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> I think these criticisms aren't just relevant to HN, they apply to all social media and online conversation. I believe the reason is that epistemology (gener

> I think these criticisms aren't just relevant to HN, they apply to all social media and online conversation. I believe the reason is that epistemology (generally: theory of knowledge, seeking/determining what is actually(!) True) is not just hard, but it goes counter to the natural workings of the human mind. If the topic of a thread is a psychology paper dealing with human perception, bias, this sort of thing (an abstract discussion of the phenomenon), few people have difficulty realizing and acknowledging that this is a fundamental problem, in/with reality. However, if the topic of discussion is an object level matter, particularly culture war issues (but even technical ones, as the author notes), the mind seems to run in a different mode - gone[1] is the knowledge that the mind is subject to imperfect thinking, replaced by ~"perception is reality". And, one's intuition might suggest that intelligent people would be less prone to this problem, but substantial evidence[2] suggests that this is not only not necessarily true, but that intelligence exacerbates the problem (if one is usually more often correct than others, it is perfectly reasonable that their default confidence level in being correct would increase). What I think is also interesting: it seems to me that this one fundamental idea could be one of the main root cause problems with human interaction on the internet (or, in general, really), a topic most people seem to be very interested in - but oddly, these same people almost without exception (in my experience) have zero (or less than) interest in identifying plausible root causes of the problem and contemplating/brainstorming solutions - the exact opposite of what one's intuition might predict. I have yet to encounter a single human being that is even marginally seriously interested in this idea (and many(!) who recoil from it), and I have talked to hundreds of people about it, often in meetups and other places where the general problem with people getting along, fake news, etc is literally the sole topic of conversation. I am not optimistic that humanity can solve a problem that their mind does not grant them access to (assuming my theory has some truth to it). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_memory [2] A word that causes tremendous discord when humans are discussing object level matters

fragmede 5y ago
There are four ways in which people disagree. First is just miscommunication which is easily clarified. Second is working from a different set of facts. Third is same facts, different interpretation. Lastly is same facts, same interpretation, different principles. Discourse online straddles the four, with an unhealthy amount of ego and stubborness thrown in for good (bad) measure. Without a good way to get people on the same page first, aka people don't even read the linked article before commenting (tbc, guilty of that myself), there's zero real hope of getting people interested in epistemology and why we get it so wrong. And who could blame them? Examining why you believe something central to your identity threatens it and is very uncomfortable, and most people simply aren't here for that.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > There are four ways in which people disagree. This itself is an epistemological matter. You've listed a perfectly reasonable high level summary of some of the problems....but is this summary actually true, comprehensively? For example: "There are four cities in China" is also a true statement. There's one fundamental thing most everyone overlooks when engaging in examination of reality: you're not actually dealing with reality, but rather a sophisticated and invisible model of it - and it is because of this (fundamentally, with massive amounts of additional nuanced details) that I believe at least some decent background in the fundamentals of epistemology (plus: logic, linguistics, semantics, psychology, meditation/mindfulness, etc) are required for humanity to get a handle on this out of control bus we're all riding in. And the scariest part to me: not only is there no serious initiative underway or under discussion approaching the problem from this perspective (unless I've somehow not encountered it in my searching), rare is the individual who is not opposed to the validity of the notion. As crazy as it sounds, I truly believe there is something hard wired in the human mind cutting off our access to such ideas - it seems not possible for people to even consider it.

fragmede 5y ago

There are four ways in which people disagree. First is just miscommunication which is easily clarified. Second is working from a different set of facts. Third is same facts, different interpretation. Lastly is same facts, same interpretation, different principles. Discourse online straddles the four, with an unhealthy amount of ego and stubborness thrown in for good (bad) measure. Without a good way to get people on the same page first, aka people don't even read the linked article before commenting (tbc, guilty of that myself), there's zero real hope of getting people interested in epistemology and why we get it so wrong. And who could blame them? Examining why you believe something central to your identity threatens it and is very uncomfortable, and most people simply aren't here for that.

mistermann 5y ago
> There are four ways in which people disagree. This itself is an epistemological matter. You've listed a perfectly reasonable high level summary of some of the problems....but is this summary actually true, comprehensively? For example: "There are four cities in China" is also a true statement. There's one fundamental thing most everyone overlooks when engaging in examination of reality: you're not actually dealing with reality, but rather a sophisticated and invisible model of it - and it is because of this (fundamentally, with massive amounts of additional nuanced details) that I believe at least some decent background in the fundamentals of epistemology (plus: logic, linguistics, semantics, psychology, meditation/mindfulness, etc) are required for humanity to get a handle on this out of control bus we're all riding in. And the scariest part to me: not only is there no serious initiative underway or under discussion approaching the problem from this perspective (unless I've somehow not encountered it in my searching), rare is the individual who is not opposed to the validity of the notion. As crazy as it sounds, I truly believe there is something hard wired in the human mind cutting off our access to such ideas - it seems not possible for people to even consider it.