
The Importance of Having Your Pain Be Legible - plattegrond
https://status451.com/2018/07/01/the-importance-of-having-your-pain-be-legible/
======
maldusiecle
Leaving aside how poorly written this is ("spergonaut"? really?), I don't
really see its claims about flagging borne out. Heavily political articles are
often flagged regardless of which side of the aisle they come from. Certainly
in the case of articles like this, which are more or less the definition of
"more heat than light."

~~~
dqv
>I don't really see its claims about flagging borne out

I think the posts disappear from the frontpage when they get flagged, so it's
hard to verify. But I've seen it. I'll come to discussion that I think are
interesting and reload an hour or so later and find it's been flagged.

------
pnathan
I would agree that there exists a distinct and mostly disjoint set of people:
flaggers vs debaters, to use the OP's terminology. I don't see that tension
going away. It's certainly a long-standing tension online.

I disagree fairly comprehensively with everything after that first point, and
I'll leave it at that to avoid the flamewar. :-)

------
lcuff
The notion that affective empathy is present in any complete way in text-only
communication is misguided at best. Affective empathy gets communicated f2f
via voice quality, body posture, tonus et al. The lack of a medium for
affective information is a primary reason why text-only discussions go off the
rails so quickly.

~~~
s-shellfish
> The lack of a medium for affective information is a primary reason why text-
> only discussions go off the rails so quickly.

I don't agree with that. As someone who has communicated primarily online
since childhood, I feel as though I am much more attenuated to some group of
people's emotional state through text, whereas in person, I feel like my
emotions are obvious to everyone besides me, which makes them feel like they
are much more able to be subject to manipulation. I as well feel as though my
own 'truthful understanding' is concrete in real life, but online, it is
easily manipulated in the attempt to see eye to eye.

Style develops - humor, sensitivity, all this is information depending on who
you associate with and whether you are reflective of another intuitively, or
whether it requires gradual understanding and a developed awareness /
sensitivity, coupled together with time and observation.

I find that text discussions go off the rails because people aren't trying to
see eye to eye. They either latch onto a specific point (irony) or a key
phrase that doesn't jive appropriately with their perspective, and that
constructs the direction of the discussion. People can have whole
conversations without actually understanding another, and you can actually
examine these arguments and decompose them into parts that once again, become
mostly linear.

Part of that I think is because, a conversation sequence can actually be
composed of many people, which can make it seem like a dialogue, but a
dialogue it is often not. This can also happen to individuals, I can see in
myself, I consistently contradict myself in a most convoluted way, through the
attempt to balance multiple perspectives of awareness - perhaps in the attempt
to coalesce those perspectives into some understanding that resonates as true
to myself. But I find that to be a problem with no solution, because as soon
as resonance seems to be found, the understanding escapes me through
repetition - a sort of semantic satiation of concepts. So care must be taken.

The problems(?) of life.

~~~
klodolph
I'm trying to understand the first part of your argument... it sounds like you
are saying that it is much easier to understand people's emotions face to
face, even _too_ easy, but this is exactly what the parent comment was
claiming with the term "affective empathy" (although it's worth discussing the
difference between cognitive and affective empathy).

> They either latch onto a specific point (irony) or a key phrase that doesn't
> jive appropriately with their perspective, and that constructs the direction
> of the discussion.

This is a good way of putting it. If you are trying to make some kind of point
or to say something, then you don't want me to mechanically react to some word
you used or a particular choice of phrasing or example. What you do want is
for me to:

1\. Understand what you are trying to communicate, what you had in mind rather
than the particulars of how you express it, and

2\. React appropriately.

This is not too far from a textbook definition of "affective empathy".

I'm sorry to hear that you feel you are manipulated in face-to-face
discussions. For a long time I tried to maintain a neutral affect to avoid
similar kinds of things. These days I consider a consistently neutral affect
in the face of changing internal emotional states to be more of a liability
and an unhealthy habit than anything else. The reason that we express our
emotions so strongly in our body language is because our ancestors that did so
were more likely to survive than our ancestors that didn't, in spite of the
fact that this made them easier to manipulate. The fact that you feel like
this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may either be a completely rational
response to an unhealthy environment or a maladaptive response to a normal
environment.

~~~
s-shellfish
> The fact that you feel like this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may
> either be a completely rational response to an unhealthy environment or a
> maladaptive response to a normal environment.

Whether I have PTSD or aspergers, etc whatever. This is always a hard problem
to know for certain, the things that keep me grounded are 'maintain interest
in pure mathematics and computation' and 'be aware of reality as reality
actually is'. Not getting caught up in the imagination of the way things could
get interpreted and what that implies as to how things can unfold. Present
minded.

> What you do want is for me to:

I believe you have the right idea in general, but my advice from experience
is, don't get caught up in the minutia of conversation having to be perfect.
There is no perfect so long as there are more things to discover and know. I'm
not sure why most people come onto hacker news, but I mainly come here to
learn. I find myself getting pulled into conversations of which I believe I
have some wisdom about (or perhaps I'm just humoring myself), sometimes it
hurts, sometimes it helps. On the whole though, I work to stay positive,
progress oriented, stuff, life, ebbs and flows. Shrug.

------
ggm
It shouldn't need to be said that the distinction between the community of
use, (and how users consent to be engaged) and the provider of the forum, (and
how they consent to have the forum used) is always present.

HN is not present in my mind, when I write things here. What people do,
flagging me up or down, voting, responding, ignoring, is what I consider to be
community engagement.

If somebody _working_ (paid or unpaid) in a meta-god-like state in HN
technology can remove me, or my writing, thats distinct from the disdain
others have for what I chose to say.

I take the community rebukes as I find them. Sometimes, they hurt, sometimes,
they feel valid. Sometimes, they hurt because they are valid.

Shadowbanning is possibly kinder? But none the less, something has to be done
to keep a tone. Thats what editorial is.

------
zygotic12
Fucking chill the lot of you.

Learn from people that have had a real fight.
[https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1...](https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3536197)

------
tempestn
I was actually just thinking earlier today that HN's great strength is its
focus on quality of discourse, and it would be great if it leaned into that
even more. I would love if it were made extremely clear at signup and whenever
possible afterward guidelines such as,

1) Comments should be well thought-out, politely written, and supported by
facts 2) Down-votes should be used for comments that are uncivil or
unproductive; even if you disagree with the point made, a comment has value if
a good-faith effort has been made to engage in constructive conversation.

These are similar to the existing guidelines—and I'm sure they could be
fleshed out and worded better—but I feel the site would really benefit from
even more emphasis on points like these. At signup, and then at convenient
parts later on—when the user's karma unlocks the downvote capability for
instance. There could even be a sort of "self-moderation" triggered by things
like excessive down-voting or flagging, where it would remind the user of the
guidelines and show them several of their votes, then just ask them to review
and make sure they're using the buttons appropriately. Another possibility
would be, whenever a user down-votes, require them to choose one of several
categories of justification, like with a flag. That would quickly make it
clear that the down-vote is for poor comments, rather than ones you personally
disagree with. It might even be useful to have a similar—but probably
optional—choice for up-votes; one nice options would be something like, "I
disagree with this, but it's well argued." That kind of thing would give the
ranking algorithms more variables to play with, hopefully improving results
over time. Those are just some possibilities, and I'm sure there are many
other options including by moderators when necessary.

The main thing though would be to make the guidelines very clear. My hope
would be that a focus on quality of discourse, rather than on the types of
content that are allowed, would allow more controversial topics to be
discussed productively, as well as prevent unpopular opinions (when presented
productively) from being drowned out. Ideally, the specific "off-topic"
subjects could even be removed from the guidelines, since there are
intellectually interesting discussions to be had on many different topics. Of
course we wouldn't want to be overwhelmed with political topics to the extent
that nothing else makes it to the homepage, but if that were to happen perhaps
a dedicated subsection could be used, rather than an outright ban. Perhaps
that would be preferable regardless, since many HN'ers come here to enjoy
stimulating content and discussion outside strongly polarizing topics.
Regardless though, I feel the site should double down on its focus on
rationality and civility, and take every opportunity to influence new and
existing users in that direction.

------
quxbar
This guy seems to veer out of the way of the natural conclusion near the end:

> The term “woman-child” lacks teeth, because damseling and self-
> infantilization are acceptable for women.

He seems to think that the fact that women are infantilized is a bonus, as if
the 'pity points' accrued are the utility function of the game being played.
This completely ignores the -actual advantages- that have been accruing for
thousands of years from -massive, systemic violence-.

The author seems to have trouble realizing just how pervasive the misogyny
goes. It's not some tit-for-tat twitter debate about who pays for dinner (this
is what PUA forums try to pretend). The attempt is to pull ourselves out of
the hole of human ignorance, despite our cultural foundations being pretty
incredibly problematic. Taking a look at the history of the 'west' makes it
pretty clear:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women)

~~~
haberman
75% of women survived the Titanic, compared with 19% of men.
([http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html](http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html))

At the massacre of Katyn, an estimated ~22,000 men and exactly 1 woman were
executed by the Soviets.

The West has undeniably patriarchal elements of its history. But trying to
spin this into a narrative of pervasive misogyny ignores the very real value
that society places on the well-being of women. Even in your own example, the
men angrily avenge the treatment of the women by outsiders.

~~~
fossuser
I'd guess this has something to do with if a bunch of men die in the tribe it
doesn't matter too much, but if a bunch of the women die in the tribe that's
the end of the tribe.

Men are pretty expendable when it comes to what's required to reproduce - that
mixed with fighting for status/high risk behavior being attractive probably
complicates things.

~~~
belorn
The idea that its a privilege to be viewed as "pretty expendable" is to me a
rather odd. In any war where a minority group is used as an expendable meat
shield, I have never seen anyone argue that its proof that that minority group
holds power and carries "-actual advantages-" in society. In contrast, when
some individuals of a category holds power while others are viewed as
expendable it indicate that that categorization (ie, this one based on being
male) is a poor predictor for privilege.

~~~
fossuser
That isn’t my view?

I just suspect it’s a component of why cultures tend to protect women in
disasters.

------
gue5t
Glad to be able to upvote an article like this.

The prevalence of articles about things that aren't software or hardware
hacking, combined with the site's increased popularity lowering the bar for
technical content to be considered worthwhile, and its occupancy of a critical
position in the cultural namespace ("hacker news" is a really good name but
not descriptive of the actual focus of the site--the hacker ethic is
anticapitalist rather than neoliberal), make HN a really tragic institution
these days.

~~~
badcede
"Glad to be able to upvote an article like this."

"The prevalence of articles about things that aren't software or hardware
hacking"

"tragic"

~~~
jschwartzi
What's your point?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I think he is saying that he original comment is hypocritical.

The person is glad to upvote _this_ particle non technical article.

But they think its _tragic_ that non technical articles are bring down the
quality of the site.

~~~
gue5t
Yep. I think the site is in a tragic place, but it's not for a lack of
technical articles (or I'd submit them) but instead for cultural reasons (the
majority of the userbase doesn't want HN to be a purely technical forum).
Changing the culture has to be done via concerted effort in that direction,
not by simply voting for the things I want to see in the end. Second-order
effects and so on.

~~~
dang
HN has never been a purely technical forum. Its DNA is in the overlap between
"anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity" and "anything that good
hackers would find interesting":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
The word 'anything' appears twice in the 'On-Topic' section. HN's early years
amounted to "anything that pg would find interesting", and he finds a lot of
things interesting. So when I read your comment, what I hear is that HN is
staying true to its original mission. That doesn't seem like a tragic place
for the site, nor a new one.

For example, people sometimes have the perception that HN has grown more
political over time. The opposite is true, as I tried to show here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869).
Such perceptions are externalities that exist for other reasons.

