Some people call it conditioning, others call it education. Societies seem to work better when people don't bash each others heads in all the time, so we try to teach our children that violence is not okay. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
It seems pretty reasonable to me too. Indeed, education is supposed to enlighten you to see others viewpoints. Why do we continue to have problems meeting eye to eye with others' ideas then?
Education is as much to create willing and accepting members of a society, however unjust that happens to be, as to educate. What else is a pledge of allegiance?
If you condition/educate away the social acceptance of demonstrations or even riot then one of the checks and balances of a society is removed. When the reaction comes it's likely to be a more extreme one, or if enough checks and balances are removed, straight to civil war or coup.
I am aware you feel these comments are abusive. But you are acting so cartoonishly evil in this instance – banning a 12-year member of HN for 3 months solely for asking why he was rate limited – that someone needs to stand up to you.
It’s true that I demanded an answer from you. But that was because your original decision to issue a rate limit was an overreaction. My comments in that thread were not significantly different from the various other discussions that people have on a daily basis about social issues.
You feel that it’s abusive to highlight this decision and continue to call attention to it. I feel it’s the only recourse left. I have tried for a very, very long time to come to some kind of understanding with you.
But the reason I’m doing this isn’t personal. It’s because I care about this community and am afraid of what you’re forcing it to become. From the recent “What do you hate about HN?” thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18184914):
I’ve been here for awhile (just about eight years), and the single biggest change I’ve noticed is the increasing presence of what I’ll call a “bourgeois tech monoculture.” This place used to be weirder, with more obscure links and discussions filled with academics and hackers. If you search the older archives, there are some really incredible conversations. Now it mostly seems to be nytimes articles commented on by upper-middle class engineers.
I miss Michael O. Church. Not that I always agreed with him, but he was really interesting, and his comments consistently made me think about my own biases and opinions in ways few others ever have.
I noticed when you referred pejoratively to yummyfajitas as “Socrates”. I didn’t know him, but I respected his writing. And he didn’t leave until you personally made him feel unwelcome. In fact, he left immediately after: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=yummyfajitas
You’ve become what pg calls a suit: image over substance; authority over reason.
But your actions go far deeper than most people know, or understand. People still do not understand that you personally flag (and therefore instantly kill) many comments per day. They believe users do this, not you acting alone. And anyone who dares disagree with you is silenced, one way or another.
I don’t know if you’ve been hunting trolls for so long that all you see are trolls, everywhere you look. All I know is that people are starting to notice.
I regret that mine might too. But my personal desire to participate in the site is overruled by the greater desire to see this community protected from your purge of unpopular opinion.
If you truly believe this is abusive, we’ll have to agree to disagree. History’s judgement will last longer than yours.
You don't think we're being conditioned to value the abstinence of violence for whatever reason regardless of claims of justification?
You don't think we're being conditioned to ignore the reasons people blow up and instead ask how they had the means to be able to do so?
You don't think we're being conditioned to complain about the way things are without thinking about the way things could, or even should, be?
The book should be taken at face value indeed.