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> I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the e

> I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent you're implying. I guess you just didn't read what I wrote, that is fair, I make such mistakes all the time. If you read it you would notice that the thing I said is basically exactly what you said here, and since you disagreed with that it makes sense that I thought you wanted to shut down interesting conversations. The anti-"isms" have a large mottle and bailey problem, so when people say they don't want you to ban racists or sexists they mean that they don't want to force everyone to tiptoe around sex or gender, it doesn't mean that they are fine with racism or sexism. I think the level of racism and sexism on HN is roughly optimal. It isn't enough to drive people away, but discussions are still allowed. Too much and you create a racist/sexist monoculture.

tptacek 4y ago
You will be flagged dead, rightly, and eventually banned from the site if you engage in racist and misogynist tropes on HN. The community here isn't tolerant of it in any meaningful titration. What little of it survives here is couched, hedged, and obscured to the point of plausible deniability. If you like HN's culture, as I do, you like a culture that rigorously pushes this form of "interesting" thought out.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Nothing you said there disagrees with anything I've said though. HN is much more accepting of sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting. I don't think that HN would become better if we moved more towards reddit style mono culture. For example, I would have gotten banned from most subreddits for what I said here.
  - atleastoptimal 4y ago
    > sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting My point, in my first post in this thread, was with this point, which is what I identified as what you were implying in your first post. You have a mentality that accepting racism/sexism is what causes HN to be interesting, or at least more interesting than Reddit. Your general mental frame seems to be "Reddit is always tip toeing about racism and offending people, which neuters how interesting/dynamic their discussions are, while HN explores the full range of thought and doesn't trivialize itself with those matters" You are claiming that accepting racism/sexism causes things to be more interesting, but I'd wager it's a symptom of the general difference in culture, not a cause. It's still possible to have a very interesting culture of discussion without racism or sexism, it just slightly narrows the scope of discussing not what is racist/sexist, but what simply appears racist or sexist. At what point, however, would discussing the history of development in nuclear physics, or compiler libraries, or any technical topic, be more interesting if racism/sexism were tolerated vs not tolerated? I think the few cases where things which may be considered racist/sexist being tolerated making the site more interesting are cases where HN discusses caste discrimination, or the causes of the discrepant gender ratios in the tech world, or certain aspects of human behavior. But even so, what makes those discussions interesting isn't the subset of the discussions that may be sexist or racist, but rather the general analytical and investigative culture this forum has borne out of the more libertarian edge of 2000s silicon valley and internet culture. My gripe is that a lot of people think that the capacity to tolerate sexism/racism is an inherent strength, an inability to be phased by the squeamishness and hall-monitoring style policing that affects most people, when in reality it's just their ability to justify their normal human biases with their intellect.
    - calderknight 4y ago
      Traditional "hacker" culture is anti-authoritarian. Freedom of speech is an aspect of that. And therefore the acceptance of the expression of racist, sexist, and transphobic ideas is too. It's not that "accepting racism/sexism" is a symptom or a cause of the general difference in culture. It just is the culture. A logically necessary aspect of the culture. Remove it, and you've lost the culture. And it generalises to intellectual culture as a whole. If you have a culture of loving knowledge, you simply can't have a ban on discussion of these vast swathes of serious theories about the world. The two can't go together.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        None of this is true; it's just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynist jokes say to rationalize the behavior.
        calderknight 4y ago
        My point is that freedom of speech is crucial to a great intellectual environment, and that you can't have freedom of speech and ban the discussion of vast swathes of theories about the world. You claim that this is just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynistic jokes say. That is absurd. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, John Stuart Mill, etc. - are these people all just racists and misogynists?

tptacek 4y ago

You will be flagged dead, rightly, and eventually banned from the site if you engage in racist and misogynist tropes on HN. The community here isn't tolerant of it in any meaningful titration. What little of it survives here is couched, hedged, and obscured to the point of plausible deniability. If you like HN's culture, as I do, you like a culture that rigorously pushes this form of "interesting" thought out.

Jensson 4y ago
Nothing you said there disagrees with anything I've said though. HN is much more accepting of sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting. I don't think that HN would become better if we moved more towards reddit style mono culture. For example, I would have gotten banned from most subreddits for what I said here.
- atleastoptimal 4y ago
  > sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN much more interesting My point, in my first post in this thread, was with this point, which is what I identified as what you were implying in your first post. You have a mentality that accepting racism/sexism is what causes HN to be interesting, or at least more interesting than Reddit. Your general mental frame seems to be "Reddit is always tip toeing about racism and offending people, which neuters how interesting/dynamic their discussions are, while HN explores the full range of thought and doesn't trivialize itself with those matters" You are claiming that accepting racism/sexism causes things to be more interesting, but I'd wager it's a symptom of the general difference in culture, not a cause. It's still possible to have a very interesting culture of discussion without racism or sexism, it just slightly narrows the scope of discussing not what is racist/sexist, but what simply appears racist or sexist. At what point, however, would discussing the history of development in nuclear physics, or compiler libraries, or any technical topic, be more interesting if racism/sexism were tolerated vs not tolerated? I think the few cases where things which may be considered racist/sexist being tolerated making the site more interesting are cases where HN discusses caste discrimination, or the causes of the discrepant gender ratios in the tech world, or certain aspects of human behavior. But even so, what makes those discussions interesting isn't the subset of the discussions that may be sexist or racist, but rather the general analytical and investigative culture this forum has borne out of the more libertarian edge of 2000s silicon valley and internet culture. My gripe is that a lot of people think that the capacity to tolerate sexism/racism is an inherent strength, an inability to be phased by the squeamishness and hall-monitoring style policing that affects most people, when in reality it's just their ability to justify their normal human biases with their intellect.
  - calderknight 4y ago
    Traditional "hacker" culture is anti-authoritarian. Freedom of speech is an aspect of that. And therefore the acceptance of the expression of racist, sexist, and transphobic ideas is too. It's not that "accepting racism/sexism" is a symptom or a cause of the general difference in culture. It just is the culture. A logically necessary aspect of the culture. Remove it, and you've lost the culture. And it generalises to intellectual culture as a whole. If you have a culture of loving knowledge, you simply can't have a ban on discussion of these vast swathes of serious theories about the world. The two can't go together.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      None of this is true; it's just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynist jokes say to rationalize the behavior.
      - calderknight 4y ago
        My point is that freedom of speech is crucial to a great intellectual environment, and that you can't have freedom of speech and ban the discussion of vast swathes of theories about the world. You claim that this is just something that people who enjoy racist and misogynistic jokes say. That is absurd. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, John Stuart Mill, etc. - are these people all just racists and misogynists?