The Dying Art of Disagreement

Not exactly. HN is a community that is relatively small and has a strong culture. This is one of HN's greatest strengths in preventing the same sort of issues that occur in reddit. Larger subreddits show the breakdown of the upvoting system quite dramatically. Subreddits that become heavily polarized also suffer from this. You can see HN having the same problem in heavily contentious topics or flagged posts. This is where the left leaning majority demonstrates it's influence the most. Comment quality hits the skids right off the bat and never really recovers.

Inevitably it is the culture of the posting community and the adherence to that culture that allows for this kind of thoughtful posting to occur. Moderation is a fundamental requirement as well. I've seen many instances in large subreddits that experiment with relying on the upvote system that end in total failure. For a time the community policing works, and then the front page is dominated by low effort content and shit posting.

That's fair. Communication is hard. I edited my original comment along the lines of your suggestion. I hope that it's still clear and concise and now does a better job of not taking sides. I think sometimes I go overboard in trying to empathize with the side I disagree with and end up appearing to agree with it.

Sadly, the piece does not actually seem to model the behavior it advocates. I wish it were more well written.

It is a really hard problem space to address well. But, I think a good place to start would be to acknowledge that with 7 billion people on the planet and the existence of the internet, humanity has an unprecedentedly challenging circumstance that makes it inherently harder than ever to find common ground with people with whom we disagree. Then challenge people to up their game.

This piece is guilty of the very sin it decries: Being not genuinely respectful and empathetic to the people it criticizes. I think acknowledging the unique and extreme challenges of modern life as a starting place is the only way out.

First, admit that agreeing to disagree is fundamentally harder than it has ever been before in human history because there is so much more opportunity to interact with people whose views and choices are utterly alien. Then, invite people to rise to the occasion.

Otherwise, you are merely pissing on people and provoking them in the exact way the article describes and decries as a bad practice. Most of this article merely slams parents, educational institutions, etc for their failures. There is zero acknowledgement that these failures might amount to crumpling under extreme stress.

This is a very high-minded concept, but I just can't see how it would work in practice.

To take an example less divisive than politics, I'll use religion (yeah–go figure).

Say you're an agnostic biologist. One Sunday, you meet your new neighbour, who happens to be an Eckists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckankar#Teachings). After a few weeks of infrequent small talk, he becomes dead set on helping you find you way to God's graces through a series of 25 two-hour rituals of singing the 'Hu'. He's also really excited by having someone to share his theory of the spiritual fluid "yam" that separates the living matter from the dead, and he considers "DNA" to be a hoax perpetrated by the Christadelphian Conspiracy.

You make what you believe is a very good case against any God existing, give an even better overview of the basics of molecular biology, and point out some of the most glaring inconsistencies in his theory of life.

But he comes back at you with the full force of someone spending about 500% as much time thinking and reading about religion and "yam" than you do. He always has an argument, and sometimes it takes a sleepless night to figure out where his argument actually breaks down.

Through no fault of yours, his internet connection starts developing the ugly habit of showing rather immoral photos of all genders where he would usually expect to see completely wholesome photos of the Eckankars' last Day of Celebrating Celibacy and Celery. He finally moves out.

You new neighbour is Frances. He is excited to tell you everything about his Christadelphian faith, and how the walnut is actually the most intelligent brain on the planet. He also has all the answers.

Now imagine there's an endless supply of these people, and they start showing up at work, starting to make legislation to cut your funding, and march across campus with their "Torches for the Glory of Walnut Yam". Do you actually belief your study of mitochondrial diseases will be improved by debating every single one of them? Remember: they don't operate by your standard of reasoning: whenever you find the missing link between hamster and opossum, they just see it as two new missing links in the chain of evolution.

Certain jobs involve making certain kinds of judgement calls. Acting like the person fulfilling the role is unquestionably immoral and at fault for the fact that people die when nations have conflicts is, at best, naïve.

I was a hippie tree hugger type. I got married at age 19 to another 19 year old. Being a soldier was his dream career, in part because he was very patriotic and loved his country. My twenties were spent being genuinely surprised that some soldiers go to church and they are not all bloodthirsty villains. In fact, most of them fervently want war to not happen because their own lives are at stake.

I am still kind of a hippie tree hugger type. But, I am a pro military hippie these days. "A man of peace must be strong." If you think America would be a kinder gentler nation if we got rid of our military forces entirely, think again. The US would cease to exist. It would be promptly invaded and taken over.

There is a lot of not nice stuff that happens in the world. "Freedom for all" gets paid for in part with the blood of patriots. That is an unfortunate reality.