6 ms·

Ask HN: Why do anti-progressive comments get so many down votes?

14 points by shaburn 4y ago

ggm 4y ago
A worldwide trend to more left leaning views has been taking place since before ww1. Despite short term localised reverses to nationalism, and rightist trends, a case is made that irrespective of the agenda in teaching, an increase in learning to secondary and tertiary levels is not just correlative to this: the enquiring mind seeks equity, and equitable outcomes more than the adversarial traditionalist ones. True conservatism, in its purest sense, is not actually about capitalism per se, but a rejection of the assumption that all which is new is better. But that aside, most capital has conservative roots. It is the nature of accrued land and wealth to vest in fewer hands, and to run against redistribution and progressive trends to social equity. Many conservatives love land and nature, hate industry and development despite dependence on it for much of their wealth. If this worries you, consider how much it worries the Chinese, Russian and like states: they hate progressives every bit as much as rightist conservative trends in the developed west. Churches display the same thing btw. Young priests have to be warned against populism and progressive ideas in all faiths. Personally I welcome anti progressive comments. They're interesting. They make me question my own progressive beliefs. I lose far more arguments than I win. In 61 years I have yet to feel less progressive than in my youth. Less revolutionary, perhaps.
- shaburn 4y ago
  So extrapolating HN is more global than US oriented.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Statements made by others about social trends in the US are so often misconceived and misconstrued, you will have to forgive me if I don't make many serious points, but on the low levels of voter participation and under the gerrymander it would be almost impossible to say the 49/51 class split in voting was indicative of real social trends. US media is quite progressive overall. US education system is quite progressive overall. I am amazed the women of America did not rise up and slaughter their political classes and judges in the red states and the federal courts, but that goes to my bewilderment at the mixture of progressive and regressive tendencies which make up America. To all practical purposes at this time in many ways the US is an illegal theocracy operating in a nation state which constitutionally forbids it. More of them are practising Christians than any other comparable democracy. Yet, they legalised cannabis and stop kids drinking until they're 21, after they can die for their country. It's strange. HN isn't only about America, but the progressive regressive questions tend to be from an American perspective.
    - cato_the_elder 4y ago
      > I am amazed the women of America did not rise up and slaughter your political classes and judges in your red states and the federal courts Then perhaps you probably don't know much about American politics. Until recently, there wasn't a huge gender gap on the issue. [1] > You are to all practical purposes at this time in many ways an illegal theocracy operating in a nation state which constitutionally forbids it. The declaration of independence explicitly says that our fundamental rights are endowed to us by our Creator. [2] The pledge of allegiance calls the US "one Nation under God". [3] The US, unlike France [4], isn't afraid of God. [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.a... [2]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/france-god-religion-secularism/620528/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/france-...
      - ggm 4y ago
        The pledge of allegiance dating from the 19th century has no constitutional status, and "under God" is a product of the 1950s cold war. A previous generation of the Supreme Court upheld it's complete irrelevance. Maybe that will change again, but I struggle to see it really. This current court is black letter law, if the 1770s didn't require it, then it takes heavy process to make it happen, for them. The stats on views of abortion were fascinating! Thanks. I am unsure yet they go to my side of things or yours. The definitely legal and sometimes legal count, appears to me to be consistently pro abortion rights. They've just had flat denial from the court on a federal right and a push back to (often distorted) states rights. You think this isn't going to hurt electorally? You know what: I don't know. I think it foolish for me to even try.
      - feet 4y ago
        Mentioning a creator is not equivalent to stating that the US is a theocracy, let alone a christian one
  - bradwood 4y ago
    No. Despite a global membership, it still appears (to my foreign eyes) to be overwhelmingly (and annoyingly) US-centric. Many posters demonstrate this through their language (why say 401k when you could say pension scheme), assumptions (guns are legal), and the scope of their posts and commentary. You only need to read threads on crypto, gun control, politics, etc for this to become abundantly clear (irrespective of the side of the argument taken by a commenter). Of course, there are exceptions, but, by and large, HN does seem to be like this. Many posters and comments just _assume_ a US frame of reference without stopping to consider whether a global one, or a non-US one might be better.
    - ggm 4y ago
      Same as Google. Announces new product, initially solely in the US. There are 5x as many Google consumers or more outside the US than inside and they kill the product on a whim if it "fails" some US centric market test. I wonder if the American Python community (for instance) even realises Guido is Dutch. Or marvels at his fluency in English. Many HN participants are FAANG and so US centric thinking is strong, noting of course the huge disparity on pay and conditions and inside and outside the US. There may also be a time of day effect. I'm gmt+10 so maybe I'm camping on end day ranked stories, responding to midnight owls in the US who tend to more extreme views.
      - junofan 4y ago
        I guarantee people know Guido van Rossum is Dutch because his name is not Americanized.
      - bradwood 4y ago
        I don't think it's just a FAANG thing. There are FAANG employees outside of the US also. I think it's simply that many US-based people are just blinkered to the world beyond. It's a cultural thing. For decades the US has aimed to export its values, democracy, world view, etc, to other parts of the world. They think of themselves as the world's protector, the upholder of what is right, the benchmark for freedom and liberty in the world. This is not to say those values are wrong - I think, by and large, they are indeed good, but the arrogance with which they are expressed by the US often just doesn't help. This is a superiority complex which is ingrained and, frankly, tiring -- there are many places in the world which can legitimately claim those accolades, but many US citizens just seem incapable of acknowledging that.
cato_the_elder 4y ago
Because tech has a left-wing bias [1], and HN is mostly a tech forum. I personally think that will change in the coming years though. There's a limit on how much tech and denial of reality can coexist. Perhaps the reason that they have been able to coexist for while is that most tech workers tend to work in fields adjacent to computer science. They live in the world of bits, not atoms. By denial of reality I mean things like denying the enormous role of genetics, or basic economics (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory), or insisting on human equality at every level (which is of course utterly untrue, e.g. von Neumann was smarter than almost all of us here), or the war on merit (i.e. "affirmative action"), or heavy use of propaganda and censorship and doublethink to avoid social stigma for particular groups, or denial of basic biology (when it comes to fitness, or gender differences), or even Orwellian [2] insistence on the "fact" that 2 + 2 = 5. [3] [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-compan... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5 [3]: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1290479330477240320 https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/129047933047724032...
- ggm 4y ago
  Pretty good list. Don't agree with it, but it's a list indicative of a different world view. You think tech will swing to this reality? I doubt it. But you know, time will tell. I think the bitter economic reality will swing to more radical views and towards increased collective views. That's because the wreck of AGW is going to be so disruptive, it will be necessary.
  - shaburn 4y ago
    Isn't the pendulum due for swing back first?
    - ggm 4y ago
      Fair. Maybe? How do you know it didn't reach the end of its swing back already? It's one of those "you can tell after" I'm pretty sure the swings have not got in phase worldwide and I have to tell you I am delighted, because when they synchronise the shit gets scary, real fast.
conz 4y ago
Definition is necessary. What's 'progressive'? Is post-modernism (and associated Social Justice Activism, identity politics and focus on culture-wars) 'progressive', or is 'progressive' defined as old-school, 'social democratic' politics, social justice, rights/freedoms and classic liberalism? These are almost diametrically opposed viewpoints.
- shaburn 4y ago
  I believe a contemporary pole based on US politics and economics will do.
bell-cot 4y ago
There are plenty of ways to get downvoted on HN which have little to do with anti-progressivism. The old "When in Rome, do like the Romans..." wisdom also applies to tone, style, context, and {attributes which someone who took Rhetoric 101 would know the terms for}. The old "always know your crowd" vaudeville wisdom also applies. HN seems dominated by a pretty young crowd of techies, who are moving up in the world (or identify that way), thanks to their own skills with computers. Their favoring Progressive ideas is no more surprising than powerful monarchs favoring the Divine right of kings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings ).
- shaburn 4y ago
  Inherently anti-progressive and probably outing yourself. The saying is now "when in Rome do as you whim".
  - feet 4y ago
    >Their favoring Progressive ideas is no more surprising than powerful monarchs favoring the Divine right of kings This statement is what really makes no sense to me. I don't understand the equivalency
    - 8jef 4y ago
      Probably derived from an amalgam between general social progress and individual economical progress, both supposedly traveling together, but don't.
    - bell-cot 4y ago
      {HN Crowd} ===favor=(aka "like")===> {Progressive ideas} ...is similar to... {Powerful Monarchs} ===favor=(aka "like")===> {Set of ideas which closely align with the worldviews and interests of powerful monarchs. These ideas also tend to be very popular with the families, friends, favorite authors, peers, underlings, etc. of powerful monarchs.} Any better?
      - 4y ago
anm89 4y ago
Progressive views tend to lean towards thing thing that sounds nice - everyone should be equal - everyone should have a good standard of living - everyone should get a good education It's easy to throw out this category of things in a vacuous way wherein everyone on every side of the spectrum agrees with these statements, but the progressive angle is to downplay the difficulties and simply assert things as rights and disparage anyone who claims it is more complicated than this whereas the stock conservative angle is to focus on the logistical issues - how do we afford this? - ensuring "everyone is equal" involves forcefully holding some people back - through what process do you plan to ensure the right? - what happens if this societal goal conflicts with my rights? These things all sound "mean" compared to the things in the first group and are far easier to criticize than the nicer sounding but ultimately incomplete ideas in the first set. Obviously this is a drastic oversimplification and there are all sorts of people on both sides who don't fit this mold but as a rule, more often than not, this pattern plays out.
bediger4000 4y ago
I would guess it's a matter of presentation. If you present any idea in dogmatic, absolutist fashion, you get down voted. Rhetorically allow for disagreement, nuance, respond to criticism, you may not get any votes, but you probably won't get down votes. "Anti-progessive" means "traditional" basically. Dogmatically advocating for tradition is going to come off as bull-headed, and without logical or empirical underpinnings. Nobody wants to argue with someone who is illogical and won't change their minds, so it's easier to just down vote.
origin_path 4y ago
You could ask this about any forum and it would be pertinent, or you could ask why left wing societies like the USSR, China etc always have more censorship in general than the right. Here's one theory for you to try: leftists/progressives in general are much more concerned with speech and language control than non-progressives. Why is that? Well, this ideology or philosophy or whatever you want to call it, is fundamentally about the Power of Man to reshape the world through the Power Of Ideas. Ideas in turn are objects manipulated entirely using words. So, people on the left believe very deeply that words and ideas are very powerful. Not the implementation of ideas, but the ideas themselves. That is, merely articulating an idea can itself change people and thus the world, almost immediately! They therefore elevate and protect "intellectuals", using Sowell's definition of people whose primary status in society depends on their production of ideas. People not on the left (I don't think the right is really a consistent thing worth talking about as a coherent unit), generally don't believe that to the same extent. They are much more concerned with implementations, practical experience, the evolved wisdom of traditions and so on, and may find many ideas to lack common sense, be wishful thinking, etc. What happens if you deeply believe that merely hearing words can significantly change the world, or people's beliefs about the world? Well, then controlling what other people say becomes critical. After all, if someone writes some anti-progressive ideas then other people might see them and change their beliefs away from progressivism, which would be terrible. But if you can't directly control it, then hiding the words is the next best thing. Forum downvotes are the second best option available to hide a post, abusive flagging is of course the best and so if you turn on showdead and browse https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active so you can see flagged posts you'll see that anything anti-progressive in any way gets flagged very quickly regardless of any merits the story or post may have. What can be done? Mostly, better forum software would fix this. The mechanisms for getting posts pulled or reranked need to be divorced from abstract voting, where it's never really clear what a downvote is meant to mean (mere disagreement vs "get rid of this post" for other reasons). Fully algorithmic ranking, for example, would allow heavily downvoted posts to nonetheless be at the top if they scored well on other metrics. However not many people make or run forums so such ideas don't get much experimentation.
- shaburn 4y ago
  I believe the hippies who caught beating for protesting for free speech in the 60's, which have been memorialized with things like the "Free Speech Cafe" at UC Berkeley, are rolling in their graves. Free speech was a formerly progressive value and authoritarian attitudes formerly more popular on the right; politically here in the US. So there is nothing categorically inherent to Free speech or authoritarianism.
20after4 4y ago
Maybe it's because progressive ideology is activist ideology and progressives like to exercise their downvote.

14 points by shaburn 4y ago

ggm 4y ago

A worldwide trend to more left leaning views has been taking place since before ww1. Despite short term localised reverses to nationalism, and rightist trends, a case is made that irrespective of the agenda in teaching, an increase in learning to secondary and tertiary levels is not just correlative to this: the enquiring mind seeks equity, and equitable outcomes more than the adversarial traditionalist ones. True conservatism, in its purest sense, is not actually about capitalism per se, but a rejection of the assumption that all which is new is better. But that aside, most capital has conservative roots. It is the nature of accrued land and wealth to vest in fewer hands, and to run against redistribution and progressive trends to social equity. Many conservatives love land and nature, hate industry and development despite dependence on it for much of their wealth. If this worries you, consider how much it worries the Chinese, Russian and like states: they hate progressives every bit as much as rightist conservative trends in the developed west. Churches display the same thing btw. Young priests have to be warned against populism and progressive ideas in all faiths. Personally I welcome anti progressive comments. They're interesting. They make me question my own progressive beliefs. I lose far more arguments than I win. In 61 years I have yet to feel less progressive than in my youth. Less revolutionary, perhaps.

shaburn 4y ago
So extrapolating HN is more global than US oriented.
- ggm 4y ago
  Statements made by others about social trends in the US are so often misconceived and misconstrued, you will have to forgive me if I don't make many serious points, but on the low levels of voter participation and under the gerrymander it would be almost impossible to say the 49/51 class split in voting was indicative of real social trends. US media is quite progressive overall. US education system is quite progressive overall. I am amazed the women of America did not rise up and slaughter their political classes and judges in the red states and the federal courts, but that goes to my bewilderment at the mixture of progressive and regressive tendencies which make up America. To all practical purposes at this time in many ways the US is an illegal theocracy operating in a nation state which constitutionally forbids it. More of them are practising Christians than any other comparable democracy. Yet, they legalised cannabis and stop kids drinking until they're 21, after they can die for their country. It's strange. HN isn't only about America, but the progressive regressive questions tend to be from an American perspective.
  - cato_the_elder 4y ago
    > I am amazed the women of America did not rise up and slaughter your political classes and judges in your red states and the federal courts Then perhaps you probably don't know much about American politics. Until recently, there wasn't a huge gender gap on the issue. [1] > You are to all practical purposes at this time in many ways an illegal theocracy operating in a nation state which constitutionally forbids it. The declaration of independence explicitly says that our fundamental rights are endowed to us by our Creator. [2] The pledge of allegiance calls the US "one Nation under God". [3] The US, unlike France [4], isn't afraid of God. [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.a... [2]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip... [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance [4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/france-god-religion-secularism/620528/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/12/france-...
    - ggm 4y ago
      The pledge of allegiance dating from the 19th century has no constitutional status, and "under God" is a product of the 1950s cold war. A previous generation of the Supreme Court upheld it's complete irrelevance. Maybe that will change again, but I struggle to see it really. This current court is black letter law, if the 1770s didn't require it, then it takes heavy process to make it happen, for them. The stats on views of abortion were fascinating! Thanks. I am unsure yet they go to my side of things or yours. The definitely legal and sometimes legal count, appears to me to be consistently pro abortion rights. They've just had flat denial from the court on a federal right and a push back to (often distorted) states rights. You think this isn't going to hurt electorally? You know what: I don't know. I think it foolish for me to even try.
    - feet 4y ago
      Mentioning a creator is not equivalent to stating that the US is a theocracy, let alone a christian one
- bradwood 4y ago
  No. Despite a global membership, it still appears (to my foreign eyes) to be overwhelmingly (and annoyingly) US-centric. Many posters demonstrate this through their language (why say 401k when you could say pension scheme), assumptions (guns are legal), and the scope of their posts and commentary. You only need to read threads on crypto, gun control, politics, etc for this to become abundantly clear (irrespective of the side of the argument taken by a commenter). Of course, there are exceptions, but, by and large, HN does seem to be like this. Many posters and comments just _assume_ a US frame of reference without stopping to consider whether a global one, or a non-US one might be better.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Same as Google. Announces new product, initially solely in the US. There are 5x as many Google consumers or more outside the US than inside and they kill the product on a whim if it "fails" some US centric market test. I wonder if the American Python community (for instance) even realises Guido is Dutch. Or marvels at his fluency in English. Many HN participants are FAANG and so US centric thinking is strong, noting of course the huge disparity on pay and conditions and inside and outside the US. There may also be a time of day effect. I'm gmt+10 so maybe I'm camping on end day ranked stories, responding to midnight owls in the US who tend to more extreme views.
    - junofan 4y ago
      I guarantee people know Guido van Rossum is Dutch because his name is not Americanized.
    - bradwood 4y ago
      I don't think it's just a FAANG thing. There are FAANG employees outside of the US also. I think it's simply that many US-based people are just blinkered to the world beyond. It's a cultural thing. For decades the US has aimed to export its values, democracy, world view, etc, to other parts of the world. They think of themselves as the world's protector, the upholder of what is right, the benchmark for freedom and liberty in the world. This is not to say those values are wrong - I think, by and large, they are indeed good, but the arrogance with which they are expressed by the US often just doesn't help. This is a superiority complex which is ingrained and, frankly, tiring -- there are many places in the world which can legitimately claim those accolades, but many US citizens just seem incapable of acknowledging that.

cato_the_elder 4y ago

Because tech has a left-wing bias [1], and HN is mostly a tech forum. I personally think that will change in the coming years though. There's a limit on how much tech and denial of reality can coexist. Perhaps the reason that they have been able to coexist for while is that most tech workers tend to work in fields adjacent to computer science. They live in the world of bits, not atoms. By denial of reality I mean things like denying the enormous role of genetics, or basic economics (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory), or insisting on human equality at every level (which is of course utterly untrue, e.g. von Neumann was smarter than almost all of us here), or the war on merit (i.e. "affirmative action"), or heavy use of propaganda and censorship and doublethink to avoid social stigma for particular groups, or denial of basic biology (when it comes to fitness, or gender differences), or even Orwellian [2] insistence on the "fact" that 2 + 2 = 5. [3] [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-compan... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_%2B_2_%3D_5 [3]: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/1290479330477240320 https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/129047933047724032...

ggm 4y ago
Pretty good list. Don't agree with it, but it's a list indicative of a different world view. You think tech will swing to this reality? I doubt it. But you know, time will tell. I think the bitter economic reality will swing to more radical views and towards increased collective views. That's because the wreck of AGW is going to be so disruptive, it will be necessary.
- shaburn 4y ago
  Isn't the pendulum due for swing back first?
  - ggm 4y ago
    Fair. Maybe? How do you know it didn't reach the end of its swing back already? It's one of those "you can tell after" I'm pretty sure the swings have not got in phase worldwide and I have to tell you I am delighted, because when they synchronise the shit gets scary, real fast.

conz 4y ago

Definition is necessary. What's 'progressive'? Is post-modernism (and associated Social Justice Activism, identity politics and focus on culture-wars) 'progressive', or is 'progressive' defined as old-school, 'social democratic' politics, social justice, rights/freedoms and classic liberalism? These are almost diametrically opposed viewpoints.

shaburn 4y ago
I believe a contemporary pole based on US politics and economics will do.

bell-cot 4y ago

There are plenty of ways to get downvoted on HN which have little to do with anti-progressivism. The old "When in Rome, do like the Romans..." wisdom also applies to tone, style, context, and {attributes which someone who took Rhetoric 101 would know the terms for}. The old "always know your crowd" vaudeville wisdom also applies. HN seems dominated by a pretty young crowd of techies, who are moving up in the world (or identify that way), thanks to their own skills with computers. Their favoring Progressive ideas is no more surprising than powerful monarchs favoring the Divine right of kings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings ).

shaburn 4y ago
Inherently anti-progressive and probably outing yourself. The saying is now "when in Rome do as you whim".
- feet 4y ago
  >Their favoring Progressive ideas is no more surprising than powerful monarchs favoring the Divine right of kings This statement is what really makes no sense to me. I don't understand the equivalency
  - 8jef 4y ago
    Probably derived from an amalgam between general social progress and individual economical progress, both supposedly traveling together, but don't.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    {HN Crowd} ===favor=(aka "like")===> {Progressive ideas} ...is similar to... {Powerful Monarchs} ===favor=(aka "like")===> {Set of ideas which closely align with the worldviews and interests of powerful monarchs. These ideas also tend to be very popular with the families, friends, favorite authors, peers, underlings, etc. of powerful monarchs.} Any better?
    - 4y ago

anm89 4y ago

Progressive views tend to lean towards thing thing that sounds nice - everyone should be equal - everyone should have a good standard of living - everyone should get a good education It's easy to throw out this category of things in a vacuous way wherein everyone on every side of the spectrum agrees with these statements, but the progressive angle is to downplay the difficulties and simply assert things as rights and disparage anyone who claims it is more complicated than this whereas the stock conservative angle is to focus on the logistical issues - how do we afford this? - ensuring "everyone is equal" involves forcefully holding some people back - through what process do you plan to ensure the right? - what happens if this societal goal conflicts with my rights? These things all sound "mean" compared to the things in the first group and are far easier to criticize than the nicer sounding but ultimately incomplete ideas in the first set. Obviously this is a drastic oversimplification and there are all sorts of people on both sides who don't fit this mold but as a rule, more often than not, this pattern plays out.

bediger4000 4y ago

I would guess it's a matter of presentation. If you present any idea in dogmatic, absolutist fashion, you get down voted. Rhetorically allow for disagreement, nuance, respond to criticism, you may not get any votes, but you probably won't get down votes. "Anti-progessive" means "traditional" basically. Dogmatically advocating for tradition is going to come off as bull-headed, and without logical or empirical underpinnings. Nobody wants to argue with someone who is illogical and won't change their minds, so it's easier to just down vote.

origin_path 4y ago

You could ask this about any forum and it would be pertinent, or you could ask why left wing societies like the USSR, China etc always have more censorship in general than the right. Here's one theory for you to try: leftists/progressives in general are much more concerned with speech and language control than non-progressives. Why is that? Well, this ideology or philosophy or whatever you want to call it, is fundamentally about the Power of Man to reshape the world through the Power Of Ideas. Ideas in turn are objects manipulated entirely using words. So, people on the left believe very deeply that words and ideas are very powerful. Not the implementation of ideas, but the ideas themselves. That is, merely articulating an idea can itself change people and thus the world, almost immediately! They therefore elevate and protect "intellectuals", using Sowell's definition of people whose primary status in society depends on their production of ideas. People not on the left (I don't think the right is really a consistent thing worth talking about as a coherent unit), generally don't believe that to the same extent. They are much more concerned with implementations, practical experience, the evolved wisdom of traditions and so on, and may find many ideas to lack common sense, be wishful thinking, etc. What happens if you deeply believe that merely hearing words can significantly change the world, or people's beliefs about the world? Well, then controlling what other people say becomes critical. After all, if someone writes some anti-progressive ideas then other people might see them and change their beliefs away from progressivism, which would be terrible. But if you can't directly control it, then hiding the words is the next best thing. Forum downvotes are the second best option available to hide a post, abusive flagging is of course the best and so if you turn on showdead and browse https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active so you can see flagged posts you'll see that anything anti-progressive in any way gets flagged very quickly regardless of any merits the story or post may have. What can be done? Mostly, better forum software would fix this. The mechanisms for getting posts pulled or reranked need to be divorced from abstract voting, where it's never really clear what a downvote is meant to mean (mere disagreement vs "get rid of this post" for other reasons). Fully algorithmic ranking, for example, would allow heavily downvoted posts to nonetheless be at the top if they scored well on other metrics. However not many people make or run forums so such ideas don't get much experimentation.

shaburn 4y ago
I believe the hippies who caught beating for protesting for free speech in the 60's, which have been memorialized with things like the "Free Speech Cafe" at UC Berkeley, are rolling in their graves. Free speech was a formerly progressive value and authoritarian attitudes formerly more popular on the right; politically here in the US. So there is nothing categorically inherent to Free speech or authoritarianism.

20after4 4y ago

Maybe it's because progressive ideology is activist ideology and progressives like to exercise their downvote.