I think what this boils down to, and is extremely apparent in those quotes, is communication skills & style.
People with very controversial beliefs (and in a free & diverse society, everything is controversial in some relative axis, hence we need to extend measures of freedom to each other) can still act civilly, or they can flail and be problematic on forums. That's not a feature of their beliefs, but a feature of their behavior (stubbornness, arrogance, etc). People who have fully "correct thinking" in some scope can also be disruptive, poorly behaved members of discussion-based communities.
> 4) Communities themselves can be hostile, especially when the majority adopt black and white thinking.
many of these communities will inevitably fall into that thinking, even when they start out as a more open forum, due to selection bias, us-vs-them / in-group-out-group, and a tendency for more controversial, angry, or loud posts to get more views.
> I feel as though I am more open-minded than many others. I am always ready to be corrected if I am wrong, and I am always willing to discuss my views with people subscribing to other political ideologies. However, I fear the repercussions of offending others who do not have an open mind.
This is how every open and critically minded person feels nowadays.
There is a clear line between two groups:
1. People who think the best way to learn, educate and explore other people's views is by having an open discussion, saying uncomfortable things and having an ear to be corrected and showing mutual respect.
2. People who think that saying something uncomfortable during a discussion is an act of offence itself and therefore must be muted even if it takes some form of aggression by one or many people in order to mute that person. A discourse is only allowed if people immediately subscribe to a specific ideological idea and people are not allowed to get to that point through saying or asking the wrong things but must somehow be born with those views or otherwise need to be extinguished by the mob.
Unfortunately the 2. group is getting increasingly more violent and aggressive in their approach which makes the 1. group increasingly more aware that they are in fact in danger to just be themselves and learn about life through sometimes tough discourse or mistakes.
This may be unintentional, but I find there’s a meaningful difference between having/making controversial opinions/ideas/statements and being controversial.
The former is (IMO) an important part of a tolerant and thinking society. The latter feels to me like attention seeking.
> People with different opinions have a hard time getting along.
Not necessarily. As long as they are civil and able to articulate their differences in a good way chances are the viewpoints will be shifted and possibly converge.
It's a problem when people become so invested in their viewpoints and opinions that they become a part of their identity. That's one way to become a person who is going to react in a not-so-nice way to seeing those viewpoints and opinions challenged.
> What does it matter if somebody genuinely holds heinous views? So long as they are willing to discuss things logically, cool-headedly, and coherently --- I'd be happy to discuss anything with anybody.
Sadly that's not how the world works. People end up on lists for discussing "anything" or having "any" heinous views, and sometimes have their lives via this. And so far as I can see, the vast majority are okay with this.
I think this is the point of contention. I don't think the type of person I'm describing will 'let you be' if you make an argument that falls outside their worldview. And the tone of the resulting debate is more often than not fairly toxic. The result is just more division.
That is the single most compelling reason, why I find most people (on|off)line disturbing. They just want to drown out dissent without helping other people argumentatively to understand the opposing view.
OK, that is probably, because they oftentimes do not have real arguments and haven't rationalized their position at all.
Maybe the past paragraph is just me being a misanthrope. Or maybe the internet is just too big - as bigger discourses tend to deteriorate.
> People with strong opinions can still talk about them and get along.
While it is mathematically true that people can do this, the vast majority prove they choose not to nearly every single day. And once called out on it, it becomes another "tone policing" issue.
> The only people who want to remove polarity from online conversation are hardcore censorship maximalists. Life rarely involves absolute truths but some people refuse to acknowledge this.
Those two sentences don't make sense together. Surely if there are no absolute truths then removing polarity would help people find a middle ground.
> But it doesn't change the fact that general population will say these things, and it's them, not HN crowd
What about thought leadership? I know its a cliche beaten to death perhaps, but still I think people are able to see a raised level of discourse, than theirs, while they may not always leave their hard positions and immediately agree.
But there's also this balancing act, that we need to do, of not wanting to get into an argument of certain kinds.
>I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to defend their beliefs and explain why they think they're right.
And some people like myself just don't feel like sitting around arguing all day.
>share their thoughts and react to a news, pretty much exactly like you are doing.
While it's somewhat 'natural' to share a thought, I never share it because I want to share it. I'm way too conscious about my time to merely share a topic.
>1. I think diversity is a completely useless metric. 2. I am in favor legalizing discrimination. 3. I believe we should not help people who want to commit suicide.
>I don't consider any of these opinions to be controversial.
Isn't the 'hard' opinion ( Or the opinion that they generally pander to?)of the majority by definition 'controversial' ?
Side note on 1): people who insist on diversity (or play along with the diversity card), will never do well in the long run in an area where competence is important. So it's one of the traits (among many others) that I use to size people up and decide who to associate with. Often when there is one fundamental difference, there are likely to be many other fundamental differences.
>That’s because the pernicious social dynamics of these online spaces hammer home the idea that anyone who disagrees with you on any controversial subject, even a little bit, is incorrigibly dumb or evil or suspect.
I see some merits in this article and I agree with certain parts up to a certain point, but the portion I quoted above is actually more troubling to me. There are lots of people who refuse to believe basic, empirically-proven concepts about the world and social media is merely revealing the ignorance of those people. Celebrating it or saying that everyone has a valid opinion (despite that opinion being based on something false) is even more harmful than the conflict spurred by disagreement, in my opinion.
> Sure, but why do we have to conflate "disagreement" with "undesirability"?
Because most people find being challenged very tiresome and uncomfortable. People who are high in openness actually enjoy being challenged, but they are a minority (and it's definitely a spectrum).
>I had a negative opinion of it because someone out there believed that you could just shout out your controversial beliefs in a group email and expect something positive to come from it.
I'm honestly struggling to understand your perspective. Would you prefer a world where nobody says anything "controversial", everyone just rolls with the status quo, and nothing ever changes? Why is espousing "controversial ideals" offensive to you? I treat ideas that clash with my own internal logical understanding of the world as challenges that can only improve my understanding of the world. If I run these "controversial ideas" through my logic and reasoning faculties, there's really only two possible outcomes:
- I reject the idea and now have arguments against them that I can share with others
- I end up embracing the idea because I realize that my implicit rejection of it lacked a sturdy logical foundation
Either way, I win—I get a better understanding of the world I live in.
Why would you choose to shield yourself from improving yourself mentally?
> Unfortunately people have convinced themselves that some opinions -those they disagree with- are dangerous for others to read.
Or more likely than seeing them as "dangerous" they recognize that if you allow opinions to be expressed, others may gain a new perspective by reading it or even adopt that opinion themselves.
Or in the case of HN, certain topics of conversation are censored or discouraged because they tend to lead to boring/repetitive/annoying/aggressive comment threads.
People with very controversial beliefs (and in a free & diverse society, everything is controversial in some relative axis, hence we need to extend measures of freedom to each other) can still act civilly, or they can flail and be problematic on forums. That's not a feature of their beliefs, but a feature of their behavior (stubbornness, arrogance, etc). People who have fully "correct thinking" in some scope can also be disruptive, poorly behaved members of discussion-based communities.
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