4 ms·

> They've also had years to test out ways to be open about their beliefs while hiding behind a guise of "civility" or "curiosity" and spreading blatant lies onl

> They've also had years to test out ways to be open about their beliefs while hiding behind a guise of "civility" or "curiosity" and spreading blatant lies only to discard them and move on to the next talking point when caught. Now who's engaging in conspiracy thinking?

hnbad 4y ago
I'm talking about well-known phenomena that can readily be observed in online debate culture and social spaces over the past decade: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-internet-trolling https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-int... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing I'm not sure what you think this has to do with "conspiracy thinking". I'm not saying this is an organized effort. While particularly rowdy online communities do organize via places like 4chan (and its various even less palatable siblings) and KiwiFarms, the shift on HN can much more easily be described by looking at how fringe politics generally spread in online spaces. Innuendo Studios' video series "The Alt-Right Playbook"[0] is worth a watch if you are new to this concept. Heck, Jordan B Peterson wildly holds celebrity status at this point and for the longest time his interview strategy consisted of making general statements implying political positions and then accusing the interviewer of putting words in his mouth when those positions were challenged. Literally "just asking questions" and "stating facts" (which even with proper context were not always actually true, e.g. the entire lobster thing was based on the assumption that lobsters and humans react the same way to the same biochemical reactions). Right-wing fringe groups have been talking about various flavors of "red pilling" since before "alt-right" even became a thing. Even before "GamerGate" (which shifted a lot of young male gamers towards extremely far right views) you'd hear the concept in the "Manosphere" (i.e. MGTOWs, PUAs, MRAs and so on) to refer to "the truth about gender roles" (sexual market value, female promiscuity, but also "true facts" like male suicide rates but always presented as part of a misogynist narrative yearning for some imagined patriarchic past based on 1950s advertisements). The idea has since been refined to the point that "red pilling" has moved from simple "truth bombing" (i.e. plainly citing factoids supposedly supporting the narrative) to "just asking questions" (see above) and "it's just a joke" (hence the phrase particularly popular among online antisemitic white ethnonationalists: "when the joke really lands", i.e. when you no longer see it as an edgy joke but as the truth). Your use of the term is an interesting reversal of the accusation of "conspiracy thinking" by the way. The term is usually used to describe "anti-establishment" accusations of "powerful elites" (Rothschilds, WHO, George Soros, Bill Gates, whatever) conspiring to control the world. Even the actual Nazis spread conspiracy theories about "international bankers" (or simply "the Jews" when civility was not required) being "in control" and blaming the economic collapse and the loss of WW1 on them. What I'm claiming is far more mundane: 1. Far-right extremists and right-wing fringe people exist. 2. At least some of them are online and hang around in the same spaces as normal people do. 3. At least some of them understand that if they just open their mouths and plainly state their views they'll be banned from those spaces. 4. At least some of those still want to either state or advertise their politics in those spaces in ways that won't get them immediately banned. 5. At least some of those succeed in doing that. Of course this requires acknowledging that ideologies exist and people can hold genuine political views rather than simply looking out for their own financial gain. And historically liberals (and libertarians) have a track record of not being able to comprehend this or to believe "bad politics" (i.e. ideological opposition) is just a matter of not having access to enough information (e.g. "white supremacists only hate brown people because they don't understand how immigrants benefit the economy"). This post by the way is a perfect example of why these tactics work: 1. You replied with a single short sentence that probably took you no time. 2. You broadly dismissed everything I said without pointing out any specific claim as wrong or giving any actual argument I could respond to, making it hard to falsify without "rambling". 3. You didn't directly attack me or what I said (e.g. "That's conspiracy thinking!") but instead merely implied a statement by asking a rhetorical question, thus appearing more civil without changing what you actually wanted to say. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  There's a lot I could have taken issue with in the comment I replied to starting with your conflation of libertarians with Trump supporters. You also haven't been paying attention considering libertarianism really had its heyday under the Bush and Obama administrations and has flagged quite a bit since then. You're positing that there is some subculture of these supposed evil libertarians that have been biding their time here on HN and elsewhere, practicing their menacing writing skills to further their vile plots. You say that anyone who takes this type of rhetorical approach is doing so in order to conceal their true desire to engage in hate speech, honestly this is just twisted you're painting your opponents as monsters instead of admitting that someone might disagree with you and it seems you'd prefer to simply ban anyone who disagrees as such. Talk about authoritarian ambitions. To top it all off, you Godwin the conversation by comparing this imaginary foe to Nazis. To me, all of that seems very in line with conspiratorial or paranoid thinking. No wonder I didn't want to put the energy into a long winded rebuke like this one.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    > your conflation of libertarians with Trump supporters I'm not saying all these people are libertarians. I'm saying libertarians are ill-equipped and/or unwilling to subdue the far-right because they value civility over content (or "order over justice" if you want to bring MLK into this). That said, some supposed libertarians were (and in some cases still are) exceptionally friendly towards Trump but I'd argue that has more to do with being opportunistic right-wingers than specifically being right-wing libertarians. Ironically prior to 2016 there was a wave of people with clearly right-wing conservative (and in some cases even clearly tradcon) views adopting the label of "classical liberals" but I wouldn't call them libertarians either. > You're positing that there is some subculture of these supposed evil libertarians that have been biding their time here on HN and elsewhere, practicing their menacing writing skills to further their vile plots. You say that anyone who takes this type of rhetorical approach is doing so in order to conceal their true desire to engage in hate speech The problem with intent is that there is no functional difference between someone using far-right talking points because they're edgy or because they are a true believer but by enabling them by giving them a platform, you're enabling the true believers even when the ones you initially refuse to subdue are just being edgy. This is a well understood phenomenon (meme-fied as the Paradox of Tolerance). I've literally seen comments on HN openly espousing antisemitism, sexism and "race realism" (aka scientific racism). I've seen HN users do this repeatedly without having their accounts killed even if their posts were downvoted or flagged. More often than not any replies calling them out for it were downvoted at least as much if not more than the comments themselves. Meanwhile any comment acknowledging racism, sexism or other "social justice" issues will get immense pushback in the form of replies and downvotes compared to a casual mention of well established far-right talking points like the Bell Curve (race and IQ) or evopsych bullshit. > libertarianism really had its heyday under the Bush and Obama administrations and has flagged quite a bit since then. I'm not talking about the US government, I'm talking about the US startup VC culture (and to some degree even so-called "Hacker culture" in general) HN originates in and still inherits. > Talk about authoritarian ambitions. That's not what authoritarianism means. HN is already authoritarian. Dang can shadow or slow ban anyone he pleases with little oversight. Being a property of YCombinator, theoretically Paul G could interve and ban you personally with zero repercussions. HN users can up and down vote or flag and vouch posts but the HN mods and owners can completely ignore that and boost or kill posts if they want without accountability. It's not that I'm asking for "more authoritarianism", I'm saying that authoritarianism should be applied differently than it is. > honestly this is just twisted you're painting your opponents as monsters instead of admitting that someone might disagree with you and it seems you'd prefer to simply ban anyone who disagrees as such. If your disagreement consists of denying the humanity of other people by espousing pseudoscience like "Jews are naturally more intelligent but can't be trusted" or "Black people are naturally less intelligent but physically stronger and thus more prone to violent crime" or "women can't do science, maths or programming because they're naturally more adapted for child rearing", that's not simply a disagreement, that's a declaration of war and should be treated as such. See Tolerance Paradox as above. > To top it all off, you Godwin the conversation by comparing this imaginary foe to Nazis. No, I'm not comparing anyone to Nazis. I only call nazis nazis. There are white supremacists, incels, casual racists and antisemites on HN too but I'm not calling them nazis. When I call someone a nazi I'm specifically talking about someone who wants to establish a white ethnostate and believes in a Jewish conspiracy to "weaken the white race" through immigration (often in the form of a Great Replacement or White Genocide narrative). These people also exist on HN but they are harder to identify for what they are because that kind of talk is much less socially acceptable. What I did say was that the Nazis believed in a literal conspiracy theory. The only person accusing anyone of believing in conspiracy theories here is you, so if you really want to insist on this being a case of Godwin's law you'd have to argue that I was accusing you of comparing me to Nazis, which still doesn't really match any definition of Godwin's law I've ever seen. I didn't say you were comparing me to the Nazis though. I said it's interesting that you accuse me of believing in a conspiracy theory because I'm literally talking about the presence of people who believe in conspiracy theories. It's also weird that you double down on this accusation considering I literally explained I don't believe there is a coordinated campaign of undermining HN nor that the moderators are intentionally supporting these people. So I guess my question really is: who do you think my "imaginary" foe is? And what is your opinion on the Paradox of Tolerance given that you seem to be arguing for a "marketplace of ideas" (often framed as "sunlight is the best disinfectant") approach to "bad ideas". EDIT: To be redundantly clear, I'm not saying there is a far-right subculture in HN. HN doesn't really lend itself to building subcultures within it directly and allegedly there are protections in place to make brigading an inefficient strategy so coordinating outside HN is also off the table. What I'm saying is, as I've already said explicitly, there are people who hold these views and some of these people use HN. In aggregate, the more of these people feel comfortable expressing their views on HN, the more their views become part of HN's culture, the less people on the opposite end feel comfortable expressing themselves on HN and the fewer of those people will remain. I'm also saying this cycle has already been going on for a while and if you think it hasn't that may be because it hasn't affected you (yet).

hnbad 4y ago

I'm talking about well-known phenomena that can readily be observed in online debate culture and social spaces over the past decade: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-internet-trolling https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-int... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Concern_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing I'm not sure what you think this has to do with "conspiracy thinking". I'm not saying this is an organized effort. While particularly rowdy online communities do organize via places like 4chan (and its various even less palatable siblings) and KiwiFarms, the shift on HN can much more easily be described by looking at how fringe politics generally spread in online spaces. Innuendo Studios' video series "The Alt-Right Playbook"[0] is worth a watch if you are new to this concept. Heck, Jordan B Peterson wildly holds celebrity status at this point and for the longest time his interview strategy consisted of making general statements implying political positions and then accusing the interviewer of putting words in his mouth when those positions were challenged. Literally "just asking questions" and "stating facts" (which even with proper context were not always actually true, e.g. the entire lobster thing was based on the assumption that lobsters and humans react the same way to the same biochemical reactions). Right-wing fringe groups have been talking about various flavors of "red pilling" since before "alt-right" even became a thing. Even before "GamerGate" (which shifted a lot of young male gamers towards extremely far right views) you'd hear the concept in the "Manosphere" (i.e. MGTOWs, PUAs, MRAs and so on) to refer to "the truth about gender roles" (sexual market value, female promiscuity, but also "true facts" like male suicide rates but always presented as part of a misogynist narrative yearning for some imagined patriarchic past based on 1950s advertisements). The idea has since been refined to the point that "red pilling" has moved from simple "truth bombing" (i.e. plainly citing factoids supposedly supporting the narrative) to "just asking questions" (see above) and "it's just a joke" (hence the phrase particularly popular among online antisemitic white ethnonationalists: "when the joke really lands", i.e. when you no longer see it as an edgy joke but as the truth). Your use of the term is an interesting reversal of the accusation of "conspiracy thinking" by the way. The term is usually used to describe "anti-establishment" accusations of "powerful elites" (Rothschilds, WHO, George Soros, Bill Gates, whatever) conspiring to control the world. Even the actual Nazis spread conspiracy theories about "international bankers" (or simply "the Jews" when civility was not required) being "in control" and blaming the economic collapse and the loss of WW1 on them. What I'm claiming is far more mundane: 1. Far-right extremists and right-wing fringe people exist. 2. At least some of them are online and hang around in the same spaces as normal people do. 3. At least some of them understand that if they just open their mouths and plainly state their views they'll be banned from those spaces. 4. At least some of those still want to either state or advertise their politics in those spaces in ways that won't get them immediately banned. 5. At least some of those succeed in doing that. Of course this requires acknowledging that ideologies exist and people can hold genuine political views rather than simply looking out for their own financial gain. And historically liberals (and libertarians) have a track record of not being able to comprehend this or to believe "bad politics" (i.e. ideological opposition) is just a matter of not having access to enough information (e.g. "white supremacists only hate brown people because they don't understand how immigrants benefit the economy"). This post by the way is a perfect example of why these tactics work: 1. You replied with a single short sentence that probably took you no time. 2. You broadly dismissed everything I said without pointing out any specific claim as wrong or giving any actual argument I could respond to, making it hard to falsify without "rambling". 3. You didn't directly attack me or what I said (e.g. "That's conspiracy thinking!") but instead merely implied a statement by asking a rhetorical question, thus appearing more civil without changing what you actually wanted to say. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJIseNY&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

throwaway4aday 4y ago
There's a lot I could have taken issue with in the comment I replied to starting with your conflation of libertarians with Trump supporters. You also haven't been paying attention considering libertarianism really had its heyday under the Bush and Obama administrations and has flagged quite a bit since then. You're positing that there is some subculture of these supposed evil libertarians that have been biding their time here on HN and elsewhere, practicing their menacing writing skills to further their vile plots. You say that anyone who takes this type of rhetorical approach is doing so in order to conceal their true desire to engage in hate speech, honestly this is just twisted you're painting your opponents as monsters instead of admitting that someone might disagree with you and it seems you'd prefer to simply ban anyone who disagrees as such. Talk about authoritarian ambitions. To top it all off, you Godwin the conversation by comparing this imaginary foe to Nazis. To me, all of that seems very in line with conspiratorial or paranoid thinking. No wonder I didn't want to put the energy into a long winded rebuke like this one.
- hnbad 4y ago
  > your conflation of libertarians with Trump supporters I'm not saying all these people are libertarians. I'm saying libertarians are ill-equipped and/or unwilling to subdue the far-right because they value civility over content (or "order over justice" if you want to bring MLK into this). That said, some supposed libertarians were (and in some cases still are) exceptionally friendly towards Trump but I'd argue that has more to do with being opportunistic right-wingers than specifically being right-wing libertarians. Ironically prior to 2016 there was a wave of people with clearly right-wing conservative (and in some cases even clearly tradcon) views adopting the label of "classical liberals" but I wouldn't call them libertarians either. > You're positing that there is some subculture of these supposed evil libertarians that have been biding their time here on HN and elsewhere, practicing their menacing writing skills to further their vile plots. You say that anyone who takes this type of rhetorical approach is doing so in order to conceal their true desire to engage in hate speech The problem with intent is that there is no functional difference between someone using far-right talking points because they're edgy or because they are a true believer but by enabling them by giving them a platform, you're enabling the true believers even when the ones you initially refuse to subdue are just being edgy. This is a well understood phenomenon (meme-fied as the Paradox of Tolerance). I've literally seen comments on HN openly espousing antisemitism, sexism and "race realism" (aka scientific racism). I've seen HN users do this repeatedly without having their accounts killed even if their posts were downvoted or flagged. More often than not any replies calling them out for it were downvoted at least as much if not more than the comments themselves. Meanwhile any comment acknowledging racism, sexism or other "social justice" issues will get immense pushback in the form of replies and downvotes compared to a casual mention of well established far-right talking points like the Bell Curve (race and IQ) or evopsych bullshit. > libertarianism really had its heyday under the Bush and Obama administrations and has flagged quite a bit since then. I'm not talking about the US government, I'm talking about the US startup VC culture (and to some degree even so-called "Hacker culture" in general) HN originates in and still inherits. > Talk about authoritarian ambitions. That's not what authoritarianism means. HN is already authoritarian. Dang can shadow or slow ban anyone he pleases with little oversight. Being a property of YCombinator, theoretically Paul G could interve and ban you personally with zero repercussions. HN users can up and down vote or flag and vouch posts but the HN mods and owners can completely ignore that and boost or kill posts if they want without accountability. It's not that I'm asking for "more authoritarianism", I'm saying that authoritarianism should be applied differently than it is. > honestly this is just twisted you're painting your opponents as monsters instead of admitting that someone might disagree with you and it seems you'd prefer to simply ban anyone who disagrees as such. If your disagreement consists of denying the humanity of other people by espousing pseudoscience like "Jews are naturally more intelligent but can't be trusted" or "Black people are naturally less intelligent but physically stronger and thus more prone to violent crime" or "women can't do science, maths or programming because they're naturally more adapted for child rearing", that's not simply a disagreement, that's a declaration of war and should be treated as such. See Tolerance Paradox as above. > To top it all off, you Godwin the conversation by comparing this imaginary foe to Nazis. No, I'm not comparing anyone to Nazis. I only call nazis nazis. There are white supremacists, incels, casual racists and antisemites on HN too but I'm not calling them nazis. When I call someone a nazi I'm specifically talking about someone who wants to establish a white ethnostate and believes in a Jewish conspiracy to "weaken the white race" through immigration (often in the form of a Great Replacement or White Genocide narrative). These people also exist on HN but they are harder to identify for what they are because that kind of talk is much less socially acceptable. What I did say was that the Nazis believed in a literal conspiracy theory. The only person accusing anyone of believing in conspiracy theories here is you, so if you really want to insist on this being a case of Godwin's law you'd have to argue that I was accusing you of comparing me to Nazis, which still doesn't really match any definition of Godwin's law I've ever seen. I didn't say you were comparing me to the Nazis though. I said it's interesting that you accuse me of believing in a conspiracy theory because I'm literally talking about the presence of people who believe in conspiracy theories. It's also weird that you double down on this accusation considering I literally explained I don't believe there is a coordinated campaign of undermining HN nor that the moderators are intentionally supporting these people. So I guess my question really is: who do you think my "imaginary" foe is? And what is your opinion on the Paradox of Tolerance given that you seem to be arguing for a "marketplace of ideas" (often framed as "sunlight is the best disinfectant") approach to "bad ideas". EDIT: To be redundantly clear, I'm not saying there is a far-right subculture in HN. HN doesn't really lend itself to building subcultures within it directly and allegedly there are protections in place to make brigading an inefficient strategy so coordinating outside HN is also off the table. What I'm saying is, as I've already said explicitly, there are people who hold these views and some of these people use HN. In aggregate, the more of these people feel comfortable expressing their views on HN, the more their views become part of HN's culture, the less people on the opposite end feel comfortable expressing themselves on HN and the fewer of those people will remain. I'm also saying this cycle has already been going on for a while and if you think it hasn't that may be because it hasn't affected you (yet).