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Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

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Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#891

Post by dang »

freddyc wrote: post #102

The beauty (in my eyes at least) of Hacker News has always been that the most interesting/relevant stories and discussions find their way to the top of the feed. I've discovered topics and perspectives (including those I disagree with) that I otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to if it weren't for HN. I've always felt there is something of a built-in filter present, so this move feels a little forced and unnecessar…

It sounds like you may not be seeing the worst of the threads we're talking about, which tend not to remain on the front page but burn like tire fires anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#892

Post by grzm »

atmosx wrote: post #890
tripzilch wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone whose views don't align with a good chunk of HN readers (or don't align, period), I've grown to love reading about differing ideas through the eyes of others computing/tech enthusiasts. There's common ground to start from and most importantly, even if it turns out to be a viewpoint that deeply goes against my values I can still respect this fellow human because of their tech expertise. I have to admit, it…

You remind me an Aristotle quote: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. :-)

That's a great quote! Thanks for sharing! That and the oft-attributed-to-Voltaire “I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.”, though I temper the latter with a wholesome peppering of civility.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#893

Post by proactivesvcs »

If the result of political articles is a break down in polite, thoughtful discourse, such so that the site operators feel the need to take such drastic action, then we as users should also consider how we are voting comments.

I've recently realised I was upvoting comments (across various sites) that I agreed with and sometimes vice-versa, and I have started making a concrete effort to ensure that I upvote views I disagree with, if they add to the discussion.

I agree with the proposal of a one-week political moratorium here because I think that experiments can make good science. Let's also try to change the way we vote (and comment) for a week, by trying to ensure quality discourse is promoted, not just our views.

It's sometimes good for the soul to respect what you disagree with.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#894

Post by dang »

fdgdasfadsf wrote: post #667

I get what you are doing - HN has been in eternal September mode for a while now. I'm not sure it will work but I hope it does I don't want to have to find a new message board. My question is what counts as political? HN has been an important place for me to get news about censorship, surveillance and copyright issues that are just not covered by my country's press (UK). I would be sad to lose this news source.

This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics aren't going to disappear from HN.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#895

Post by inimino »

pjlegato wrote: post #388

This supposes that legimitately intellectual and civil political discourse is simply not possible, that some sort of "primitive brain" must always take over in any political discussion. This is empirically false. Hacker News generates much more calm and rational political discourse than otherwise. Of course people sometimes get angry and flame each other in political threads. That should be flagged. For that matter,…

I think it is based on empirical volume of comments and shifts in discourse, not a belief that civil political discourse is impossible a priori.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#896

Post by dang »

srpablo wrote: post #810

Many of us were skeptical when visible HN leadership expressed sentiments over and over like this: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/785769454516916228?lang=en And we, in turn, were criticized for daring to express our thoughts that, if Trump were elected, YC would play the typical role of the moneyed, comfortable, and powerful, and not use any of its significant power to work towards a better end. Anyways, cool to pu…

pg hasn't had any role on HN for a long time. Which is too bad for HN, but he definitely isn't "HN leadership". Leadership emeritus maybe.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#897

Post by ctchocula »

reflexive wrote: post #515
cloverich wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The topic doesn't matter Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks t…

I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion. Part of the beauty of H…

Compulsory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/451/

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#898

Post by dang »

t1mg wrote: post #426

HN has long gone from being dedicated just to programming and tech news. Why is it just now that you want it to be so "on-topic"? In turbulent times like these, with hate speech, racism and sexism out of the shadows and in it's highest, it is crucial to be having conversations. Being silent, burying head in the sand - not much different than siding on the side of the oppressor. Whatever news are posted here - is a re…

HN was never dedicated just to "programming and tech news"—not from the day it was named, and this has been in the first paragraph of the site guidelines since forever: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. So that's not the issue. The issue is that this site exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political battle not only threatens that but runs roughshod over it. I tried to make this clear in what I posted above.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#899

Post by stevedonovan »

Frondo wrote: post #184
djsumdog wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually haven't seen very many political stories on here. I've personally avoided most of the political crap too, so maybe I just didn't click on a lot of it (and therefore selectively un-memoryed it). I don't feel this need to be an explicit policy. I mean it gets into the entire "what is politics debate." Hackernews is about hacking (software, hardware, life), and I still see tons of that on here -- well that an…

The problem I see is that everything is politics, because politics is the air we breathe as a society. It's asking the question of how we live in community. I think what dang is after getting of is tribalism, where people show group membership with displays of insults, meme-dropping, etc. Different things, but if any group can separate tribalism from politics, through thoughtful community-making, I'd say HN can.

Very useful distinction. One mark of tribalism is a set of knee-jerk responses and stock vocabulary. If people could at least check in their tribal phrases, we would have better conversations. For example: 'racists', 'crybullies', 'deplorables' and so forth. Although left-libertarian, I don't hold with all this 'no platforming' nonsense, for instance. Leave the words behind, and find less loaded terms in an attempt at recovering public discourse

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#900

Post by dang »

jrubinovitz wrote: post #86

"Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming each other when political conflicts activate the primitive brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same time." I think this calls for more moderation so users that can speak…

It is true, and quite literally so. Our fight-or-flight threat detection systems (what I meant by 'primitive brain') get activated when these topics flare up, and when that happens people can't even see each other as human, let alone engage each other in intellectual curiosity, which is the purpose of this site.
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