I just stend to stay clear of certain topics on HN. It's not that I'm not open to different viewpoints on the internet, it's that these comment sections are filled with bad-faith arguing and are just bound to make me angry. If I wanted that, I could just go to Reddit or Twitter.
The bad-faith filter is manifested in the "flag" button.
The problem is that "rational" is taken as the highest good by some people, and a key part of their identities.
Unfortunately these people have mammalian brains, which are a prefrontal cortex sitting on top of an antediluvian limbic system. To pretend that you are rational and not emotional is to launch vigorously down the path of self-deception.
It inevitably follows that one's post-rationalisation becomes both deep-rooted and hidden from one's own view. To roughly paraphrase tfa, you'll cherry-pick facts and apply narrow logic. Worse, you'll be bolstered by the unshakeable conviction that you are completely logical. Then you'll become extremely passionate in defense of your beliefs. The irony...
It is excellent to strive for rationality, just as long as one keeps one's own fallibility in mind. That implies self-knowledge. You can't reach the top of Maslow's pyramid without self-knowledge; we should teach techniques to cultivate it in schools.
You'd be surprise how much of this noise can disappear from blocking maybe, a dozen frequently "passionate" commenters in a community like this. But block features aren't on the table last I checked.
There was an extension¹ posted a few years ago² which implements blocking on the client side. The possible issue is there may be some users who you wish to block in the general case that do add value in other threads, so you would have to weigh up those decisions.
However, it feels like a bad idea to me, if only because it reduces community building and curation a little. Without a mass of users taking action via flagging or reporting on community problems the end result will surely just tend towards submissions and comment threads that are simply garbage, as that is what new users would see as the social norms.
All that said, I wouldn't blame people for using it. There do seem to be a few members of this community that I'd not want to know in real life, and given their comments in some threads they'd not want to know me either ;)
Edit: I see you mentioned an extension in another thread, and this may be the same one. Still, I'll leave this here in case others want to see the links.
