Too many people have peed in the pool • Hacker News Board

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#531

Post by _0ffh » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #485

kedean wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the occasional disagreement, it's when communities raid each other, since people are much more brazen online than in person. In person, thousands of atheists would never march into a church during mass and start berating members for their beliefs, but that's very common in unmoderated communities. Moderation solves this issue when you can shard your communities (see reddit), but Twitter is just a gl…

"communities raid each other" I love that image and it makes a clear picture for me. Playing on a PvP server of WoW before any expansions there was no formal PvP game. What spontaneously happened though was the raiding and taking over of the other factions town. Making a mess and disrupting otherwise normal play until everyone got tired and went to sleep. It feels so much more intense (real?) in the social media worl…

Back in the times of the meow wars ( http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/_/meow_wars.html ) people were at least aware of exactly what they were doing...

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#532

Post by bzbarsky » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 2:48 PM UTC

carsongross wrote: post #15

I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on. It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalit…

The thing is, the groups of people that have irreconcilable diferences on gun ownership are not the same as the groups of people that have irreconcilable differences on free speech. So now you're talking at least 4 separate countries, right? But worse yet, the people involved don't necessarily admit to themselves what their opinions on free speech are, so they wouldn't necessarily self-segregate properly...

Add to that that there is significant geographical intermixing, and the multistate solution to these problems starts to look like the ethnic situation in the Balkans has at some points: several states with totalitarianisms of some ideology (ethnicity in the case of the Balkans) but also a significant minority of dissenters who are supported by neighboring states. It's not really that happy a situation.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#533

Post by richmarr » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #267

richmarr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. The idea of secession in that instance kinda scares me because it leaves you with a new foriegn nation on your doorstep with the exact same set of 'irreconcilable' differences and nobody to moderate them. Seemingly irreconcilable differences (e.g. US rep/dem, Israel/Palestine) are created by the narratives we're fed & let fester. Sure, n…

Personally I don't think there's any such thing as 'irreconcilable differences'. How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women? Should we "admit" that our perspective that women should be allowed to go outside with their faces uncovered is possibly wrong?

> How would you reconcile the differences between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam regarding the rights of women?

Your comment reads like you disagree and are raising a counter-example, but the existence of a difference doesn't make that difference irreconcilable.

> Should we "admit" that our perspective... is possibly wrong?

Fundamentalist Islam in the 20th & 21st century seems (as far as I've read) to be largely a reaction against Western powers interference, or to use a tired term 'imperialism', with the natural evolution of Middle East nations... toppling democracies, installing dictators, etc.

To get away from the influences of perceivedly 'evil' Western interference fundamentalists took Islam all the way back to the 7th century. In that context it's hard to see how a Westerner arguing that their views on women are "wrong" is going to bother them much; the opposite perhaps. You're arguing against the narrative.

Should we admit that we're wrong about feminism? No, I think that'd be both dishonest and counter-productive. Should we admit that we have been wrong in the past about other important things? Maybe, perhaps that'd help undermine the imperialism narrative.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#534

Post by mcv » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

I'm not active on twitter, but from what I've seen, particularly in the aftermath of GamerGate, is that it's a putrid mess of hatred, threats, and bigotry. The problem doesn't so much seem to be that people are defending others, but that they are attacking them.

I never really saw the point, but it in the past few years it has seemed even more pointless. You just can't have a good, nuanced conversation in 140 characters. You can only shout one-liners and threats. It's what the medium seems designed for.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#535

Post by mcv » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

foxylad wrote: post #440

derefr wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community. Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it? (Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged at the community—or its management—and that'd…

> I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. One of the reasons I like HN is that outrage is discouraged.

There's plenty of topics here that are worthy of outrage and posted and discussed exactly for that reason. Fortunately people are civilized enough not to stoop to insults and threats. Those are the real problems. Twitter has no method to address insults and threats, and that's its ruin.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#536

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

iBzOtaku wrote: post #520

potatolicious wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is really Twitter's saving grace, and also why as much as it is a raging dumpster fire, it is still valuable. Facebook curbs abuse by basically making sure no one can bug you unless you opt-in to it (friending them), and limiting how viral your posts can go. The flip side of this is that this is a really poor way to talk to people you don't already know. Twitter is the complete opposite - complete stranger…

> the two big reasons why Twitter succeeds (vast reach and free interjection) is precisely why it's also a shithole The same could be said for 4chan and it's still here after 15 years and shows no signs of going away. Can't we assume that twitter will continue to exist as it is right now? But then again, twitter and 4chan are different platforms. People get hurt on twitter and by 4chan. I guess twitter is going to be…

[deleted]

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#537

Post by striking » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

baltar wrote: post #511

striking wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you'll get your wish soon enough, at least with respects to Twitter. But how clean is clean enough?

Simple: no racism, sexism or any other de-humanizing speech based on identity is "clean enough".

How would you define the line between race discussion and racism? Or between meaningful discourse about gender/sex and sexism?

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#538

Post by tormeh » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #408

hueving wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As evidence of this, think of how many people think that $other_party wants to "destroy America" in some form. Cue (and possibly queue) commenters saying "but $x really does want that!" I've found that people who claim to know the other side's motivations are projecting for the most part. I catch myself doing it too. Being more aware of bias does not make one less susceptible to it, unfortunately. If anything, it ten…

I've realized that Americans are uniquely patriotic, but to wildly different countries whose only common trait are their borders.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#539

Post by tormeh » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #408

hueving wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As evidence of this, think of how many people think that $other_party wants to "destroy America" in some form. Cue (and possibly queue) commenters saying "but $x really does want that!" I've found that people who claim to know the other side's motivations are projecting for the most part. I catch myself doing it too. Being more aware of bias does not make one less susceptible to it, unfortunately. If anything, it ten…

I've realized that Americans are uniquely patriotic, but to wildly different countries whose only common trait are their borders.

Re: Too many people have peed in the pool

#540

Post by tormeh » Tue, Feb 16, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #266

toomuchtodo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether its perceived or not, thats how its playing out on a macro scale.

Really? Care to back that up with actual evidence?

Goddammit. Seriously. It's well-known that all kinds of intelligence are correlated, at least at the lower end. There is such a thing as a benchmark of the brain that gives a one-dimensional result that tells us a something significant about that person. You're just being touchy-feely superstitious (which is way better than the scared-of-different kind of superstitious, but still).