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> I think downvoting is actually quite important for keeping bad commentary off of HN. Very sincerely, there’s a lot of commentary here that is one small step r

> I think downvoting is actually quite important for keeping bad commentary off of HN. Very sincerely, there’s a lot of commentary here that is one small step removed from The Red Pill or MRA toxicity, and unfortunately the site guidelines allow it to be treated as if it’s innocuous and fair / civil discourse. Is it possible that valuable contributions to a discussion could be "one small step removed from" negative, toxic, or detrimental ideas? For example, someone could say "inequality is increasing and its reaching a critical point where we may have to do something about the staggering amount of wealth held by the 1%" or "gun rights were enshrined in the US constitution so that a tyrannical government could be changed by force" which could both be interpreted as a small step from extralegal measures to rectify the situation according to the speaker's values, but may also be interpreted as a justification for legal measures (in the former case) or a recitation of historical fact (in the latter case). I mention this because part of the problem I have observed in social media discussion of controversial issues is that on the one hand, people use certain tropes/memes as signals to invoke a particular perspective and people have responded to this by inferring their interpretation of this reference and jumping to condemning the perspective they believe has been referenced. This makes the discourse seem bizarre to outsiders who lack the requisite background knowledge to make those same inferences and polarizes people by suggesting that some signals are always used to refer to certain perspectives and not others.

pmiller2 6y ago
So, now, I think you're getting into an area I like to call "shit you can't say on HN." For example, I think pretty much everybody agrees genocide is bad, and that Stalin committed a good amount of genocide. But, he also brought a feudal, agrarian nation from nothing to launching the first artificial satellite in under 50 years. I'm pretty sure such a comment would be downvoted because "scary genocidal mustache man bad." I can give other examples, if you like.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  My parent comment is downvoted to -1 already, without reply. That's the evidence that there's something to it. Downvotes and/or flags on either that or this comment would also validate my theory.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    Its probably downvoted because its easier to express distaste for intellectual laziness that way rather than a substantial reply.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      If you're going to call me intellectually lazy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to explain yourself. Did or did not Stalin take a feudal, agrarian nation and turn it into an industrial power in less than 50 years? Well, yes. Sputnik, 1957 is my citation. Did he do a lot of bad things? Hell yes. Did he do a lot of bad things in the process of industrializing the USSR? Again, yes, but you have to weigh that against the good that was done. All of that is within epsilon of what I literally wrote in my comment. I submit that it looks like it is you who is being intellectually lazy, and using "scary genocidal mustache man bad" level reasoning, unless you'd like to explain yourself. Please note I never said genocide was justifiable. I've merely stated that Stalin did a thing which had some good effects for the Soviet people. And, yet, here you are deliberately misreading my original comment in bad faith, and all but saying "scary genocidal mustache man bad."
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        The laziness would be in failing to make the connection between mass starvation and murder and technological development (one can imagine technological development without murder, so its not in evidence that murder was necessary for development) and in asserting sputnik as a proxy for technological development which is itself a proxy for greater quality of life among the population. > I've merely stated that Stalin did a thing which had some good effects for the Soviet people. And, yet, here you are deliberately misreading my original comment in bad faith, and all but saying "scary genocidal mustache man bad." You just invoked some historical facts in a way that suggests a connection without explaining the connection. Thats what was lazy. On my end it has nothing to do with moustaches. Thats just your preferred reading.
        6y ago
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Why does launching a satellite justify murdering millions of people?
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Where do I say it does?
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
I think what you’re saying leads to much, much more harm than good. 99% of the time, defending things that are “one step away” from communities with widely known hate-based agendas is actually just legitimizing those abusive views and is not contributing some sort of “intellectual, good faith exploration of the fringe” or anything like that. If there was a reliable way to detect the good faith attempts, then maybe, but it is so noise-jammed by the people taking hate or bigotry and trying to legitimize it under some false pretense of open inquiry that it’s not practically achievable. As for people using memes or tropes as stereotypes to reject them, I think that is super, super uncommon. Especially with communities like MRA, which is even seen federally as a domestic terror group, it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. It doesn’t deserve any further due process or open forum - it’s just hate speech. I don’t think it’s fair to act as though instant rejection of that sort of community is unfair. It’s not simplistic reductionism based on an in-group, it’s really actually based on analysis of the group’s core tenets and goals and a widely agreed perspective that it’s inappropriate.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > I think what you’re saying leads to much, much more harm than good. 99% of the time, defending things that are “one step away” from communities with widely known hate-based agendas is actually just legitimizing those abusive views and is not contributing some sort of “intellectual, good faith exploration of the fringe” or anything like that. The point is that what is "one step away" is often subjective and relies on a web of inferences that the original speaker may not share. The views that are downvoted for being "too close" to "hate-based agendas" may not actually be close at all, merely shared by a variety of people, some of which also have hate-based views and some who do not. In other words it may be a mistake to infer that the view is too close to a "bad idea" if the idea itself cannot be labeled as bad. Refusing to discuss ideas that are legitimate objects of discourse because they are "too close" to bad ideas prevents reasonable-minded people from responding to those ideas if they are incorrect and drives discussion of these ideas to areas that have been taken over by extremists. > If there was a reliable way to detect the good faith attempts, then maybe, but it is so noise-jammed by the people taking hate or bigotry and trying to legitimize it under some false pretense of open inquiry that it’s not practically achievable. The remedy for this is to treat assume good faith and interact on the object level, explaining why an idea may be good or bad, and explicitly draw the boundary between the acceptable idea they put forth and the unacceptable idea that you suspect they really mean. > As for people using memes or tropes as stereotypes to reject them, I think that is super, super uncommon. Actually I see it all the time. > Especially with communities like MRA, which is even seen federally as a domestic terror group, it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. How then could we ever discuss reform of child support or divorce laws if any argument that suggests that something might be unfair for men pattern-matches to "federally [designated] domestic terror" and is therefore forbidden? Actually, how does being federally-designated as terror make it somehow forbidden to talk about? What if the feds wrongly designated something as terror, how could we talk about that? > it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. It doesn’t deserve any further due process or open forum - it’s just hate speech. I don’t think it’s fair to act as though instant rejection of that sort of community is unfair. So do you see how you have identified discourse that you associate with a community as the same as that community? What if your association is the part that's incorrect? What if a bad community discusses things that are both good and bad? This guilt by association is exactly the problem here. Observe that if an extremist community has somehow obtained a good idea, and you refuse to permit discussion of that idea because of its association with that community, you have given people who want to discuss that idea no choice but to discuss it with extremists. This occurs even if the idea is itself bad but the person wants to explain why it is bad. > It’s not simplistic reductionism based on an in-group, it’s really actually based on analysis of the group’s core tenets and goals and a widely agreed perspective that it’s inappropriate. Actually I think its based on pattern-matching and inference, both processes that cover a lot of terrain because they tolerate error in results.

pmiller2 6y ago

So, now, I think you're getting into an area I like to call "shit you can't say on HN." For example, I think pretty much everybody agrees genocide is bad, and that Stalin committed a good amount of genocide. But, he also brought a feudal, agrarian nation from nothing to launching the first artificial satellite in under 50 years. I'm pretty sure such a comment would be downvoted because "scary genocidal mustache man bad." I can give other examples, if you like.

pmiller2 6y ago
My parent comment is downvoted to -1 already, without reply. That's the evidence that there's something to it. Downvotes and/or flags on either that or this comment would also validate my theory.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Its probably downvoted because its easier to express distaste for intellectual laziness that way rather than a substantial reply.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    If you're going to call me intellectually lazy, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to explain yourself. Did or did not Stalin take a feudal, agrarian nation and turn it into an industrial power in less than 50 years? Well, yes. Sputnik, 1957 is my citation. Did he do a lot of bad things? Hell yes. Did he do a lot of bad things in the process of industrializing the USSR? Again, yes, but you have to weigh that against the good that was done. All of that is within epsilon of what I literally wrote in my comment. I submit that it looks like it is you who is being intellectually lazy, and using "scary genocidal mustache man bad" level reasoning, unless you'd like to explain yourself. Please note I never said genocide was justifiable. I've merely stated that Stalin did a thing which had some good effects for the Soviet people. And, yet, here you are deliberately misreading my original comment in bad faith, and all but saying "scary genocidal mustache man bad."
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      The laziness would be in failing to make the connection between mass starvation and murder and technological development (one can imagine technological development without murder, so its not in evidence that murder was necessary for development) and in asserting sputnik as a proxy for technological development which is itself a proxy for greater quality of life among the population. > I've merely stated that Stalin did a thing which had some good effects for the Soviet people. And, yet, here you are deliberately misreading my original comment in bad faith, and all but saying "scary genocidal mustache man bad." You just invoked some historical facts in a way that suggests a connection without explaining the connection. Thats what was lazy. On my end it has nothing to do with moustaches. Thats just your preferred reading.
      - 6y ago
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Why does launching a satellite justify murdering millions of people?
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Where do I say it does?

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

I think what you’re saying leads to much, much more harm than good. 99% of the time, defending things that are “one step away” from communities with widely known hate-based agendas is actually just legitimizing those abusive views and is not contributing some sort of “intellectual, good faith exploration of the fringe” or anything like that. If there was a reliable way to detect the good faith attempts, then maybe, but it is so noise-jammed by the people taking hate or bigotry and trying to legitimize it under some false pretense of open inquiry that it’s not practically achievable. As for people using memes or tropes as stereotypes to reject them, I think that is super, super uncommon. Especially with communities like MRA, which is even seen federally as a domestic terror group, it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. It doesn’t deserve any further due process or open forum - it’s just hate speech. I don’t think it’s fair to act as though instant rejection of that sort of community is unfair. It’s not simplistic reductionism based on an in-group, it’s really actually based on analysis of the group’s core tenets and goals and a widely agreed perspective that it’s inappropriate.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> I think what you’re saying leads to much, much more harm than good. 99% of the time, defending things that are “one step away” from communities with widely known hate-based agendas is actually just legitimizing those abusive views and is not contributing some sort of “intellectual, good faith exploration of the fringe” or anything like that. The point is that what is "one step away" is often subjective and relies on a web of inferences that the original speaker may not share. The views that are downvoted for being "too close" to "hate-based agendas" may not actually be close at all, merely shared by a variety of people, some of which also have hate-based views and some who do not. In other words it may be a mistake to infer that the view is too close to a "bad idea" if the idea itself cannot be labeled as bad. Refusing to discuss ideas that are legitimate objects of discourse because they are "too close" to bad ideas prevents reasonable-minded people from responding to those ideas if they are incorrect and drives discussion of these ideas to areas that have been taken over by extremists. > If there was a reliable way to detect the good faith attempts, then maybe, but it is so noise-jammed by the people taking hate or bigotry and trying to legitimize it under some false pretense of open inquiry that it’s not practically achievable. The remedy for this is to treat assume good faith and interact on the object level, explaining why an idea may be good or bad, and explicitly draw the boundary between the acceptable idea they put forth and the unacceptable idea that you suspect they really mean. > As for people using memes or tropes as stereotypes to reject them, I think that is super, super uncommon. Actually I see it all the time. > Especially with communities like MRA, which is even seen federally as a domestic terror group, it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. How then could we ever discuss reform of child support or divorce laws if any argument that suggests that something might be unfair for men pattern-matches to "federally [designated] domestic terror" and is therefore forbidden? Actually, how does being federally-designated as terror make it somehow forbidden to talk about? What if the feds wrongly designated something as terror, how could we talk about that? > it is not at all an unfair generalization to reject the discourse commonly associated with that community. It doesn’t deserve any further due process or open forum - it’s just hate speech. I don’t think it’s fair to act as though instant rejection of that sort of community is unfair. So do you see how you have identified discourse that you associate with a community as the same as that community? What if your association is the part that's incorrect? What if a bad community discusses things that are both good and bad? This guilt by association is exactly the problem here. Observe that if an extremist community has somehow obtained a good idea, and you refuse to permit discussion of that idea because of its association with that community, you have given people who want to discuss that idea no choice but to discuss it with extremists. This occurs even if the idea is itself bad but the person wants to explain why it is bad. > It’s not simplistic reductionism based on an in-group, it’s really actually based on analysis of the group’s core tenets and goals and a widely agreed perspective that it’s inappropriate. Actually I think its based on pattern-matching and inference, both processes that cover a lot of terrain because they tolerate error in results.