
Show HN: A Chrome extension to block users on Hacker News - morgante
https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist
======
gravypod
It's a funny trend in recent years that people are so offended by the opinions
and ideas of others that they cannot bare to expose themselves to anything
that person has to say.

Discourse and logical thinking are the basis of modern society and all of it's
afforded comforts. If the inventors of the past had coddled themselves in a
hugbox for their entire lives we would still be saying things along the lines
of "A train can never go more than 10 miles an hour", "there wont be a market
for more than 10 computers in the world", and "you wont ever need more than
64k of ram" because there would have been no one who would have heard--or even
said for that matter--"No!"

If someone disagrees with you, just explain your points rationally and calmly.
If it something you are passionate about, like the OP has pointed out in
[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/), then isn't it worth the 15
minutes it will take to explain your viewpoint as I am doing here?

~~~
untog
It's a funny trend in recent years that people are entitled enough to believe
that their opinion is important enough that everyone has to read it.

No-one is stopping HN users from commenting, they're just allowing themselves
the opportunity to easily ignore it. I don't see anything wrong with that. Why
is someone obliged to spend 15 minutes of their time indulging you?

~~~
gravypod
Yes, it is the duty of every thinking person on this planet to examine
viewpoints of others.

A famous Aristotle quote that you may not have heard of: "It is the mark of an
educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

If you disagree, that is fine! No one is saying you must agree with everyone,
just endorse the possibility they are presenting and think reasonably about
the evidence they provide to support their claims. Who knows, they might be
right.

Do you think Roman forums would have yielded the intellectual progress they
where responsible for if people just ignored everyone they didn't agree with
100% of the time?

~~~
drdeca
To consider alternate/opposing viewpoints, perhaps.

But there are many viewpoints, and to consider all of them would take an
excessive amount of time.

As such, it seems there may be uses in narrowing down the ones to consider in
some way.

One option I've considered would be to focus on the boundary of what
viewpoints one considers to be plausible.

So, in each "direction", the viewpoint that, of all the ones which seem
implausible, seems the least implausible, and also the viewpoint that, of all
the ones which seem plausible, seems the least plausible.

Another idea might be, if one has already considered a viewpoint, and the
viewpoint isn't changing, there might cease to be much use in considering it
further (suppose, for example, that one can pass an ideological turing test of
it with flying colors). Does it not seem implausible that it might not be
worth spending more time on exposing oneself to that viewpoint?

After all, I doubt you believe that you have an obligation to consider the
viewpoints of off brand viagra sellers whenever you receive spam in your
inbox.

~~~
gravypod
If you have somehow proven to yourself that something is better or worse than
the standard practice, is it not in your best interest to share such an
insight with everyone else?

Take, for example, doctors washing their hands. Once, it was crazy take to
mandate this. Literally, Semmelweis was driven crazy from proposing this and
becoming ostracized. Read the NPR story "The Doctor Who Championed Hand-
Washing And Briefly Saved Lives", it will give some insights into this.

If you limit things you expose yourself as what you see is "correct" then you
will never come to learn something new.

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te_platt
Well, I guess that's one way. Wouldn't it be easier to just not get too worked
up about other people's comments?

~~~
morgante
It's mostly to avoid getting dragged into pointless arguments:
[https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

~~~
pdeuchler
For those with the self control of a 5 year old? Just don't reply?

Wait, shit...

~~~
justboxing
lol.

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forgotmypassw
Pretty neat, just yesterday I was wishing something like that existed, any
chance for a Firefox port?

~~~
morgante
I don't have any experience with writing Firefox plugins, but a port should be
pretty easy to implement.

All the logic is included in a simple JS file:
[https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist/blob/master/src/inj...](https://github.com/morgante/hn_blocklist/blob/master/src/inject.js)

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PopeOfNope
It's an interesting approach at controlling the signal to noise ratio.
Unfortunately, my experiments with that sort of thing over at reddit show me
that blocking some people and "following" others isn't all that effective.
People are dynamic. They have hot days and cold days, interesting days and not
so interesting days. I've started looking into machine learning to see if I
can train it to recognize what I consider a "good" post based on the word
content of the post. I haven't gotten it to work yet. :P

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NeutronBoy
Nice extension, and I use something similar on Reddit. However, I feel on HN
(given the tighter moderation standards), if a user comments and contributes
to the discussion there shouldn't be a need to block them. If a comment is
_not_ contributing to the discussion, then flag it!

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pmelendez
I would prefer an extension to follow users rather than block them.

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VLM
Could be (mis)used for political censorship, the friend of my enemy is my
enemy etc. Looking at recent events WRT OSCON blocking on twitter etc.

