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Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the

Right. To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized to a few corners of the internet suffering from "the coven of the witches" problem. And for the record, Ruqqus was shut down [1], so it really doesn't even exist. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799199

badRNG 5y ago
There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts. My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  Cf. Scott Alexander’s “three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches” quip[1]. This bootstrap problem has very little to do with current affairs anywhere, I’d say, and I don’t think it has ever been solved except where the more liberal (in the original sense) means of communication additionally had some sort of technical superiority as well. Except maybe the founding story of the US—I’m not an expert—but that was literally several waves of “witches” (many of them profoundly illiberal) taking their ball and going elsewhere, and their genetic memory of the necessity of free discourse seems to have died out by the middle of the 20th century (and was arguably missing the point as to which discourse needs to be free for decades before that). Not a bad record overall, but we’ve run out of unsettled land to go elsewhere to. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
  - badRNG 5y ago
    - mananaysiempre 5y ago
      I wasn’t commenting on the suitability of this kind of thing on HN, more on the sane-political-discussion-bootstrap problem. I mean, here in Soviet Russia politics can and will do you whether or not you do politics, and it is indeed tech people, who seem to be the most eager to pull the separate magisteria trick with “politics” and “interesting stuff I care about”, that have been getting hit by that fact more and more often in recent years. Humans gonna hume, human life is political, and “politics is dirty” is as damaging as it is self-fulfilling (maybe not immediately, but over a couple of generations...). If your corner of the world affords you the luxury of ignoring that, I can only look on with envy. But to go from this to “political discourse belongs on HN” is a leap I’m not interested in making on defending. Whatever my opinion on that (I’m not sure) I don’t have the power to make or help it come true in any case, and idle bitching is only satisfying in very small amounts. Somewhat relatedly, I don’t feel that cultivating strong feelings about the state of a discussion website that is completely owned and maintained by a single investment company is likely to be good for my social health. It’s a good place, and it will continue to be until it suddenly isn’t, and there isn’t a single thing I can do about it. (Been there, done that.) Getting back to my original point, my actual hope is that a good-enough witch filter could be built without mentioning object-level norms, solely on meta-level ones like “don’t shout down or shame people you disagree with”. Certainly the quality of moderately large political discussions on HN (which exist, whatever you or I think about them) seems to be pointing in that direction. (The experience of some other places, e.g. the SSC subreddit and comment section, seem to point to other possible perils of that approach that are not avoidable by changes local to a single venue.)
coldtea 5y ago
>To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized Seems that way. Parent explicitly wrote that it's only the articles that say "they've gone too far this time" that they find at fault. This means articles with the opposite view ("yay, more of those diversity efforts"), that touch on the same subject (and thus one would assume to be equaly divisive), are ok. I'd find it impartial and ok if they didn't wish either kind on HN, but only targeting one side is icky. But even this framing (of articles like TFA as being anti-diversity) is wrong, if not disingenuous, to begin with. As if TFA author is a seggregationist or wants less diversity (so agreeing makes you like that too), when diversity is not what the author complains about, but rather the inverse: lamenting the litany of the same facile rage-bait identity articles to the detriment of substantial reporting. Actual reporting which would include substantial reporting on matters of opressed identity and lack of diversity, as opposed to e.g. gaslighting readers that Dave Chappele's special was met with uniform hostility when it was a huge success, or letting huge social issues be ignored, while covering inconsequential complains...

badRNG 5y ago

There's a chicken or egg problem with the "coven of witches" conjecture. I also don't think Gab is all that marginal. It seems to exist largely to facilitate conversations around perceived excesses with diversity efforts. My greater point is that communities that facilitate these types of conversations typically have less inviting, more hostile cultures. There's a spectrum of course, but you can see glimmers of the type of discourse found on sites like Gab in the comment sections of anti-diversity blogs on HN. I think that an HN which plays host to more discussions about perceived issues with diversity will alienate a lot of folks who aren't entrenched in those sorts of debates and self-select for the type of discourse associated with these so-called "covens of witches." It seems to me that there's no value in sliding down that side of the spectrum for a site that's largely meant not to play host to ideological battles.

mananaysiempre 5y ago
Cf. Scott Alexander’s “three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches” quip[1]. This bootstrap problem has very little to do with current affairs anywhere, I’d say, and I don’t think it has ever been solved except where the more liberal (in the original sense) means of communication additionally had some sort of technical superiority as well. Except maybe the founding story of the US—I’m not an expert—but that was literally several waves of “witches” (many of them profoundly illiberal) taking their ball and going elsewhere, and their genetic memory of the necessity of free discourse seems to have died out by the middle of the 20th century (and was arguably missing the point as to which discourse needs to be free for decades before that). Not a bad record overall, but we’ve run out of unsettled land to go elsewhere to. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
- badRNG 5y ago
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    I wasn’t commenting on the suitability of this kind of thing on HN, more on the sane-political-discussion-bootstrap problem. I mean, here in Soviet Russia politics can and will do you whether or not you do politics, and it is indeed tech people, who seem to be the most eager to pull the separate magisteria trick with “politics” and “interesting stuff I care about”, that have been getting hit by that fact more and more often in recent years. Humans gonna hume, human life is political, and “politics is dirty” is as damaging as it is self-fulfilling (maybe not immediately, but over a couple of generations...). If your corner of the world affords you the luxury of ignoring that, I can only look on with envy. But to go from this to “political discourse belongs on HN” is a leap I’m not interested in making on defending. Whatever my opinion on that (I’m not sure) I don’t have the power to make or help it come true in any case, and idle bitching is only satisfying in very small amounts. Somewhat relatedly, I don’t feel that cultivating strong feelings about the state of a discussion website that is completely owned and maintained by a single investment company is likely to be good for my social health. It’s a good place, and it will continue to be until it suddenly isn’t, and there isn’t a single thing I can do about it. (Been there, done that.) Getting back to my original point, my actual hope is that a good-enough witch filter could be built without mentioning object-level norms, solely on meta-level ones like “don’t shout down or shame people you disagree with”. Certainly the quality of moderately large political discussions on HN (which exist, whatever you or I think about them) seems to be pointing in that direction. (The experience of some other places, e.g. the SSC subreddit and comment section, seem to point to other possible perils of that approach that are not avoidable by changes local to a single venue.)

coldtea 5y ago

>To be frank, it really seems you are suggesting people who disagree with you should be marginalized Seems that way. Parent explicitly wrote that it's only the articles that say "they've gone too far this time" that they find at fault. This means articles with the opposite view ("yay, more of those diversity efforts"), that touch on the same subject (and thus one would assume to be equaly divisive), are ok. I'd find it impartial and ok if they didn't wish either kind on HN, but only targeting one side is icky. But even this framing (of articles like TFA as being anti-diversity) is wrong, if not disingenuous, to begin with. As if TFA author is a seggregationist or wants less diversity (so agreeing makes you like that too), when diversity is not what the author complains about, but rather the inverse: lamenting the litany of the same facile rage-bait identity articles to the detriment of substantial reporting. Actual reporting which would include substantial reporting on matters of opressed identity and lack of diversity, as opposed to e.g. gaslighting readers that Dave Chappele's special was met with uniform hostility when it was a huge success, or letting huge social issues be ignored, while covering inconsequential complains...