Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Too many people have peed in the pool

stephenfry.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 555 posts

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#371

Post by dang »

yorwba wrote: post #311
effie wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't disagree with someone without silencing them on HN This bothers me too. I've encountered quite a few posts that were unreadable. Why? Was it because they violated some rule, or was it because they were unpopular opinion? I have no way to know. This is the largest problem with HN I can see.

> I've encountered quite a few posts that were unreadable. You mean they were so faded that the text merged with the background? Highlighting it with the mouse usually works for me in this case.

Or just click on the timestamp to go to the comment's own page, and then the fading should be turned off.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#372

Post by VonGuard »

Sad to say, but humans have been bred over millennia to be clannish, violent, and prone to witch hunts. Quite literally, all of European history is about taking the peasants off to murder other people, and bringing back only the strongest ones who survived the battle to spread their seed to the next generation. The ones in the aristocracy interbred to the point of serious genetic flaws p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_intermarriage ]. So, choose your side: the ones born from the strongest, heartiest fighters, or the ones produced by many generations of selective in-breeding... At least, this is the story for us white folks....

Humans are just irrational, flawed, and prone to freak out. And I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords...

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#373

Post by kefka »

ptaipale wrote: post #368
kefka wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "defending family values" Which is what I hear exclusively regarding Christian activists. They disregard any non-Christians whom have families, or of other value systems.

Yes, that's one funny name for a thing. Another is "social justice" as in SJW.

Which means "twitter/Fb hate". Or more succinct, "social" justice is literally mob justice.

We had mobs before. They hung black people and wore funny hats. Now they don't care what color you are, wear guy fawkes masks, and make you lose your job and residence. Economic murder, rather than real murder.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#374

Post by hueving »

skybrian wrote: post #337
hueving wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your defending the problem we have now. People are encouraged to get into feedback loops and not ever see anything that disagrees with them. If you're a hunter or animal rights activist, it would be much better for you to be reminded that there are people out there that disagree with you.

Better for whom? I think that's condescending. People already know that some forums only contain like-minded people - that's the point! Connecting with like-minded people about some specialized interest is one of the great advantages of the Internet. You can get valuable things out of it, without being under any illusion that you're talking with a diverse crowd. Maybe the issue is that we don't have enough forums for…

If the average person is completely shielded from any kind of discourse surrounding their beliefs, society will suffer. Echo chambers are the main reason politics in the US have become a complete disaster. When you hear the other side's point of view presented by your side, it's going to be biased and will just reinforce your own beliefs.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#375

Post by [deleted] »

bricemo wrote: post #111

There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media. Smithsonian had a good short article on it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-go... Research shows that amaz…

[deleted]

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#376

Post by smithkl42 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #226
smithkl42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.

Interesting. I'm not sure I can relate, though. I'd rather listen to Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins talk about evolution and atheism than someone of average intelligence.

On certain topics, certainly. Listening to me talk about particle physics would do neither of us any good. That's why I constrained my answer to politics and morality (i.e., building the sort of society and becoming the sort of person that tends towards justice). Valuable opinions in those areas have much more to do with what has sometimes been called "practical intelligence", i.e., the ability to sift good ideas from bad using a wide range of personal experiences and a character intentionally shaped in response to those experiences. I suspect raw intelligence generally helps in that process, but it may also hurt, and it's by no means the most important factor.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#377

Post by Loughla »

potatolicious wrote: post #327
lmm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Twitter by its very nature promotes that kind of thing. The 140-character limit inherently pushes towards zingers and outrage. Nuance is stripped away by the medium.

Exactly - it's too easy to say that Twitter is simply a reflection of society itself, technology is not a completely neutral pass-through filter. The 140-character limit strips all nuance out of conversation, so it's no surprise that when it comes to controversial topics everyone is an asshole. It turns out we need more than 140 chars when talking about complicated, important topics. More than that, Twitter's choice…

Honest question here - if you believe the issue is that information is too readily available, what is the solution to avoid brigading and the like? Segregating spaces? Safe speech spaces?

Pandora's box has been opened in social media and the internet, and it's not going to close again.

I believe what we're seeing is the happy crossroads of cavemen tribal thought that we got so used to before instant communication, and the, in my opinion inevitable, world-culture many years in the future.

I just don't buy that the issue is that too-much information is available. The issue is that taking offence to information is just so much en vogue right now for exactly the reasons you state. We used to only be able to pile on our family and friends. And to do that we had to really watch what we said, or else they'd be pissed at us for no good reason.

Now that communication is across the world, it just doesn't matter anymore to the individual (especially those who were raised to be self-centered, as I would argue we are currently being raised). So, I can threaten you with a bombing, because I'll never actually meet you. So it doesn't really matter to me.

Combine that with the NEED FOR FAME that we are fed by media. Everyone wants to go viral. Everyone wants to be part of something famous. Everyone wants to be on the cutting edge of the next big movement. So, we yell and we kick and we scream and we insult and we don't think about consequences. Because something new will be along in the next ten minutes; so there are no consequences.

I love watching humans figure out new technology. It seems like we never really do it that well. I'm mostly just pissed that I was born too early for what we know should be possible, but can't figure out how to make happen.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#378

Post by csixty4 »

Kiro wrote: post #43
moron4hire wrote: post #31

The problem isn't that this is a Twitter problem. It's that this is a cultural problem. People kinda suck. People kinda suck a lot. I was having a conversation with a friend at lunch, when I started putting ketchup on my hotdog. He looked at me and incredulously questioned, "really? What are you, like, 8 years old?" I had never even heard of the idea that "only children put ketchup on a hotdog." Yet here was someone…

Where are you from? I'm very surprised anyone would even consider eating hotdog without ketchup so it must be a cultural thing.

In Chicago, you're lucky they don't ban you from setting foot in the Loop for putting ketchup on a hot dog. http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-chicago-ketchup-hot-...

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#379

Post by teach »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #124

This is true of almost any internet forum today. Every comment you make is meticulously deconstructed in an effort to find some kind of "gotcha". Well, either that or it's completely ignored. And god forbid you have an opinion on any subject in which you don't hold a doctorate degree. You can't even tell people "it's alright to eat eggs" without the conversation devolving into a back-and-forth war of citations.

My wife does have a doctorate degree and you still get the back-and-forth of citations.

Because she has a PhD in nutrition (really!) I can confirm that, yes, it is okay to eat eggs. (Though I'd shoot for organic and cage-free, personally.)

But I still get arguments/pushback. Guh.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#380

Post by bitwize »

reitanqild wrote: post #270
emp_zealoth wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I personally think it is even more insidious. When I'm on facebook and see some extreme rightwing nutjob upvote ring I see what's going on On HN on a lot of downvoted commets it makes sense, they are poorly written and full of bs. But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even d…

> But every time there is a little more political and/or contentious issue on all I see is Political Correctness police mercilessly downvoting and flagkillig anything that dares to even doubt. Yes. > It is insidious and ironically has exactly the oposite effect (look:most of europe extreme right rise in popularity) Let me add a little detail here for non-Europeans. "Far right" in some western European countries has c…

It so happens that Western Europe has settled on a political system or set of systems which aren't perfect, but basically work well for everybody. Europeans have much less "stuff" than Americans, but when it comes to the basics -- health, education, public infrastructure, in some cases even housing -- everybody, rich and poor, has more or less equal access.

America, by contrast, has got its shit so not in one sock that despite vast increases in productivity, the vast bulk of the excess wealth has gone to the 1%, with the remaining classes not much better off than they were 30 or 40 years ago. And how healthy you can expect to be is positively correlated with how rich you are.

So when people say that America is a two party system: a right-wing corporatist party and a far-right-wing corporatist party, they're not blowing smoke. They're reckoning from a different origin than you. Apparently, relative to your political origin, sane policies are considered "way left and politically correct".

Post reply on HN