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> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I

• dunkelheit 7y ago
  Compared to e.g. twitter it may feel this way but there is definitely some discussion going on despite the efforts to keep it to the minimum. And even without directly engaging with "the other side" it is nice to know that they are still here and can provide their perspective on the other matters.
  • Bartweiss 7y ago
    I have a sneaking suspicion that this is how the majority of productive political discussions happen - around the edges of other things. People who show up for political debate generally do so with knives drawn; you hear from the loudest people with the most solidified views, and the stuff that rises to the top is playing to the crowd instead of engaging in extended discussions. But in a rec sports team, a movie club, or a tech forum, people aren't grouped by viewpoint and vitriolic arguments are a distraction from the original cause. So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism.
    • Gh0stRAT 7y ago
      >So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism. Another way of looking at it is that in that context, they are interacting as fellow members of their "rec team tribe" rather than as members of competing political tribes. (which they may also be a part of)
    • tomatotomato37 7y ago
      Itp's not just political discussion; some of the best discussions in general I've seen were in derailed threads on hobby boards.
    • ethbro 7y ago
      It seems like there's probably a mathematical law that one could state about the probability of a substantive discussion occuring, where the result is dominated by the likelihood of a random, uninformed stranger crashing into the thread. I feel like at less than ~ 3:1 "citizens":stranger ratios, any conversation spirals down. Because someone inevitably takes the bait, responds to stupidity, and there goes the thread.
• Bartweiss 7y ago
  It's always interesting to see a light-grey thread at the bottom of a page that's full of lucid, not-overly-aggressive political discussion. In one sense it's a shame when thoughtful, evidence-based discussion is discouraged for being off-topic. But I suspect that's ultimately what makes those discussions possible; they're happening between relatively small numbers of discussants, in a space that doesn't draw in people looking for political debates.
  • mcv 7y ago
    Well, if it is off-topic, it doesn't belong at the top. But if it's thoughful, it should still be readable, so I sometimes upvote comments that deserve downvotes because I think it's been downvoted too much. It's fine if it lingers at the bottom, but if it's still thoughtful, it deserves to be readable. Actual abuse, trolling, etc deserves to be downvoted into unreadability.
  • wozniacki 7y ago
    In one sense it's a shame when thoughtful, evidence- based discussion is discouraged for being off-topic. But I suspect that's ultimately what makes those discussions possible; No. Thoughtful, evidence-based discussion should never be discouraged or deemed off-topic - no matter how sensitive the topic. ( People reading this, even 10-15 years on, might find the mores of this age whimsical, at best. ) The only reason one might find thoughtful, evidence-based discussion off-putting is to be on the good side of David Geffen in the hopeful attempt that he or she might be might be invited to luxuriate on his super-yacht, one day. There's never a better reason than that to be economical with the truth.
    • reificator 7y ago
      > Thoughtful, evidence-based discussion should never be discouraged or deemed off-topic - no matter how sensitive the topic. Off-topic has nothing to do with the sensitivity of the topic or the current social mores. It has to do with not being on topic.
      • 7y ago
• crispyambulance 7y ago
  I LOVE this paragraph. God-damn nails the problems of HN (and other tech-heavy web communities) like nothing else... > The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition— > hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative— > often masks a deeper recklessness. Ill-advised citations proliferate; > thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as > emotional or irrational. Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify > broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be > ancillary concerns. The message-board intellectualism that might > once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an > intellectual style all its own. Hacker News readers who visit the > site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they > talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that > resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian > economics blogs, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of > Yuval Noah Harari.
  • curtis 7y ago
    There's a lot of the author's opinion embedded in that paragraph, and I'm disinclined to agree with it, but ... no wait -- was that paragraph generated by a Markov bot trained to make substanceless attacks on opinions that the author doesn't like?
  • cloakandswagger 7y ago
    That paragraph is a smug, flowery dismissal of the kind of evidence-based discussion that happens on HN. It's passive aggressively accusing HN commenters of wrongthink and of abusing unreliable tools like "data" and "logic" to counter "humane arguments" (read: emotional arguments). It basically dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective--we've all probably encountered this type of weaselly thinking, one that demands proof for an argument and, when provided, attacks the source as biased or the data as flawed. You can argue for pretty much any position when you embrace a brand of anti-intellectualism which believes that all data is fake/flawed and reality is subjective. If you strip it down, the author is basically saying "I wish these annoying nerds would stop thinking so much and get onboard my bandwagon."
• jothezero 7y ago
  Once tried to step up and say that a certain article should not be on Hacker News. Got down-voted down to the abysses. Obviously, the article was an anti-trump article.
• clairity 7y ago
  yes, i think HN balances political discussions well: political discussion, in the philosophical sense of the application of power, is unavoidable in any discussion (it's inherent to communication itself), while partisan discussion (e.g., tribalistic and ideological stances) should be entirely discouraged. leave the labels at the door and let's dive into the ideas, deeper than the platitude-based debate so prevalent otherwise.
• derefr 7y ago
  Indeed, that “hovering near zero” voting effect is just-as-often because the folks around here will downvote arguments they agree with, just because they don’t like seeing such things on HN. Which I find lovely, personally.
  • AimForTheBushes 7y ago
    Also, it's not like you can create an account and downvote. I think that is overlooked as well.
  • ethbro 7y ago
    That's one of my core personal rules before I downvote or upvote -- am I doing this because the comment is objectively good / true / insightful (or the opposites), or because I simply agree with it. I try and avoid the latter, to the extent humanly possible.
  • hollerith 7y ago
    >the folks around here will downvote arguments they agree with, just because they don’t like seeing such things on HN. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious how you came to know that. Do you have some way of seeing who downvoted what?
    • lallysingh 7y ago
      Sometimes people comment on things they downvote.
      • rusk 7y ago
        quite
• gwbas1c 7y ago
  Honestly, in the last few months I often find myself upvoting opinions I disagree with. It's one thing to downvote something that's factually incorrect, mean-spirited, ect. But downvoting a post that expresses a well-formed, but subjective opinion? I used to just ignore opinions that I disagreed with; and only downvote flames and things that were factually incorrect. That, IMO, is how I interpret how the “Eternal September” plays out here: When people penalize opinions instead of facts and flames.