How to Disagree

There is an exceptionally large gap between not being able to respond, and not thinking it's a good use of one's time.

My experience is that expressing contrary opinions on HN, even well-reasoned and considered ones, is a recipe for getting [dead]'d. As such, many wise people don't bother.

I think it helps to realize it is endemic to the culture and to understand why.

My original introduction to online communities was with parenting/homeschooling forums for folks with "gifted" kids. The members were generally bright and many of them well educated. The initial environment was pretty ugly, in spite of the intent that these were supposed to be "support" groups.

I eventually concluded that most of the members were used to being the smartest person in the room and had the routine experience that if someone didn't agree with them, it was because they didn't understand it. I felt it was the first time most of these people were exposed to a culture of intellectual equals where other people who disagreed with them had valid reasons for seeing it differently. I felt that we had no choice but to break new ground in order to get past the tendency for people to be obnoxious and arrogant.

Hacker News appears to have a similar situation. It is somewhat compounded by the fact that it is the most international forum I have participated in. This means people from very different cultures and very different life experience are interacting. This inevitably leads to inaccurate interpretations. I come from a multi-cultural background, so I tend to overlook foreign accents and grammatical errors to a greater degree than most bright, well-educated individuals. I operate on the rule of thumb that "They are speaking English way better than I would be able to speak their native language". I know a smattering of German and French, a smidgen of Spanish, and a few words of Russian. I'm not fluent in any of them. So I start with giving foreigners a pass on grammatical errors or oddities of wording. I don't see it as any indication of lack of intelligence. Grammar and spelling are often nit-picked here and I occasionally do it myself. I try hard to not come across as obnoxious. I sometimes genuinely was not sure what they were saying because of a misspelled word (that seems to trip me up more than grammar, which is mentally easier for me to account for, presumably because I grew up in a bilingual home). In some ways, I like the fact that people here will nit-pick grammar and spelling and such but I really hate it when it is done in a very obnoxious manner. I have seen instances where someone was railing about something of that sort and it just made me feel like "Oh, grammar and spelling are things you think are critically important to public appearances but manners are not??"

This dynamic -- of everyone in the room being confident they are Right, by god! -- was a problem within my own family (with my marriage and my kids). After about 16 1/2 years of marriage, my then husband bought me a t-shirt that said "I'm always RIGHT (except when I'm wrong)". It was something I said a lot at home and I think it was something of an admission on his part that perhaps he shouldn't argue with me so much, perhaps he should try harder to talk to me instead. (The constant arguing was one of the things that contributed to the demise of the marriage.) I try really hard to talk with people online rather than argue, even if I don't agree with them.

If chosen, one can make a binding contract that trades time for something. For example, I could agree to protect a friend for the rest of this life and of the next we meet for something. Gurus make similar agreements about being a teacher as well. Usually a guru agreement is binding until otherwise broken. And life usually puts us back in contact, even in other lives. Now, our relationship can (and usually does) change, but we will almost always meet them.

The show and movie Avatar the Last Airbender is very similar how the Dalai Lama is actually chosen. In the Dalai Lama's case, they are shown about a hundred objects, 3 of which belong to the last reincarnation. The TV show shows 4 objects that respond unnaturally (the 4 being representatives of wind/water/fire/earth). It is also in the Dalai Lama's case that he is also to choose people who was in his cabinet prior to his reincarnation, as there is only a few years between the death and life. This step is also proof of who he is. The search usually goes on 2 weeks after his death, in which the world is searched for his new incarnation. And in the case of the Dalai Lama, what makes his so important is that he is seen as the Avatar of Chenrezig (the Patron God of Tibet).