Reminds of Daniel Everett's work with the Pirahã, who have non-existent recursion in language. Unfortunately one exception in biology is not evidence of generality. Proof by contradiction works in math, doesn't work very well in biology. Doesn't even work well in physics e.g. room temperature super conductors are extremely rare even if they exist.
Physically you can make people do anything, but what they want internally is a completely different matter and there is no way today to probe that.
Let's assume there is a large section of people who can only love their direct off springs, the author could perhaps claim that that would be immoral - is this gaslighting or what. What's the end game for this kind of stuff - it's to eliminate all preferences - quite akin to slavery.
Could you please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle? We ban such accounts, regardless of what they're for or against, and your account has been particularly bad for this lately. You're way on the wrong side of the line, so if you want to keep posting here, we need you to fix this.
Sure, I probably don't have a choice anyway. I'm not sure that I see the particular comment you are replying to as being very "ideological" though.
Also, can I have my downvoting, flagging, and vouching privileges back? I have a feeling that they have been disabled without any kind of explicit notification or explanatoin. Just like shadow-banning domains and accounts, that's something I don't appreciate about your site.
> regardless of what they're for or against
That may be your intention, but it doesn't seem to be what you are doing in practice. Take a look at the following left-wing accounts, all of which have quite a lot of "ideological" submissions/comments, and none of which are banned (and ideally, I don't think should be banned):
bediger4000
myshpa
cratermoon
PrimeMcFly
This last one calls most of Republican politicians "christofascists". [1] Again, I don't think they should be banned for that per se, but you seem to have banned a right-wing account for calling trans people "a blight on society" [2]. If my understanding of the situation is correct, that seems politically biased to me.
On the other hand, let's look at the political ideology of the accounts from your search query [3] (R is for right-wing, L for left-wing):
sfusato; R
salemh; R
hutzlibu; R
TeeMassive; R
dragonsh; R
door5; L
qd6pwu4; Not sure, apparently just pro-China
outis; R
I just took the first few ones in there as a representative sample, but I'm sure you understand why this may give an appearance of political bias.
Finally, based on your previous comments, I understand that you find it amusing that both left-wingers and right-wingers think moderation is biased against them. I'd like to note that this doesn't imply that HN's moderation is free of political bias.
It's like to the old relativist fallacy: just because different people have different norms and opinions doesn't mean that all norms and opinions are equally invalid. Some could be just plain wrong, and others could be right. You should look at the evidence.
I didn't have a chance to respond to this over the weekend. Since then you went all-in on doing exactly what I asked you to stop. I have no idea what you were expecting by doing that but it's an obvious ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37384119.
I looked through the accounts you mentioned anyhow, out of curiosity to see how strong your case actually was. For a list intended to finger-point at the other side, it's weak sauce. Of the first 4, 3 are nowhere close to breaking the rule we're talking about. The other was posting primarily about environmental issues and I've asked them to stop, but actually they weren't being particularly ideological-battle or flamewarrish about it, so even they didn't really deserve to be mentioned in this context. You can have half a point for that one—that puts your total at 12.5%. That's not just unconvincing, it's evidence for the opposite.
As for your second list, only three of those accounts are banned and they were banned for obvious reasons. I didn't see any borderline calls there, the ideological balance was split, and 3 is a meaningless sample in any case.
So much for your 'data'. What about your arguments?
I'd never claim that HN's moderation is free of bias (how would I know)? What I claim is (1) the complaints about bias we do hear are so isomorphic that there must be a common mechanism generating them, and (2) this mechanism is independent of ideology because we get it in exactly the same way from both poles—right down to pointing fingers at other users every time we ask them to stop breaking the rules. Anyone who bothers to parse out what I just said there (not that anyone should, as this is weedy stuff) can see that's not a relativistic argument.
It's odd for you to argue systemic bias by digging up lists (let alone weak ones) of who gets moderated more. Suppose group X breaks the rules more often—obviously more Xs are going to get moderated. That's evidence of non bias as much as anything. Or to put it in terms you'll surely recognize: maybe more of them are in jail because they commit more crimes.
The truth is that you've been ideologically trolling HN, to the point of conducting some sort of vendetta, so obviously that you crossed the ban line a long time ago. We gave you way more rope than you had any reason to expect. How you turn this excess of patience on our part into bias against you is beyond me. One mark of the ideological mindset (relevant to HN because it's so predictable, and thus so off topic) is this aggrieved certitude of always being the victim—that plus its cousin, total unwillingness to take even a drop of responsibility for anything. (Btw, isn't at least one ideology supposed to be about personal responsibility?) Blame is always on others, never on self, and there's only one reason to read the rules: to bash the refs (and the other team). How about sincerely trying to follow them in the first place, one might wonder? Oh no no—it's all rigged against us so that's unthinkable.
The interesting thing is how consistent this is regardless of ideology; you all resemble your enemies far more than anybody else. As I said, it's isomorphic; and worse than wrong, it's tedious.
> For a list intended to finger-point at the other side, it's weak sauce.
I'm not finger-pointing to the other side. I'm not saying that they are doing anything wrong by posting ideological things. I am accusing you of political bias.
> The other was posting exclusively about environmental issues and I've asked them to stop, but actually they weren't being particularly ideological-battle or flamewarrish about it, so even they didn't really deserve to be mentioned in this context.
Your biases show themselves even here. A particular form of environmental activism isn't ideological? Of course it is.
And of course, you totally ignored the "christofascists" vs "blight on the society" thing.
> So much for your 'data'.
My "data" is something I just typed up in a short amount of time while being angry after knowing that you are probably going to ban my account (and you had already applied a lot of restrictions before that, with no warnings or explanations). I could spend some time and give you real data, but would it matter? You've already decided that you don't care.
> I'd never claim that HN's moderation is free of bias (how would I know)?
Of course you could know, if you cared. You obviously can try to measure these things.
> It's odd for you to argue systemic bias by digging up lists (weak as they are) of who gets moderated more. Suppose group X breaks the rules more often—obviously more Xs will get moderated. That's evidence of non-bias as much as anything else. Or to put it in terms you'll surely recognize: maybe more of them are in jail because they commit more crimes.
But that's not what I tried to do. I tried to do a comparison. I pointed out that there are left-wing accounts posting a lot of ideological stuff (or outright epithets like "christofascist", "insurrectionist", "racist", "sexist", etc.) and you don't seem to care. While you either ban or give a warning to the right-wingers doing a similar thing.
> The truth is that you've been ideologically trolling HN,
What trolling? That's you biases showing up again. People sometimes do genuinely have beliefs that you may find "outrageous".
> Blame is always on others, never on self, and there's only reason to read the rules: to bash the other side for breaking them more. How about sincerely trying to follow the rules in the first place, one might wonder?
Yet again, I must emphasize that I'm not doing that. I am not accusing the other side of breaking the "rule" more than I do. I explicitly said that in a previous comment that I don't even think they should be banned. [1] I saying that HN's moderation is politically biased, and I don't appreciate that.
> Oh no no, we'd never do that—they're rigged against us so it's unthinkable.
What is the "rule"? That you should pretend that you don't have an ideology when posting to HN? Especially so if you are a right-winger, because HN's political demography is similar to California, and we get outraged more by hearing right-wing things?
> you all resemble your enemies at the opposite pole far more than you resemble anybody else
That's like Reddit-level "horseshoe theory" [2], and very far from the truth.
> You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.
I don't remember seeing that before when submitting things even faster. I mean, all those restrictions (which I can't even be sure about their existence) seem quite hostile.
Physically you can make people do anything, but what they want internally is a completely different matter and there is no way today to probe that.
Let's assume there is a large section of people who can only love their direct off springs, the author could perhaps claim that that would be immoral - is this gaslighting or what. What's the end game for this kind of stuff - it's to eliminate all preferences - quite akin to slavery.