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These comments have vastly reduced my opinion of HN.

justajot 6y ago
Me too.
dang 6y ago
In that case your opinion of HN may have needed some adjusting. Any large-enough population sample reflects the divisions in society at large—or societies, rather, since HN is a highly international site. There's no avoiding this. Sometimes when people get shocked by what they read here, the shock experience has more to do with encountering voices that (often loudly and/or at length, and sometimes even eloquently) express opinions we don't run into in our circles. We're all pretty good at siloing ourselves among the like-minded. Even when we're aware that a topic is divisive, we don't relate much with people on the other side of the divide. Mostly we label them as idiots or worse, and don't encounter them in their complexity. HN is a non-siloed site [1], meaning we're all in one big room here, so it doesn't work that way. The reality is that on any divisive topic, there are millions if not billions of people on the other side of the divide, a bunch of them are here, and they tend to be otherwise normal people whose different beliefs derive from their different backgrounds rather than them being idiots or worse. One might think that makes for an easier experience, but in fact it makes things much harder. I wrote a longer description of this a while ago if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...
- marojejian 6y ago
  And my opinion of hacker news, already high, just got higher. Where else can you get to the very bottom of the comment thread for a random post, find one not particularly insightful or helpful comment, and then see it carefully replied to with intelligent and empathetic detail by the main curator of the service? Thank you dang. I hope you are going to give yourself a holiday.

Me too.

dang 6y ago

In that case your opinion of HN may have needed some adjusting. Any large-enough population sample reflects the divisions in society at large—or societies, rather, since HN is a highly international site. There's no avoiding this. Sometimes when people get shocked by what they read here, the shock experience has more to do with encountering voices that (often loudly and/or at length, and sometimes even eloquently) express opinions we don't run into in our circles. We're all pretty good at siloing ourselves among the like-minded. Even when we're aware that a topic is divisive, we don't relate much with people on the other side of the divide. Mostly we label them as idiots or worse, and don't encounter them in their complexity. HN is a non-siloed site [1], meaning we're all in one big room here, so it doesn't work that way. The reality is that on any divisive topic, there are millions if not billions of people on the other side of the divide, a bunch of them are here, and they tend to be otherwise normal people whose different beliefs derive from their different backgrounds rather than them being idiots or worse. One might think that makes for an easier experience, but in fact it makes things much harder. I wrote a longer description of this a while ago if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23716395. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...

marojejian 6y ago
And my opinion of hacker news, already high, just got higher. Where else can you get to the very bottom of the comment thread for a random post, find one not particularly insightful or helpful comment, and then see it carefully replied to with intelligent and empathetic detail by the main curator of the service? Thank you dang. I hope you are going to give yourself a holiday.