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I appreciate the response, and yes I was being snarky. That said, I don’t think this is simply a matter of HN being divided the same way society is divided. HN

I appreciate the response, and yes I was being snarky. That said, I don’t think this is simply a matter of HN being divided the same way society is divided. HN has a bias in favor of capital, which I think is pretty observable in a typical thread on e.g startups, and if you don’t share my observation you can agree this is at least likely given the high rate of tech workers and would be investors on this site. I think open discussions of race and racism can be threatening to capital, particularly when one wants to believe that the system is good and just. Discussions of race usually have large societal change as their stakes, and that is not always to the benefit of the currently wealthy. There is a claimed interest in open dialogue on HN, but it doesn’t go as deep as it seems. The HN community has rules about what counts as valid logic or what is appealing and worthy of upvote that favor the status quote. Further, because the population bends a particular direction you need to put in massive effort in order to make a point that contradicts this view, or else you will be swarmed with criticisms, which may be defeatable, but in sum are overwhelming. There are also tactics that are commonly employed in HN comments which shut down discussion but allow the commenter to retain the position of the rational freedom lover. I can’t prove it to you without much more time and knowledge than I have, but I think it is none the less true that HN has a culture with a bias, and that it tends towards maintaining the status quo and shutting down revolutionary dialogues.

Y_Y 5y ago
I like a good revolutionary dialogue as much as the next fellow. I think there are lots of people here who feel the way I do about economics, and many many more who don't. I don't mind representing an unpopular position in a civilised forum like this. I think that showing up with an axe to grind isn't going to appeal to the people who are here to discuss the articles, regardless of whether you're pro- or anti-whatever.
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  but, if you’re deeply committed to capital, you probably don’t like a revolutionary dialogue thats got capital in its sights. I don’t think characterizing my position as somehow wrong and inherently unappealing is accurate, I think my position is unappealing to those who feel threatened by it. But threatening dialogue isn’t bad.
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    I don't know if you're speaking in generalities or not, but I'm absolutely not a capitalist, although I do respect that position. Personally try to be open to any good argument, but it's easier for one that's close to an opinion I already hold. It wasn't my intention to attack your position, in fact I'd bet it's not far from my own. What I wanted to convey is that it can be unpleasant to have a discussion with someone when they seem to be trying to win you to their side. I want to pull ideas, rather than have them pushed to me. My guess is that this effect contributes to "revolutionary dialogue" being poorly received, even by those who aren't necessarily put off by the ideological content.
    - philosopher1234 5y ago
      Yes I was speaking hypothetically, not about you specifically.
floatingatoll 5y ago
All cultures that promote discussion tend towards biases, status quos, and shutting down revolutionaries. That's part for the course of coexisting as human beings. Each society forgives some things and prohibits others. Each society has some topics which are difficult to discuss rationally within that society, requiring much more heavy-handed moderation than other topics. HN's specific set of such topics can be particularly unusual ("/e/" is an example), but as you correctly indicate, it's difficult to discuss race and wealth rationally too. Open dialogue is a platonic ideal of how a community can try to be. No community can deliver perfectly that ideal, because every community must compromise that ideal if they wish to continue functioning rationally — both when there are disagreements over strongly-held views, and when there are malicious actors who seek to exploit the platonic ideal of openness for a dizzying number of outcomes. It's fine to declare that HN has these properties, but it's also important to remember that all social communication systems share these properties. For example, in my opinion [1], the voting system used on posts and comments here biases the site away from rational discussion when malicious actors use downvoting not to silence irrationality, but instead to silence rationality that they disagree with. I think this is a critical flaw in the site. In a sense, my view intersects with yours; we both consider voting to promote 'status quo' behaviors, and we could probably discuss at length what 'status quo' means and whether that's the right phrase for both minority and majority views. The mods do their best to ensure that unpalatable but rationally-presented viewpoints are given their due consideration, but it's very hard to overcome the problem of "downvote to disagree", even when it's a blatant guidelines violation, without risking the essential nature of HN as a discussion forum centered around upvoting. The mods are, when I email them about instances of this, willing to communicate with me about what I perceive as malicious behaviors within their forum, while also recognizing that the site does not always deliver on the ideal of open dialogue. In my estimation, delivering perfectly on the ideal of open dialogue, would require a human moderation council that considers every single post and comment in realtime before it goes live, deduplicates redundant comments into upvotes, binds together related topics into topic-focused headings, and actively shuts down conversational warfare (such as sealioning and others). This would, without fail, have biases and a tendency towards status quos, just as HN does today. They would be different biases, but they would still fail to deliver perfectly on the ideal of open dialogue. Whether the site delivers a form of open dialogue that is acceptable to you, or to me, or to others — that's absolutely up to each of us to decide, and it's probably something we can't discuss very rationally, because what community can consider itself rationally without bias? None that I've met to date. But the mods have built in enough safeguards to try and protect those who question the mods. It's not even remotely perfect, and it's certainly not heavy-handed enough for my tastes, either. But the sum of moderation approach, and biases, and loudly-held viewpoints, and flaws, and to what degree open dialogue takes precedence over social compromise — that's what makes each community unique. So I do support you in describing the flaws of HN. Yes, "open dialogue" at HN is not given ultimate priority, is not inlaid as deeply as is theoretically possible. That's the price paid to have human communities at all. Whether HN's payment of that price is acceptable is worthy of discussion, but payment of that price in some form is universal. From that position, it's possible to rationally consider "is HN making the appropriate tradeoffs vs. open dialogue", and it's absolutely appropriate to say "I think the mods should intervene in this discussion, to counter irrational behaviors by the users, the mods, and/or the algorithms". If they don't understand the biases or status quos or other irrationality that you're pointing out, then that's a great time to provide proof, but certainly I think you're generally right. There are a couple of points I've been "once or twice a year" emailing the HN mods about for what I suspect is probably several years now (I refuse to look), because occasionally I trip over some proof of something that I didn't have proof for, or I find some new form of an old problem, or I just feel so strongly that I open my email client and write them a plea to make it better, to bias the site towards "open dialogue" and away from whatever I'm seeing that's truly upset me. They do not reliably agree, and I don't expect them. I don't desire them to. I'd like someday to see the site deliver better at open dialogue, without taking away from what makes it uniquely HN, and whatever my opinion may be any given day, I do not envy them considering all of our opinions, and being responsible for the compromises that they have to make as leaders of this community. I do not believe that I could run a community with fewer compromises. I would run a community with different compromises, and those compromises would draw objections about how I'm restricting "open dialogue", too. So that such restrictions exist here is almost uninteresting as a surface-level fact. It's how those restrictions exist here uniquely, or how they interact in unusual ways, or how they contrast with how I would have restricted things instead, that's interesting and novel and opens the door for me to consider and participate in such a discussion. You haven't the time to prove in detail your beliefs, but I am happy to say that at least in a couple of your specific complaints, I agree with you, and I'm doing my best to convey my concern with proof when my limited time permits. I don't know if it'll help or not, and sometimes I go months without saying anything at all. But if you never end up having time, be assured that you are not wholly alone in being concerned, and that someone else is too. We may not agree wholly, but that's community for you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267
dang 5y ago
Thanks for the reply! In my opinion you're overstating this. I can give you dozens, maybe hundreds by now, of examples complaining that HN is overrun by socialists, the mods are SJW, you name it. People just find it irresistible to leap from a few data points to dramatic overgeneralization. In my observation, quite consistently, the main variable driving this is the intensity of someone's passions on a topic. The more intense the passion, the more convinced they are that HN is dominated by the enemy side. It works that way about everything. The most passionate Linux fans feel like HN is overrun by Microsoft shills (though that example's a little dated now). Your argument about capital, tech, etc. seems to me to be a just-so story (I don't mean that as a swipe, I just can't think of a better term right now). People with a different starting position can come up with other stories that sound just as convincing. Here's one I just made up: HN's politics slant left/liberal because the main predictor of political leaning these days is education, and the audience here has a relatively high education level. If you're looking at this from a left-revolutionary point of view, then sure you're in a small minority, but that just confirms the point, because that view is a small minority in society too. That doesn't mean HN is biased towards capital, wealth, and racism (except in the sense that, to a left revolutionary, almost everybody is). It just means that most of HN sits not-that-far from the middle of the bell curve, just like most people in general. As a person who spends a lot of time trying to get people to truly listen to each other on HN, I don't think it's very nice to say "claimed interest in open dialogue". If you really think that's fake, I'd like to see links to the places where we're shutting down "open dialogue" as opposed to moderating commenters for breaking the site guidelines. If you think the site guidelines are poorly designed for "open dialogue", I'd like to see a better set.
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  Sorry, I didn’t mean the moderation team is shutting down dialogue, I meant that the culture of HN has its own rules which stifle particular points of view. Will respond to the rest of your comment later.
simonh 5y ago
I think it's really hard to say where the weight lies politically here. Comment favouring one view inevitably prompts responses favouring the converse view, so they catalyse each other. There are no shortages of anticapitalist comments here, but there's no way to put numbers to that. A handful of dedicated proponents of a view can generate a lot of comments.

Y_Y 5y ago

I like a good revolutionary dialogue as much as the next fellow. I think there are lots of people here who feel the way I do about economics, and many many more who don't. I don't mind representing an unpopular position in a civilised forum like this. I think that showing up with an axe to grind isn't going to appeal to the people who are here to discuss the articles, regardless of whether you're pro- or anti-whatever.

philosopher1234 5y ago
but, if you’re deeply committed to capital, you probably don’t like a revolutionary dialogue thats got capital in its sights. I don’t think characterizing my position as somehow wrong and inherently unappealing is accurate, I think my position is unappealing to those who feel threatened by it. But threatening dialogue isn’t bad.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  I don't know if you're speaking in generalities or not, but I'm absolutely not a capitalist, although I do respect that position. Personally try to be open to any good argument, but it's easier for one that's close to an opinion I already hold. It wasn't my intention to attack your position, in fact I'd bet it's not far from my own. What I wanted to convey is that it can be unpleasant to have a discussion with someone when they seem to be trying to win you to their side. I want to pull ideas, rather than have them pushed to me. My guess is that this effect contributes to "revolutionary dialogue" being poorly received, even by those who aren't necessarily put off by the ideological content.
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    Yes I was speaking hypothetically, not about you specifically.

floatingatoll 5y ago

All cultures that promote discussion tend towards biases, status quos, and shutting down revolutionaries. That's part for the course of coexisting as human beings. Each society forgives some things and prohibits others. Each society has some topics which are difficult to discuss rationally within that society, requiring much more heavy-handed moderation than other topics. HN's specific set of such topics can be particularly unusual ("/e/" is an example), but as you correctly indicate, it's difficult to discuss race and wealth rationally too. Open dialogue is a platonic ideal of how a community can try to be. No community can deliver perfectly that ideal, because every community must compromise that ideal if they wish to continue functioning rationally — both when there are disagreements over strongly-held views, and when there are malicious actors who seek to exploit the platonic ideal of openness for a dizzying number of outcomes. It's fine to declare that HN has these properties, but it's also important to remember that all social communication systems share these properties. For example, in my opinion [1], the voting system used on posts and comments here biases the site away from rational discussion when malicious actors use downvoting not to silence irrationality, but instead to silence rationality that they disagree with. I think this is a critical flaw in the site. In a sense, my view intersects with yours; we both consider voting to promote 'status quo' behaviors, and we could probably discuss at length what 'status quo' means and whether that's the right phrase for both minority and majority views. The mods do their best to ensure that unpalatable but rationally-presented viewpoints are given their due consideration, but it's very hard to overcome the problem of "downvote to disagree", even when it's a blatant guidelines violation, without risking the essential nature of HN as a discussion forum centered around upvoting. The mods are, when I email them about instances of this, willing to communicate with me about what I perceive as malicious behaviors within their forum, while also recognizing that the site does not always deliver on the ideal of open dialogue. In my estimation, delivering perfectly on the ideal of open dialogue, would require a human moderation council that considers every single post and comment in realtime before it goes live, deduplicates redundant comments into upvotes, binds together related topics into topic-focused headings, and actively shuts down conversational warfare (such as sealioning and others). This would, without fail, have biases and a tendency towards status quos, just as HN does today. They would be different biases, but they would still fail to deliver perfectly on the ideal of open dialogue. Whether the site delivers a form of open dialogue that is acceptable to you, or to me, or to others — that's absolutely up to each of us to decide, and it's probably something we can't discuss very rationally, because what community can consider itself rationally without bias? None that I've met to date. But the mods have built in enough safeguards to try and protect those who question the mods. It's not even remotely perfect, and it's certainly not heavy-handed enough for my tastes, either. But the sum of moderation approach, and biases, and loudly-held viewpoints, and flaws, and to what degree open dialogue takes precedence over social compromise — that's what makes each community unique. So I do support you in describing the flaws of HN. Yes, "open dialogue" at HN is not given ultimate priority, is not inlaid as deeply as is theoretically possible. That's the price paid to have human communities at all. Whether HN's payment of that price is acceptable is worthy of discussion, but payment of that price in some form is universal. From that position, it's possible to rationally consider "is HN making the appropriate tradeoffs vs. open dialogue", and it's absolutely appropriate to say "I think the mods should intervene in this discussion, to counter irrational behaviors by the users, the mods, and/or the algorithms". If they don't understand the biases or status quos or other irrationality that you're pointing out, then that's a great time to provide proof, but certainly I think you're generally right. There are a couple of points I've been "once or twice a year" emailing the HN mods about for what I suspect is probably several years now (I refuse to look), because occasionally I trip over some proof of something that I didn't have proof for, or I find some new form of an old problem, or I just feel so strongly that I open my email client and write them a plea to make it better, to bias the site towards "open dialogue" and away from whatever I'm seeing that's truly upset me. They do not reliably agree, and I don't expect them. I don't desire them to. I'd like someday to see the site deliver better at open dialogue, without taking away from what makes it uniquely HN, and whatever my opinion may be any given day, I do not envy them considering all of our opinions, and being responsible for the compromises that they have to make as leaders of this community. I do not believe that I could run a community with fewer compromises. I would run a community with different compromises, and those compromises would draw objections about how I'm restricting "open dialogue", too. So that such restrictions exist here is almost uninteresting as a surface-level fact. It's how those restrictions exist here uniquely, or how they interact in unusual ways, or how they contrast with how I would have restricted things instead, that's interesting and novel and opens the door for me to consider and participate in such a discussion. You haven't the time to prove in detail your beliefs, but I am happy to say that at least in a couple of your specific complaints, I agree with you, and I'm doing my best to convey my concern with proof when my limited time permits. I don't know if it'll help or not, and sometimes I go months without saying anything at all. But if you never end up having time, be assured that you are not wholly alone in being concerned, and that someone else is too. We may not agree wholly, but that's community for you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267

dang 5y ago

Thanks for the reply! In my opinion you're overstating this. I can give you dozens, maybe hundreds by now, of examples complaining that HN is overrun by socialists, the mods are SJW, you name it. People just find it irresistible to leap from a few data points to dramatic overgeneralization. In my observation, quite consistently, the main variable driving this is the intensity of someone's passions on a topic. The more intense the passion, the more convinced they are that HN is dominated by the enemy side. It works that way about everything. The most passionate Linux fans feel like HN is overrun by Microsoft shills (though that example's a little dated now). Your argument about capital, tech, etc. seems to me to be a just-so story (I don't mean that as a swipe, I just can't think of a better term right now). People with a different starting position can come up with other stories that sound just as convincing. Here's one I just made up: HN's politics slant left/liberal because the main predictor of political leaning these days is education, and the audience here has a relatively high education level. If you're looking at this from a left-revolutionary point of view, then sure you're in a small minority, but that just confirms the point, because that view is a small minority in society too. That doesn't mean HN is biased towards capital, wealth, and racism (except in the sense that, to a left revolutionary, almost everybody is). It just means that most of HN sits not-that-far from the middle of the bell curve, just like most people in general. As a person who spends a lot of time trying to get people to truly listen to each other on HN, I don't think it's very nice to say "claimed interest in open dialogue". If you really think that's fake, I'd like to see links to the places where we're shutting down "open dialogue" as opposed to moderating commenters for breaking the site guidelines. If you think the site guidelines are poorly designed for "open dialogue", I'd like to see a better set.

philosopher1234 5y ago
Sorry, I didn’t mean the moderation team is shutting down dialogue, I meant that the culture of HN has its own rules which stifle particular points of view. Will respond to the rest of your comment later.

simonh 5y ago

I think it's really hard to say where the weight lies politically here. Comment favouring one view inevitably prompts responses favouring the converse view, so they catalyse each other. There are no shortages of anticapitalist comments here, but there's no way to put numbers to that. A handful of dedicated proponents of a view can generate a lot of comments.