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Here’s the thread, go ahead and tally the number of comments that are sympathetic vs unsympathetic to the hate-crime CEO, and compare that to the proportion of

Here’s the thread, go ahead and tally the number of comments that are sympathetic vs unsympathetic to the hate-crime CEO, and compare that to the proportion of comments in this thread that are sympathetic/unsympathetic to the Florida whistleblower: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23007512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23007512 Kinda funny how HN commenters decide that certain people’s perspectives need to be “steelmanned” but not others’

true_religion 6y ago
Oh I remember now. The CEO was an abused kid, who joined the KKK and stayed in it till he was about 19; then gradually left. Then 32 years passed. I am willing to believe 3 decades is enough to change a man. HNs response was also tempered by the fact that many posters are young, so when this man committed his crimes they were not even born. Throw in the fact that he is Jewish and still joined the KKK, and you can see why some decided he was a deluded or tricked child who escaped the KKK clutches rather than someone who would continue to harbor self-hate for 3 decades, acting as a sleeper agent. This case now, is about the present day. The researcher can’t claim that any faults are merely past transgressions she has moved beyond. Nor can anyone say they don’t understand the time period this is occurring in (as the time period is now). Edit: In the above I reference the KKK, but the CEO was actually a neo Nazi. Same hate. Different clothing.
- iron0013 6y ago
  Thanks for making my point—-You’re willing to swallow anything the kkk ceo claimed (including the obviously false “but I’m Jewish!” howler), but are comfortable discounting this whistleblower’s claims based on a vague sniff test and nothing more.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    They didn't swallow, nor discount, anything. They pointed out reasonable doubt without committing to a conclusion, which you interpret as taking sides; which makes a different point entirely..
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
dang 6y ago
You're cherry-picking these two examples to compare precisely because the comparison reinforces your pre-existing view, which is ironically the same response that this subthread is criticizing. There have been plenty of HN comments supporting whistleblowers, and plenty of HN comments decrying things in the KKK bucket. This is a classic example of the notice-dislike bias that governs how people, especially those with strong views, perceive HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We notice what we dislike, and weight it heavily; we gloss over what we like; poof, bias. The result is a generalization about HN that is invariably an inverted afterimage of your own preferences (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20afterimage&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). And I do mean invariably; I'm not sure I've seen a single case, out of thousands, that violated this pattern. Needless to say there's an endless litany of people making the opposite generalization about the HN community to the one that you are making (it's overrun by socialists, it's full of SJWs, it's extremely left-biased, blah blah blah). I've posted lists of those many times. Do you really think that they are wrong and you are right?
- iron0013 6y ago
  I feel like “both sidesing” the issue could be countered empirically. Are there really as many pro-“SJW” comments as KKK-forgiving comments, or is that just a comfortable thought-annihilating truism?
  - dang 6y ago
    I've thought a lot about how this might be studied empirically. The problem is that the only people who'd care strongly enough to bother are people with a strong pre-existing commitment to one side or the other, and any study they produced would be guaranteed to regurgitate the conclusion they've already come to—for a whole bunch of reasons, some obvious, some not so obvious. You'd just re-encounter the same problem at a meta level. Here's a different way to look at it empirically. Can you, or anyone, find a single example of someone making a strong ideological generalization about HN that wasn't opposed to their own ideological preference? If my analysis is wrong, these shouldn't be hard to find, so let's start with an existence proof. I'm pretty sure I can find thousands of cases the other way around. If that's correct—thousands of cases exist on one side, close to zero on the other—it is surely evidence of something. I claim that it is evidence of a psychological mechanism, and not a weak one. By the way, while I have you: would you please stop arguing in the flamewar style on HN? It's against the guidelines, it's destructive, and it's tedious. Snarky swipes like "or is that just a [fancy synonym for stupid]" destroy curious conversation and don't belong here. People do this when they're more interested in defeating enemies than in learning from each other, and this site is supposed to be for the latter, not the former. You unfortunately do this a lot. In fact, the last time you asked me a question (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23018879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23018879) I had the same feeling: that it was not a genuine question but a cross-examination, almost of a "have you stopped beating your wife yet" sort. There's a reason why we added "Don't cross-examine" to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. "Both sidesing" is another example. That's a reductionist label which doesn't reflect back to me how I actually see this problem at all. When you categorize what I'm saying that way, my felt sense is that you want to back me into a corner rhetorically, alongside a bunch of concepts I don't have, but which are easy to argue against. In other words, that you're advancing a step in a fight. I don't enjoy this impression. I prefer the feeling that the person I'm talking with is curious to understand what I actually think and feel, and is interested in dropping any distorted perceptions they may have, rather than affixing them to me further.

true_religion 6y ago

Oh I remember now. The CEO was an abused kid, who joined the KKK and stayed in it till he was about 19; then gradually left. Then 32 years passed. I am willing to believe 3 decades is enough to change a man. HNs response was also tempered by the fact that many posters are young, so when this man committed his crimes they were not even born. Throw in the fact that he is Jewish and still joined the KKK, and you can see why some decided he was a deluded or tricked child who escaped the KKK clutches rather than someone who would continue to harbor self-hate for 3 decades, acting as a sleeper agent. This case now, is about the present day. The researcher can’t claim that any faults are merely past transgressions she has moved beyond. Nor can anyone say they don’t understand the time period this is occurring in (as the time period is now). Edit: In the above I reference the KKK, but the CEO was actually a neo Nazi. Same hate. Different clothing.

iron0013 6y ago
Thanks for making my point—-You’re willing to swallow anything the kkk ceo claimed (including the obviously false “but I’m Jewish!” howler), but are comfortable discounting this whistleblower’s claims based on a vague sniff test and nothing more.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  They didn't swallow, nor discount, anything. They pointed out reasonable doubt without committing to a conclusion, which you interpret as taking sides; which makes a different point entirely..
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

dang 6y ago

You're cherry-picking these two examples to compare precisely because the comparison reinforces your pre-existing view, which is ironically the same response that this subthread is criticizing. There have been plenty of HN comments supporting whistleblowers, and plenty of HN comments decrying things in the KKK bucket. This is a classic example of the notice-dislike bias that governs how people, especially those with strong views, perceive HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We notice what we dislike, and weight it heavily; we gloss over what we like; poof, bias. The result is a generalization about HN that is invariably an inverted afterimage of your own preferences (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20afterimage&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). And I do mean invariably; I'm not sure I've seen a single case, out of thousands, that violated this pattern. Needless to say there's an endless litany of people making the opposite generalization about the HN community to the one that you are making (it's overrun by socialists, it's full of SJWs, it's extremely left-biased, blah blah blah). I've posted lists of those many times. Do you really think that they are wrong and you are right?

iron0013 6y ago
I feel like “both sidesing” the issue could be countered empirically. Are there really as many pro-“SJW” comments as KKK-forgiving comments, or is that just a comfortable thought-annihilating truism?
- dang 6y ago
  I've thought a lot about how this might be studied empirically. The problem is that the only people who'd care strongly enough to bother are people with a strong pre-existing commitment to one side or the other, and any study they produced would be guaranteed to regurgitate the conclusion they've already come to—for a whole bunch of reasons, some obvious, some not so obvious. You'd just re-encounter the same problem at a meta level. Here's a different way to look at it empirically. Can you, or anyone, find a single example of someone making a strong ideological generalization about HN that wasn't opposed to their own ideological preference? If my analysis is wrong, these shouldn't be hard to find, so let's start with an existence proof. I'm pretty sure I can find thousands of cases the other way around. If that's correct—thousands of cases exist on one side, close to zero on the other—it is surely evidence of something. I claim that it is evidence of a psychological mechanism, and not a weak one. By the way, while I have you: would you please stop arguing in the flamewar style on HN? It's against the guidelines, it's destructive, and it's tedious. Snarky swipes like "or is that just a [fancy synonym for stupid]" destroy curious conversation and don't belong here. People do this when they're more interested in defeating enemies than in learning from each other, and this site is supposed to be for the latter, not the former. You unfortunately do this a lot. In fact, the last time you asked me a question (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23018879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23018879) I had the same feeling: that it was not a genuine question but a cross-examination, almost of a "have you stopped beating your wife yet" sort. There's a reason why we added "Don't cross-examine" to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. "Both sidesing" is another example. That's a reductionist label which doesn't reflect back to me how I actually see this problem at all. When you categorize what I'm saying that way, my felt sense is that you want to back me into a corner rhetorically, alongside a bunch of concepts I don't have, but which are easy to argue against. In other words, that you're advancing a step in a fight. I don't enjoy this impression. I prefer the feeling that the person I'm talking with is curious to understand what I actually think and feel, and is interested in dropping any distorted perceptions they may have, rather than affixing them to me further.