly sympathetic in my eyes. This made it much more difficult to spot any bias that may be occurring in the comments.