Please stop posting flamewar comments. I don't want to have to go back to penalizing your account but this is the kind of thing that makes us do that, and it looks like you've been swerving back into ideological battle comments lately.
Are my comments pushing a particular ideology, or are they pushing a different way of thinking about ideological matters? Is what I say incorrect? Is the phenomenon I refer to not an example of the very thing that causes you problems moderating this site?
HN (and the world it is contained within) is not perfect dang, and if we ideologically refuse to even contemplate how we go about discussing and thinking about things, should we expect it to change? Might some of your pain be caused by us "doing it wrong"?
Climate change, racism, wealth inequality, general pain and suffering throughout the word...are these things going to go away on their own? Is democracy and rules going to save the day?
If the sole goal of this forum is to establish and maintain a safe space for mostly privileged people to discuss the problems of the world in a purely pleasant, conflict free manner, that's fine, but I think it would be more optimal and honest if we all admitted to ourselves just what it is we're actually doing here.
I ask that you consider this deeply.
Thought Has Produced Our Problems - David Bohm (the physicist)
Are your views about crises, pain, and suffering in the world incorrect? How should I know?
All I can tell you is that internet ideological battles are tedious and repetitive. That already makes it boring, and it evokes worse (and eventually, considerably worse) from others. This is why we ask HN users not to use the site primarily for this.
That category includes grandiose ideological rhetoric in general, even if you're not battling for a particular ideology. It doesn't much matter what people are battling for, actually, because it's not the high-order bit—these threads all end up being the same kind of thing in the end, and it's not the kind of thing this site is for.
> Are your views about crises, pain, and suffering in the world incorrect? How should I know?
I mean my comments that you are complaining about. Are the things within the comments you say are unacceptable actually incorrect? And in those conversations, are the things my counterparts in the conversation say correct?
Correctness and incorrectness is rather important when programming computers, might it also be important in other aspects of life?
> All I can tell you is that internet ideological battles are tedious and repetitive. That already makes it boring, and it evokes worse (and eventually, considerably worse) from others. This is why we ask HN users not to use the site primarily for this.
They certainly can be, according to the manner in which they are currently conducted (a habit we have fallen into, and never bother questioning). But what if we addopted a different approach? Like for example, if instead of engaging in the repetition of lazy, half-correct memes, we actually applied strict logic and epistemology, and incorporated awareness of relevant psychological and neuro-scientific principles into our discussions. For example, science tells us that there is a distinction between reality and our perception of it, and that the delta between the two is sometimes vast. Might it be beneficial for HN to disallow just making stuff up, to saying things with utterly no concern whatsoever if they are actually true?
For fun, imagine if this policy actually passed, and was enforced - do you think that people's behavior would not adjust accordingly? Do you think the quantity of tedious, repetitive arguments you complain about would remain constant?
Or in the interests of efficiency: there are some subreddits whose moderators already enforce these sorts of rules, and as a result know quite about how human beings react to rules. Answers to many of these questions already exist, assuming one is actually interested in solving the problems that one complains about that is.
> That category includes grandiose ideological rhetoric in general, even if you're not battling for a particular ideology.
Are you suggesting that I engage in "grandiose" ideological rhetoric, even though there is no ideology contained within it?
> It doesn't much matter what people are battling for, actually
People's behavior (which derives in part from emotions) does not change according to the topic of discussion?
> because it's not the high-order bit—these threads all end up being the same kind of thing in the end, regardless of that, and it's not the kind of thing this site is for.
What is this site "for", dang? Is it a sort of theatre, where a bunch of highly intelligent people burn billions of dollars of extremely valuable biological compute time engaging in faux-serious concern for the problems of the world? Because if the literal policy is to enforce agreement with prevailing opinions (do not rock the boat), then I have trouble seeing how it can be anything other than that. As I said, this is fine, but I get a very strong feeling that the people on this site think they are engaging in something other than theatre.
And regardless: do you not care about the future of the world? Do you not care about people who are less well off than you? You control a substantial amount of power. You are in a position where you could make a difference. I think you should think about what you're doing with this power, especially the next time you read some article about the latest tragedy du jour in the world. Mildly spoiling the mindless fun just a little for a bunch of first world tech darlings on a forum is one thing, but there are literally billions of people in the world who have actual problems.
If you want a longer definition, it's a site for substantive discussion of topics that gratify intellectual curiosity. That appears to have nothing do with any of the things you've listed, including "tech darlings", "prevailing opinions", and all the rest.
Inflated rhetoric, like what you've been posting, has nothing to do with curiosity and actually drowns it out. By "inflated rhetoric" I mean dramatic claims about big things that don't come with real information to make them interesting, let alone back them up. If you'd please stop that, we'd appreciate it.
