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Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit.

Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv and see gay people and atheists, they get furious and they want all those people to shut up and be silent, so the world can go back to being the comfortable, familiar place that they think it is without all the complexity and uncertainty that the real world contains. So if you don’t understand the world, and it’s scary, you’re going to latch on to some belief system that says that some cabal of devil worshippers is responsible for everything you don’t like. Logic has nothing to do with it.

theplague42 6y ago
HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
  As the recently-departed James Randi pointed out repeatedly, scientists are among the easiest people to fool with magic tricks for this very reason.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  Vulnerable, but resoundingly not "just as vulnerable." Just this year, this community is where I learned that COVID-19 was going to be huge and devastating to the world as early as mid February, with lockdowns, financial devastation, masks and social distancing are required, etc. Meanwhile people like us had to argue with relatives and friends for a whole 'nother month as they thought we're overreacting, masks are useless, "just wash your hands, nothing to be too concerned about." For all its faults, HN is better informed on reality than most groups of people.

theplague42 6y ago

HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
As the recently-departed James Randi pointed out repeatedly, scientists are among the easiest people to fool with magic tricks for this very reason.
reducesuffering 6y ago
Vulnerable, but resoundingly not "just as vulnerable." Just this year, this community is where I learned that COVID-19 was going to be huge and devastating to the world as early as mid February, with lockdowns, financial devastation, masks and social distancing are required, etc. Meanwhile people like us had to argue with relatives and friends for a whole 'nother month as they thought we're overreacting, masks are useless, "just wash your hands, nothing to be too concerned about." For all its faults, HN is better informed on reality than most groups of people.