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Significant changes in my life primarily attributable to arguments with friends and online: 1. Moved from a vague agnosticism to atheism 2. Maintained a veget

Significant changes in my life primarily attributable to arguments with friends and online: 1. Moved from a vague agnosticism to atheism 2. Maintained a vegetarian diet for 10 years 3. Shifted my politics from the far-left toward the center-right Who are these people who think minds never change? That's what I see repeated over and over without evidence. Minds never change in the moment. That's not how beliefs or the stubborn humans who hold them work. But beliefs can -- and do! -- change over time.

bad_user 9y ago
We are having a conversation on Hacker News. Any sampling from HN's user base, including your sample of 1, is biased. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a high probability that: 1. you have at least average intelligence 2. you can entertain logical arguments, since software development involves a lot of mathematical logic 3. you are heavily exposed to American culture and San Francisco's progressiveness, even those of us that are not even living in the US ;-) 4. you have a good education, either from an Ivy league school, or because you are an efficient autodidact 5. you are middle class and have your basic needs satisfied by your salary Don't get me wrong, but there's a high probability that you're living in a bubble, just like most of us here and you're really not representative of the average population.
- dionidium 9y ago
  Right, but the mods here don't allow heated debates on controversial subjects. They view them as pointless or even harmful. Further, they seem to have accepted a sort of broken windows theory of moderation that says that any such discussion has to be stopped, lest it leak out into other threads. I think that's disastrously wrong on all counts.
  - tepe1 9y ago
    The goal of such "controversial discussions" is always to silence the minorities. The goal is not discussion or debate but normalization of extreme views. The mechanism here is very simple. A "controversial subject" is proposed like, say, "Women are inferior to men when it comes to X." The content of this discussion is not relevant. Its existence is enough to fulfill the true purpose: drive women away from the forum. It is abundantly clear that women, or any other minority, will rightly avoid any community that entertains their inferiority. What's amusing about this debate is that all the heroic defenders of "free speech" have a very limited and very self-serving definition of free speech. You will never see these people argue for making a particular forum more welcoming or hospitable to minorities. You will never see arguments for diversity. This would introduce real diversity of opinion which is very much not wanted. But even though they despise real diversity, by defending free speech of the most extreme ilk they do at least get the nice virtue points in their mind with the benefit of ensuring everbody in the forum is pretty much exactly like them.

bad_user 9y ago

We are having a conversation on Hacker News. Any sampling from HN's user base, including your sample of 1, is biased. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a high probability that: 1. you have at least average intelligence 2. you can entertain logical arguments, since software development involves a lot of mathematical logic 3. you are heavily exposed to American culture and San Francisco's progressiveness, even those of us that are not even living in the US ;-) 4. you have a good education, either from an Ivy league school, or because you are an efficient autodidact 5. you are middle class and have your basic needs satisfied by your salary Don't get me wrong, but there's a high probability that you're living in a bubble, just like most of us here and you're really not representative of the average population.

dionidium 9y ago
Right, but the mods here don't allow heated debates on controversial subjects. They view them as pointless or even harmful. Further, they seem to have accepted a sort of broken windows theory of moderation that says that any such discussion has to be stopped, lest it leak out into other threads. I think that's disastrously wrong on all counts.
- tepe1 9y ago
  The goal of such "controversial discussions" is always to silence the minorities. The goal is not discussion or debate but normalization of extreme views. The mechanism here is very simple. A "controversial subject" is proposed like, say, "Women are inferior to men when it comes to X." The content of this discussion is not relevant. Its existence is enough to fulfill the true purpose: drive women away from the forum. It is abundantly clear that women, or any other minority, will rightly avoid any community that entertains their inferiority. What's amusing about this debate is that all the heroic defenders of "free speech" have a very limited and very self-serving definition of free speech. You will never see these people argue for making a particular forum more welcoming or hospitable to minorities. You will never see arguments for diversity. This would introduce real diversity of opinion which is very much not wanted. But even though they despise real diversity, by defending free speech of the most extreme ilk they do at least get the nice virtue points in their mind with the benefit of ensuring everbody in the forum is pretty much exactly like them.