How to have better arguments online • Hacker News Board

Re: How to have better arguments online

#61

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #33

Viliam1234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this instict that "silence is consent". Which makes sense in some circumstances . Like, when the whole group is paying attention to the same speaker, the speaker says something, there is an opportunity to object, and no one objects... you could conclude that either everyone agrees, or perhaps the speaker has so much social power that no one dares to object. -- So the idea is backed by either consent or po…

> People have this instinct that "silence is consent". Absolutely. Part of my impulse to speak up IRL comes from the example of the activism to tackle HIV/AIDS. Literally, silence meant death. That left a huge imprint on me. There a few times in my life when I didn't speak up, didn't act. And it fills me with shame. Examples (of failure) help: At a music festival. Mid '90s. Two white guys were harassing two black cou…

[deleted]

Re: How to have better arguments online

#62

Post by MikeSchurman » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

disabled wrote: post #52

This sort of stuff is why I refuse to participate in "traditional" social media, which is clearly unhealthy. I refuse to take my mind to bad places, where it could become unhappy. I simply cannot afford to be unhappy. If I want to want to watch YouTube videos, I search for such videos on a traditional search engine via video search and get the YouTube link. Then I do a sentiment analysis on the comments of the video.…

This is a very interesting way to use a computer. I'm currently exploring other sorts of novel(?) ways of using computers, so this intrigues me.

What tools do you use for sentiment analysis?

Re: How to have better arguments online

#63

Post by MaxBarraclough » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #59

hooande wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing gets resolved in offline arguments either. That isn't the point. The idea of a non-factual disagreement is that both sides get to make a case and state their perspective, and everyone learns from it. You self-selected to be here on hn, just like the rest of us did. In a sense, this is a bubble of a certain kind of thought and perspective. But it's a really big bubble that has some diversity. I think the key i…

> and everyone learns from it Do they? > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again Funny, I would describe HN as the same. I'm on HN because the topics interest me as a computer programmer. But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that. Some of those within the HN bubble think very highly of themselves,…

> Do they?

If the participants are doing a good job of explaining where they're coming from, then yes. If they're just talking past each other, or worse, angrily insulting each other, then of course the answer is no. At that point it's no longer really a discussion at all, it's the online equivalent of monkeys throwing filth at each other, and it debases all involved.

> > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again

> Funny, I would describe HN as the same.

Sure, some hot topics will keep coming up until the end of time. Copyleft vs permissive licences, for instance. I think that's fine though, and the ongoing discussion isn't pure retreading, it will evolve over time as the surrounding circumstances change.

A discussion forum like HackerNews shouldn't aim to be the equivalent of StackOverflow where there's a single authoritative page for each question, and duplicates are rebuked and shut down. That approach makes sense if you're trying to build a question/answer repository, but a discussion forum is something different.

> I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that

My opinion is no more well grounded than yours, but I disagree. HN discussions very often have input from experts. Anecdotally I think this happens less often on other forums. HN also has uniquely good moderation.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#64

Post by _qulr » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #63

_qulr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and everyone learns from it Do they? > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again Funny, I would describe HN as the same. I'm on HN because the topics interest me as a computer programmer. But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that. Some of those within the HN bubble think very highly of themselves,…

> Do they? If the participants are doing a good job of explaining where they're coming from, then yes. If they're just talking past each other, or worse, angrily insulting each other, then of course the answer is no. At that point it's no longer really a discussion at all, it's the online equivalent of monkeys throwing filth at each other, and it debases all involved. > > where both sides end up arguing the same phil…

> HN discussions very often have input from experts.

Who are predictably downvoted!

I think the upvoting/downvoting mechanism by itself makes discussions unnecessarily competitive and hostile. Here's a crazy alternative: make the order of comments random and rotating. Of course you could still have flagging and moderation to remove bad comments, but otherwise get rid of the voting. You could still have nested conversations (though the UI for this is really bad on HN when the conversations become long), but the comments at each level would also be randomly ordered.

The theory is that the "best" comments rise to the top and the "worst" to the bottom. In reality, that rarely seems to be the case. It's typically a combination of popularity, controversy, accidental timing (some variation on "first!"), and the existence of replies to the comment.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#65

Post by a_random_guid » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #33

Viliam1234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have this instict that "silence is consent". Which makes sense in some circumstances . Like, when the whole group is paying attention to the same speaker, the speaker says something, there is an opportunity to object, and no one objects... you could conclude that either everyone agrees, or perhaps the speaker has so much social power that no one dares to object. -- So the idea is backed by either consent or po…

> People have this instinct that "silence is consent". Absolutely. Part of my impulse to speak up IRL comes from the example of the activism to tackle HIV/AIDS. Literally, silence meant death. That left a huge imprint on me. There a few times in my life when I didn't speak up, didn't act. And it fills me with shame. Examples (of failure) help: At a music festival. Mid '90s. Two white guys were harassing two black cou…

A lot of your examples describe physically violent situations, or at least the threat of one. I also struggle with how to respond. My parents raised me to never engage in physical violence at any cost. I was the scrawny nerd in school and was bullied a lot. My parents encouraged me to talk my way out of these types of things. As an adult, my instinct is to de-escalate verbally and if that fails to withdraw. My wife on the other hand was raised in, how do I say this, a less nurturing environment. Her instinct is to respond to violence with violence. She doesn’t care if it’s a 6’5” club bouncer, she’s down to fight (she’s 5’2” and 110 lbs soaking wet) if she feels threatened physically. We had a situation a while back where a drunken, crazed woman shoved my wife while she was holding our baby. It was completely unprovoked. I got in the middle of them and tried to talk the aggressor down from the ledge. Of course, reasoning with a drunk person is basically useless. The drunken woman then shoved me. My wife knew I wouldn’t restrain the person physically so she handed the baby to me and proceeded to beat this person to the ground. I’d never seen someone get beaten up this badly. All I wanted to do was withdraw, but with this person’s emotional state there was no telling if they would follow us and try to engage physically again, potentially risking harm to our baby. I still don’t know how to reconcile what happened. Like, instinctually, I still think withdrawing was the right choice. But, conversely, there were too many unknown variables in how that could’ve worked out. The best I could do to rationalize what happened is that we all have different reactions to the fight or flight mechanism. I flee, my wife fights. Sometimes maybe there isn’t a “right” answer and it’s all on a spectrum of gray-ness. In the moments after that situation, my wife berated me for failing to engage physically in a physical altercation that threatened our child. I felt an immense amount of shame. In the days that followed, she started to understand my position and reasoning and now says I shouldn’t feel shame. Just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in struggling in how to deal with physically violent situations.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#66

Post by csours » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

superbcarrot wrote: post #5

One rule that I have is that if I need to repeat or rephrase a previous comment without adding anything new, I need to stop the conversation. 1. Comment by me. 2. Response by someone else. If my reaction to 2 is to reiterate 1, that's a sign that the conversation isn't going anywhere and it's better if I don't participate further. Also, if you're on twitter, facebook or reddit, you need to heavily restrict your input…

If you have to repeatedly do this, sure. I guess everyone has a different threshold. People with customer facing jobs have a lot of practice with this.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#67

Post by solipsism » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

disabled wrote: post #52

This sort of stuff is why I refuse to participate in "traditional" social media, which is clearly unhealthy. I refuse to take my mind to bad places, where it could become unhappy. I simply cannot afford to be unhappy. If I want to want to watch YouTube videos, I search for such videos on a traditional search engine via video search and get the YouTube link. Then I do a sentiment analysis on the comments of the video.…

the video has greater than or equal to 10% of the comments containing negative sentiment (whether it be mildly or strongly negative), then I don't watch the video

This seems a rather arbitrary limiter of the content you're willing to expose yourself to. What makes you think a high negative sentiment percentage in comments indicates a video that will make you unhappy?

A specific video's commenter base is nothing like a representative sample, that could be used to make predictions.

If I decide to watch a video, I use youtube-dl.

Why? Youtube comments aren't put in your face. It's very easy to watch a video without watching the comments.

I simply do not go to pages that take my emotions for a spin. I have found that social media always makes me unhappy, ultimately.

It's your life and I won't attempt to tell you how you should live it, like many others here will.

As for me, I think being sad and even angry is part of the human experience, part of being in touch with reality, and I wouldn't sign up for a "keep you happy 100% of the time" machine.

In a sense, I'm serving a higher (less immediate) happiness.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#68

Post by bulleyashah » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #64

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they? If the participants are doing a good job of explaining where they're coming from, then yes. If they're just talking past each other, or worse, angrily insulting each other, then of course the answer is no. At that point it's no longer really a discussion at all, it's the online equivalent of monkeys throwing filth at each other, and it debases all involved. > > where both sides end up arguing the same phil…

> HN discussions very often have input from experts. Who are predictably downvoted! I think the upvoting/downvoting mechanism by itself makes discussions unnecessarily competitive and hostile. Here's a crazy alternative: make the order of comments random and rotating. Of course you could still have flagging and moderation to remove bad comments, but otherwise get rid of the voting. You could still have nested convers…

Let me chime in on the voting issue (or I think what you mean is mob voting issue?)

Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it. But due to randomisation, it doesn't get enough traction. Note that this problem will become bigger the more top level comments you get.

This is the same problem with democracies also. Everyone gets to vote but the outcome might not be the best.But the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems.

Do you know any platforms which have successfully done the randomisation thing?

Re: How to have better arguments online

#69

Post by bulleyashah » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

bengale wrote: post #32

_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

Agreed. As for the reason I’m on the comments here, it’s because this place selects for slightly more intelligent than average commenters and a community that does a good job and maintaining a reasonable tone. Everywhere else I run a plug-in that removes all comment sections from the web and I don’t use social media.

Could you share the plugin?

Re: How to have better arguments online

#70

Post by jhardy54 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #42

_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

> Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree. You've crossed the digital divide here and misused the word "bubble" in the process. It's not anything like a "self-selected" group of like-minded people in a room. It's more like a group of people snookered into working for a pyramid scheme. At worst-- as with Qanon-- it's like a cult. And even cult de-programmers-- pe…

> Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone.

Where did you learn about this? I'd love to be better informed.