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> how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectat

> how can we share out most wonderful and beautiful ideas with each other The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not.* It always has been, but the the arrival of new communication methods has disrupted the traditional channels, and now every idea is propagated to a much larger and looser audience, which aren't aware or don't share the expectations of the sender. We need to rebuild the architecture of communication channels around this principle of limited audiences sharing a common understanding, and reshape the current "free" massive communication tools so that they respect this principle instead of exploiting the benefits of popularising aggressive messages for their shock value. This compartmentalisation of channels would do much more for freedom of expression than the current "everyone gets a distorted and contextless version of the original message and can have their say". * By the way, this is the reason why explicit Codes of Conduct are a good thing for online projects. Without them, you simply get a default implicit code of conduct based on the expectations of the dominant group; which is not a good solution for people coming from any other group.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Now that I think about it, it's the same challenge I have with microservices. Formerly simple interactions are now hellza complicated. I'm not fighting the trend. I'm just fatigued.
- danielheath 6y ago
  Exposure to unfamiliar ideas is exhausting. Doubly so when the social behaviour that typically becomes second nature in adolescence no longer fits (IMO that’s why video calls are exhausting too - the usual subtle social cues don’t apply).
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    That's the truth. New + important = hard.
- makomk 6y ago
  For some of this stuff, I'm pretty sure the difficulty of keeping up with it is the whole point - it's effectively a way of signalling that you're part of the right group of people with the right views and connections, and what stops outsiders from just learning to imitate the signals is the way things which were mandatory suddenly flip to horribly offensive without rhyme or reason.
- paulgb 6y ago
  > The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Are per-person pronouns really such a big deal to manage? I've known more people who have changed their name in marriage than changed their pronouns.
  - blueflow 6y ago
    "changing your pronouns" has a link to "tying your identity to how you are being referenced" (i claim this from observation). Using the wrong pronoun is such much more likely to be seen as a personal attack than using your pre-marriage name.
    - paulgb 6y ago
      Have you seen anyone personally take offense, or just high-profile cases? I've definitely seen a few of the latter (e.g. Jordan Peterson) but the common denominator there seems to be antagonistically refusing to use pronouns or doing so to make the point that you reject them, which is different from an honest mistake.
      - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
        Before understood more about gender identity, yes. I think it's likely more that I was speaking to a person when they were low on patience for reasons that had little to do with me. But it's amazing how vividly remember upsetting the person, and how afraid I can be at times at doing it again.
      - technothrasher 6y ago
        Have you seen anyone personally take offense As a parent of a teenage child, I see it reasonably often between teens and "boomers". Teens absolutely use offense of misused pronouns as a weapon against older folks. But in fairness, older folks also refuse to use preferred pronouns as a weapon back. But, of course, this is all typical generational strife, and the pronouns are mostly an irrelevant detail to the actual hostility.
- kiplkipl 6y ago
  If learning new pronouns was really that difficult, none of your peers would speak more than one language. This is just the way society deals with issues that are personal or to do with respect: you don't ask people why they use Ms., you don't ask why someone hasn't had children, you (probably) don't fistbump strangers, and you feel guilt when you forget someone's name. Similarly, in most of these cases, it's worse to be on the other side.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    Does every person speak differnt language?
    - kiplkipl 6y ago
      No
- indigochill 6y ago
  >How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? I don't think perfect adherence should be expected. If there's a code of conduct and someone runs afoul of it, just give them a gentle poke and point them to what they ran afoul of. If they're cool with the code of conduct, great. They fix their behavior and everyone's happy. If they don't like the code of conduct, then they're welcome to join a community with a code of conduct that better matches their outlook. If they continue to stick around anyway and violate the code of conduct after being informed what they're doing wrong, they get the boot. Where this gets stickier is when you build monolithic communities like Stack Overflow where "the boot" is actually seriously punishing. I only ever moderated little game forums where the consequences of a ban were far less severe. Which is why I tend to think it's better to have small distributed self-managing communities rather than monolithic communities. Makes it easier for diverse outlooks to live-and-let-live without requiring minorities to conform to the majority.
  - camelCaseCamel 6y ago
    Who polices those giving the "boot"? Who polices those police? What about nuances and interpretations and lack of context?
    - ryukafalz 6y ago
      Given small enough communities: no one, and that’s okay. If you start behaving in a way I don’t like after inviting you to my home, I’m well within my rights to kick you out, and there isn’t (and shouldn’t be) anyone policing me on that. No, this doesn’t work at Facebook scale. I think we had a good thing going on the early web with lots of small discussion boards.
haberman 6y ago
> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not. Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber. I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which are not sounds like codifying the dominance of an official viewpoint.
- danielheath 6y ago
  Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say (try arguing the merits of pederasty, war, or heroin and see how far you get!)
  - haberman 6y ago
    I agree that there are almost always some guardrails in place, and certain viewpoints that are considered beyond the pale. And so there is a balancing act between an Overton Window that is too wide and wastes people's time with nonsense, and one that is too narrow and prevents bad orthodoxies from being challenged.
    - TheNorthman 6y ago
      How are implicit guardrails better than specified guardrails? Surely explicit guardrails act as therapeutic discourse, in that it seeks to clarify systematic self-deception. By self-deception, I refer first-and-foremost to the myth of objectivity that often surrounds contemporary debate.
      - michaelt 6y ago
        Because moderators are trying to stop flamewars - not jump into the middle and fight both sides.
        TheNorthman 6y ago
high_derivative 6y ago
I find codes of conduct meaningless. They will go on in very general terms about 'hate speech' which is just synonymous with 'anything that anyone feels offended by' now. I would argue that code of conducts were a symptom of the start of the problem. The strategy of the grievance class: - Propose a code of conduct which surely nobody can disagree with, it's great to have rules and be nice to each other. - Design the code of conduct so any perceived offence falls under it - Wield it as a tool to push out any dissenters
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  That was always implicit in group discussions. As others have said, Codes of Conduct aren't creating new rules, they're just making them explicit instead of implicit. Let me give you an example: you have a group of friends. Two of your friends have recently experienced a miscarriage. The implicit rules in your group have now expanded to include "no dead baby jokes" (depending on how dark your group's humour was, this might always have been a rule). The reason for this expansion is that two members of the group will now be hurt, upset and offended by those jokes. Making a "dead baby joke" is now a good reason to think the offender is an insensitive idiot, who probably isn't someone you want to be friends with. This is no different from "no jokes about fags" when your group includes gay people. But sometimes, some people insist on being able to make "fag jokes" because "snowflakes are over-sensitive". Of course, they may not know the group includes gay people, and the gay people in question may not want anyone else to know their sexual orientation (none of anyone else's business). So it's better to spell it out explicitly that "fag jokes" are not allowed, even though there are apparently no gay people in the group. This is what a Code of Conduct does. Yes, there are Purity Spirals that end up pushing this to extremes. But that's a separate issue. Codes of Conduct are still a really good idea.
  - andreareina 6y ago
    Can you point to examples where you feel they're done well? Whenever the subject comes up it's always the egregious ones that are pointed out so I'd like to see the other side.
AHappyCamper 6y ago
You bring up some really interesting ideas, but there are certain times where communication is mission critical - and deeply considering complex communicational structures before posting/conveying information can eventuate in serious injury or loss of life. During those times, you simply need to be able to "get the message out" without worrying about the potential offense that you words may cause to a certain individuals. Again, I sympathize deeply that some people are hurting badly right now, but what should we do when we're dealing with life-and-death situations and there isn't time to craft the perfect message on the perfect platform?
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Can you give me an example of an urgent, mission critical communication that could be offensive to people?
  - AHappyCamper 6y ago
    Of course - and thank you for asking. One of my friends is a paramedic who primarily works in ambulances in LA. One day, he arrives at a scene after a passer-by called 911. A homeless man is lying on the street on top of garbage and cardboard boxes. There is urine and feces everywhere - it's a bad situation - and there are used needles lying next to the man. The man is obviously in medical distress, and is unable to respond. When they try to attend to him, he wakes up and swears at them and swats at them, but then says he feels like he's dying and wants help. When they come close again, he again swears at them and swings at them. As a matter of protocol, they have to radio in to headquarters and explain their situation. This is tricky - they have to be politically correct about how they describe him. He's visibly degrading quickly, and may soon die if they don't intervene, but instead, they have to spend previous time on the radio making sure they use all the politically terminology so that no offense is caused - describing the homeless in California is a very politically charged subject and they could be disciplined if they use the wrong words. If he is going into cardiac arrest, seconds can be the difference between life and death, and they're using them on trying to remember all the correct terminology and socially-acceptable phrasing.
zarkov99 6y ago
Wouldn't it be better ti provide people the tools to create their own channels, through personalized filtering algorithms? The idea that a central authority gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not is, in my view, only acceptable in extreme cases which are already covered by law.
- TuringTest 6y ago
  Yes, that's why it's important to have decentralised social networks. You can have authorities to decide what is acceptable, but only for small groups.
imhoguy 6y ago
The usual problem is when a message from such private channel gets spread publicly usually without context and author's consent. We see it often with leaked tapes from politicians' private meetings.
belorn 6y ago
The problem with explicit code of conduct is that there is always a implicit interpretation of what the code of conduct say and how it should get enforced. If we could get an explicit code of conduct with explicit interpretation with explicit enforcement then yes, they work quite well. Sadly most communities leave interpretation and enforcement up to the dominant group with an often explicit desire to not have those parts visible.
ramblerman 6y ago
You are describing a structured echo chamber. Or worse an internet of endless safe spaces to get just the view of the world that pleases you. I mean facebook is already doing this, on purpose or not (right now the blame is on the algorithms). Either way this is not the right way forward.
- lkrubner 6y ago
  In what sense is this not the right way forward? This seems to be the trend that’s been with us for at least 20 years. People increasingly pick the news they want to hear.
  - hamilyon2 6y ago
    Three out of three best ideas that improved me as a human being were very offensive to me when I first encountered them. I mean, so offensive that I closed book and put it away. Stopped thinking, stopped listening, stopped learning. Hurt me a lot. And yet, I am so happy they entered my mind and I returned to them when I got older.
  - dijit 6y ago
    People might pick the news they want to hear; but thinking this is "fine" is an appeal to ignorance. Ignorance is not strength. For whatever it's worth I was raised dirt poor, central Britain in a city that had been in rapid decline for many decades- Yet I believed, fiercely that Europe was less than Britain, that Muslims were coming for our benefits and our women and that Britains colonial past was something to be admired, we had brought civilisation to the world. I believed that I was born "rich" compared to the rest of the world and I had a birthright to be taken care of. I don't have to tell you how much it hurt me to learn how ignorant, bigoted and wrong I was. How much taking in things that were true conflicted so concretely with what I believed that I rejected it outright. Obviously my opinions have changed, but allowing me to hide from the world would not have done that. Only stepping forward and being exposed to that which causes discomfort allows for it.
    - lkrubner 6y ago
vogre 6y ago
You basically describe Soviet "obkoms". The commitee of people who decided what is ok to say/sing/write, and what is not. Needless to say, they became corrupt very soon, because no one was allowed to say a word against them.
- TuringTest 6y ago
  > You basically describe Soviet "obkoms". Not really. That would assume that the only existing channels are official channels. My description works as well for self-organised, distributed, unofficial channels.
- j-c-hewitt 6y ago
  Having an obkom would be helpful -- it's really hard to tell what you are allowed to say. It'd be nice also to have a grace period so there is some fair warning when certain ideas or words will become banned. Orderly authoritarianism is preferable to random, chaotic outbursts of censorious violence. But even just an official obkom rather than unofficial 'volunteer' versions of it would really reduce confusion here. The Saudi Arabian religious police enforcing public edicts are preferable to ISIS pulling you out of a truck, giving you a theology pop quiz, and then shooting you when you get some answers wrong. The Anglican sacramental Test Act is preferable to a fake regime of toleration.
stepstop 6y ago
Reddit already does this via subreddits
loudtieblahblah 6y ago
This ignores that the web has birthed a global culture of people where participation in online discussion is the majority of their lives. And they sit around looking to be offended to raise their own social value amonst their online peers. Being offended is about obtaining value and for mobs to obtain power. The two way street of both trying to not offend AND the listener trying to honestly interpret what is being said goes out the window Whenever you have a bad actor on either side of communication, it breaks down. The common wisdom, though, is that the bad actor is always the speaker. And its simply not true. The other problem is, as a culture, everyone is responsible for everyone else's emotions. No one is asked to be responsible for their own. I don't have a problem with codes of conduct per se. I do have a problem with a culture that constantly asks people to not be responsible for how they process information. Even negative, even offensive information. Relationship therapists teach couples to use "I" language vs "you" language to express feelings (Google it if you don't understand) This way you take responsibility for how external stimuli makes you feel rather than making your partner wholly responsible and thus making discussion adversarial This problem is happening in FOS projects or even just social media in general. Everyone is a soccer player, falling down, grabbing their leg hoping to get the most people feeling sorry for them, claiming 1% if the bullies and edgelords out there are some dominant social group. It's crap
- bavell 6y ago
  Hit the nail on the head. This culture has no concept of "thick skin" and interprets any nuanced position in the most unfavorable light. Then they put on a dramatic show of being offended, hurt, or outraged in hopes of accolades from their peers.
- TuringTest 6y ago
  > This ignores that the web has birthed a global culture of people where participation in online discussion is the majority of their lives. I'm not ignoring that, I'm describing what I see is an underlying cause. If online discussion tools respected the principle of setting proper expectations for each communication channel, the problem would be much milder, as the problems you describe would be limited to smaller groups of interaction, instead of being escalated to viral dimensions.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cmroanirgo 6y ago
> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences I truly feel that HN is a safe haven for such notations. It's a provable, working example where first and foremost is to regard the other's words in a positive light, rather than assuming the worst. Anything deliberately otherwise gets moderated. I figure @dang sends a lot of personal emails struggling to adhere to this. It's a system that can and should be replicated elsewhere imho. Ironically, parent's comment here on HN has alerted me (& presumably others) about this diabolical practice (thanks @AHappyCamper), again proving HN as good, receptive platform.
closeparen 6y ago
People looking to start outrage mobs aren’t going to care that what you said was acceptable on the channel where you said it. You’re still the speaker, they’re still going to make it expensive for your real-world contacts to implicitly endorse your views by continuing to associate with you.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Now that I think about it, it's the same challenge I have with microservices. Formerly simple interactions are now hellza complicated. I'm not fighting the trend. I'm just fatigued.

danielheath 6y ago
Exposure to unfamiliar ideas is exhausting. Doubly so when the social behaviour that typically becomes second nature in adolescence no longer fits (IMO that’s why video calls are exhausting too - the usual subtle social cues don’t apply).
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  That's the truth. New + important = hard.
makomk 6y ago
For some of this stuff, I'm pretty sure the difficulty of keeping up with it is the whole point - it's effectively a way of signalling that you're part of the right group of people with the right views and connections, and what stops outsiders from just learning to imitate the signals is the way things which were mandatory suddenly flip to horribly offensive without rhyme or reason.
paulgb 6y ago
> The trouble I'm having with social changes, expectations, per person pronouns, and other things is that managing all of these interactions can be a crushing amount of cognitive load. Are per-person pronouns really such a big deal to manage? I've known more people who have changed their name in marriage than changed their pronouns.
- blueflow 6y ago
  "changing your pronouns" has a link to "tying your identity to how you are being referenced" (i claim this from observation). Using the wrong pronoun is such much more likely to be seen as a personal attack than using your pre-marriage name.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Have you seen anyone personally take offense, or just high-profile cases? I've definitely seen a few of the latter (e.g. Jordan Peterson) but the common denominator there seems to be antagonistically refusing to use pronouns or doing so to make the point that you reject them, which is different from an honest mistake.
    - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
      Before understood more about gender identity, yes. I think it's likely more that I was speaking to a person when they were low on patience for reasons that had little to do with me. But it's amazing how vividly remember upsetting the person, and how afraid I can be at times at doing it again.
    - technothrasher 6y ago
      Have you seen anyone personally take offense As a parent of a teenage child, I see it reasonably often between teens and "boomers". Teens absolutely use offense of misused pronouns as a weapon against older folks. But in fairness, older folks also refuse to use preferred pronouns as a weapon back. But, of course, this is all typical generational strife, and the pronouns are mostly an irrelevant detail to the actual hostility.
kiplkipl 6y ago
If learning new pronouns was really that difficult, none of your peers would speak more than one language. This is just the way society deals with issues that are personal or to do with respect: you don't ask people why they use Ms., you don't ask why someone hasn't had children, you (probably) don't fistbump strangers, and you feel guilt when you forget someone's name. Similarly, in most of these cases, it's worse to be on the other side.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Does every person speak differnt language?
  - kiplkipl 6y ago
    No
indigochill 6y ago
>How do you manage reading every code of conduct and honoring it? I don't think perfect adherence should be expected. If there's a code of conduct and someone runs afoul of it, just give them a gentle poke and point them to what they ran afoul of. If they're cool with the code of conduct, great. They fix their behavior and everyone's happy. If they don't like the code of conduct, then they're welcome to join a community with a code of conduct that better matches their outlook. If they continue to stick around anyway and violate the code of conduct after being informed what they're doing wrong, they get the boot. Where this gets stickier is when you build monolithic communities like Stack Overflow where "the boot" is actually seriously punishing. I only ever moderated little game forums where the consequences of a ban were far less severe. Which is why I tend to think it's better to have small distributed self-managing communities rather than monolithic communities. Makes it easier for diverse outlooks to live-and-let-live without requiring minorities to conform to the majority.
- camelCaseCamel 6y ago
  Who polices those giving the "boot"? Who polices those police? What about nuances and interpretations and lack of context?
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    Given small enough communities: no one, and that’s okay. If you start behaving in a way I don’t like after inviting you to my home, I’m well within my rights to kick you out, and there isn’t (and shouldn’t be) anyone policing me on that. No, this doesn’t work at Facebook scale. I think we had a good thing going on the early web with lots of small discussion boards.

haberman 6y ago

> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences, where you can set an expectation of which ideas are acceptable and which are not. Do you mean that a community could allow argument X, but disallow counter-argument Y? That sounds like a recipe for an echo chamber. I definitely see the benefit in saying that certain topics are out of scope for a given community. But saying which ideas are acceptable and which are not sounds like codifying the dominance of an official viewpoint.

danielheath 6y ago
Every stable community already has things you can and cannot say (try arguing the merits of pederasty, war, or heroin and see how far you get!)
- haberman 6y ago
  I agree that there are almost always some guardrails in place, and certain viewpoints that are considered beyond the pale. And so there is a balancing act between an Overton Window that is too wide and wastes people's time with nonsense, and one that is too narrow and prevents bad orthodoxies from being challenged.
  - TheNorthman 6y ago
    How are implicit guardrails better than specified guardrails? Surely explicit guardrails act as therapeutic discourse, in that it seeks to clarify systematic self-deception. By self-deception, I refer first-and-foremost to the myth of objectivity that often surrounds contemporary debate.
    - michaelt 6y ago
      Because moderators are trying to stop flamewars - not jump into the middle and fight both sides.
      - TheNorthman 6y ago

high_derivative 6y ago

I find codes of conduct meaningless. They will go on in very general terms about 'hate speech' which is just synonymous with 'anything that anyone feels offended by' now. I would argue that code of conducts were a symptom of the start of the problem. The strategy of the grievance class: - Propose a code of conduct which surely nobody can disagree with, it's great to have rules and be nice to each other. - Design the code of conduct so any perceived offence falls under it - Wield it as a tool to push out any dissenters

marcus_holmes 6y ago
That was always implicit in group discussions. As others have said, Codes of Conduct aren't creating new rules, they're just making them explicit instead of implicit. Let me give you an example: you have a group of friends. Two of your friends have recently experienced a miscarriage. The implicit rules in your group have now expanded to include "no dead baby jokes" (depending on how dark your group's humour was, this might always have been a rule). The reason for this expansion is that two members of the group will now be hurt, upset and offended by those jokes. Making a "dead baby joke" is now a good reason to think the offender is an insensitive idiot, who probably isn't someone you want to be friends with. This is no different from "no jokes about fags" when your group includes gay people. But sometimes, some people insist on being able to make "fag jokes" because "snowflakes are over-sensitive". Of course, they may not know the group includes gay people, and the gay people in question may not want anyone else to know their sexual orientation (none of anyone else's business). So it's better to spell it out explicitly that "fag jokes" are not allowed, even though there are apparently no gay people in the group. This is what a Code of Conduct does. Yes, there are Purity Spirals that end up pushing this to extremes. But that's a separate issue. Codes of Conduct are still a really good idea.
- andreareina 6y ago
  Can you point to examples where you feel they're done well? Whenever the subject comes up it's always the egregious ones that are pointed out so I'd like to see the other side.

AHappyCamper 6y ago

You bring up some really interesting ideas, but there are certain times where communication is mission critical - and deeply considering complex communicational structures before posting/conveying information can eventuate in serious injury or loss of life. During those times, you simply need to be able to "get the message out" without worrying about the potential offense that you words may cause to a certain individuals. Again, I sympathize deeply that some people are hurting badly right now, but what should we do when we're dealing with life-and-death situations and there isn't time to craft the perfect message on the perfect platform?

marcus_holmes 6y ago
Can you give me an example of an urgent, mission critical communication that could be offensive to people?
- AHappyCamper 6y ago
  Of course - and thank you for asking. One of my friends is a paramedic who primarily works in ambulances in LA. One day, he arrives at a scene after a passer-by called 911. A homeless man is lying on the street on top of garbage and cardboard boxes. There is urine and feces everywhere - it's a bad situation - and there are used needles lying next to the man. The man is obviously in medical distress, and is unable to respond. When they try to attend to him, he wakes up and swears at them and swats at them, but then says he feels like he's dying and wants help. When they come close again, he again swears at them and swings at them. As a matter of protocol, they have to radio in to headquarters and explain their situation. This is tricky - they have to be politically correct about how they describe him. He's visibly degrading quickly, and may soon die if they don't intervene, but instead, they have to spend previous time on the radio making sure they use all the politically terminology so that no offense is caused - describing the homeless in California is a very politically charged subject and they could be disciplined if they use the wrong words. If he is going into cardiac arrest, seconds can be the difference between life and death, and they're using them on trying to remember all the correct terminology and socially-acceptable phrasing.

zarkov99 6y ago

Wouldn't it be better ti provide people the tools to create their own channels, through personalized filtering algorithms? The idea that a central authority gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not is, in my view, only acceptable in extreme cases which are already covered by law.

TuringTest 6y ago
Yes, that's why it's important to have decentralised social networks. You can have authorities to decide what is acceptable, but only for small groups.

imhoguy 6y ago

The usual problem is when a message from such private channel gets spread publicly usually without context and author's consent. We see it often with leaked tapes from politicians' private meetings.

belorn 6y ago

The problem with explicit code of conduct is that there is always a implicit interpretation of what the code of conduct say and how it should get enforced. If we could get an explicit code of conduct with explicit interpretation with explicit enforcement then yes, they work quite well. Sadly most communities leave interpretation and enforcement up to the dominant group with an often explicit desire to not have those parts visible.

ramblerman 6y ago

You are describing a structured echo chamber. Or worse an internet of endless safe spaces to get just the view of the world that pleases you. I mean facebook is already doing this, on purpose or not (right now the blame is on the algorithms). Either way this is not the right way forward.

lkrubner 6y ago
In what sense is this not the right way forward? This seems to be the trend that’s been with us for at least 20 years. People increasingly pick the news they want to hear.
- hamilyon2 6y ago
  Three out of three best ideas that improved me as a human being were very offensive to me when I first encountered them. I mean, so offensive that I closed book and put it away. Stopped thinking, stopped listening, stopped learning. Hurt me a lot. And yet, I am so happy they entered my mind and I returned to them when I got older.
- dijit 6y ago
  People might pick the news they want to hear; but thinking this is "fine" is an appeal to ignorance. Ignorance is not strength. For whatever it's worth I was raised dirt poor, central Britain in a city that had been in rapid decline for many decades- Yet I believed, fiercely that Europe was less than Britain, that Muslims were coming for our benefits and our women and that Britains colonial past was something to be admired, we had brought civilisation to the world. I believed that I was born "rich" compared to the rest of the world and I had a birthright to be taken care of. I don't have to tell you how much it hurt me to learn how ignorant, bigoted and wrong I was. How much taking in things that were true conflicted so concretely with what I believed that I rejected it outright. Obviously my opinions have changed, but allowing me to hide from the world would not have done that. Only stepping forward and being exposed to that which causes discomfort allows for it.
  - lkrubner 6y ago

vogre 6y ago

You basically describe Soviet "obkoms". The commitee of people who decided what is ok to say/sing/write, and what is not. Needless to say, they became corrupt very soon, because no one was allowed to say a word against them.

TuringTest 6y ago
> You basically describe Soviet "obkoms". Not really. That would assume that the only existing channels are official channels. My description works as well for self-organised, distributed, unofficial channels.
j-c-hewitt 6y ago
Having an obkom would be helpful -- it's really hard to tell what you are allowed to say. It'd be nice also to have a grace period so there is some fair warning when certain ideas or words will become banned. Orderly authoritarianism is preferable to random, chaotic outbursts of censorious violence. But even just an official obkom rather than unofficial 'volunteer' versions of it would really reduce confusion here. The Saudi Arabian religious police enforcing public edicts are preferable to ISIS pulling you out of a truck, giving you a theology pop quiz, and then shooting you when you get some answers wrong. The Anglican sacramental Test Act is preferable to a fake regime of toleration.

stepstop 6y ago

Reddit already does this via subreddits

loudtieblahblah 6y ago

This ignores that the web has birthed a global culture of people where participation in online discussion is the majority of their lives. And they sit around looking to be offended to raise their own social value amonst their online peers. Being offended is about obtaining value and for mobs to obtain power. The two way street of both trying to not offend AND the listener trying to honestly interpret what is being said goes out the window Whenever you have a bad actor on either side of communication, it breaks down. The common wisdom, though, is that the bad actor is always the speaker. And its simply not true. The other problem is, as a culture, everyone is responsible for everyone else's emotions. No one is asked to be responsible for their own. I don't have a problem with codes of conduct per se. I do have a problem with a culture that constantly asks people to not be responsible for how they process information. Even negative, even offensive information. Relationship therapists teach couples to use "I" language vs "you" language to express feelings (Google it if you don't understand) This way you take responsibility for how external stimuli makes you feel rather than making your partner wholly responsible and thus making discussion adversarial This problem is happening in FOS projects or even just social media in general. Everyone is a soccer player, falling down, grabbing their leg hoping to get the most people feeling sorry for them, claiming 1% if the bullies and edgelords out there are some dominant social group. It's crap

bavell 6y ago
Hit the nail on the head. This culture has no concept of "thick skin" and interprets any nuanced position in the most unfavorable light. Then they put on a dramatic show of being offended, hurt, or outraged in hopes of accolades from their peers.
TuringTest 6y ago
> This ignores that the web has birthed a global culture of people where participation in online discussion is the majority of their lives. I'm not ignoring that, I'm describing what I see is an underlying cause. If online discussion tools respected the principle of setting proper expectations for each communication channel, the problem would be much milder, as the problems you describe would be limited to smaller groups of interaction, instead of being escalated to viral dimensions.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cmroanirgo 6y ago

> The trick is to create channels with limited audiences I truly feel that HN is a safe haven for such notations. It's a provable, working example where first and foremost is to regard the other's words in a positive light, rather than assuming the worst. Anything deliberately otherwise gets moderated. I figure @dang sends a lot of personal emails struggling to adhere to this. It's a system that can and should be replicated elsewhere imho. Ironically, parent's comment here on HN has alerted me (& presumably others) about this diabolical practice (thanks @AHappyCamper), again proving HN as good, receptive platform.

closeparen 6y ago

People looking to start outrage mobs aren’t going to care that what you said was acceptable on the channel where you said it. You’re still the speaker, they’re still going to make it expensive for your real-world contacts to implicitly endorse your views by continuing to associate with you.