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I found HN aggravatingly hostile to freedom of thinking and open discussion. There are several hypocrisies/arbitrary taboos about what ideas you're allowed to m

I found HN aggravatingly hostile to freedom of thinking and open discussion. There are several hypocrisies/arbitrary taboos about what ideas you're allowed to mention on here. Even some anti-science taboos. Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. People are very afraid of specific political ideas so even getting accidentally misidentified as a member of some popular hateable group gets you penalised. People see hints of "bad-thought" hidden behind innocent or open-minded words.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
No community is perfect. HN has some groupthink too, but honestly, it's an order of magnitude better place than anything else I've seen on the entire Web[0], so myself, I'm sticking to it. -- [0] - except maybe LessWrong of old, but I was (and still am) too dumb to be able to contribute anything of value on that site.
abraae 9y ago
> Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. Isn't this the inherent nature of a fact-based platform? And most HN posters are probably quite rational and fact-based? I wouldn't come to HN if it was a place where people could air stupid, non-fact based opinions and have them treated without criticism or derision. people can hang out in their Facebook group if they want to assert the world is flat.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  Surely fact-based and conforming to group belief are pretty opposite concepts aren't they? I'm not talking about false facts, but ideas that are outside the fairly clearly delineated (as I found by testing various boundaries and seeing others do so), but arbitrary scope of what's acceptable on HN.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  The thing is people can be very rational and fact based and still be out of their league in various topics or have strong biases that they do or don't realize. Here's a thread where someone is getting downvoted for asking a question because people don't like the implication of that question, it doesn't fit the biases of the audience. That's not rational and fact based, its suppressing views we don't like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 There are many examples like that, and one of the dangers of "rational" communities is we assume we're rational and can't mess it up, when really we aren't any different.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

No community is perfect. HN has some groupthink too, but honestly, it's an order of magnitude better place than anything else I've seen on the entire Web[0], so myself, I'm sticking to it. -- [0] - except maybe LessWrong of old, but I was (and still am) too dumb to be able to contribute anything of value on that site.

abraae 9y ago

> Usually agreeing with everyone else is good and disagreeing with the majority will get you downvoted or shadowbanned. Isn't this the inherent nature of a fact-based platform? And most HN posters are probably quite rational and fact-based? I wouldn't come to HN if it was a place where people could air stupid, non-fact based opinions and have them treated without criticism or derision. people can hang out in their Facebook group if they want to assert the world is flat.

lopmotr 9y ago
Surely fact-based and conforming to group belief are pretty opposite concepts aren't they? I'm not talking about false facts, but ideas that are outside the fairly clearly delineated (as I found by testing various boundaries and seeing others do so), but arbitrary scope of what's acceptable on HN.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
The thing is people can be very rational and fact based and still be out of their league in various topics or have strong biases that they do or don't realize. Here's a thread where someone is getting downvoted for asking a question because people don't like the implication of that question, it doesn't fit the biases of the audience. That's not rational and fact based, its suppressing views we don't like. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16337180 There are many examples like that, and one of the dangers of "rational" communities is we assume we're rational and can't mess it up, when really we aren't any different.