> Try not to dismiss this because its not dripping in pro-usa sentiment
I find your presumption, that other people are more biased than you, somewhat offensive.
> i'm interested to hear what people inside the bubble think.
I find your presumption, that other people are less capable of independent thought than you, very offensive.
My experience from posting elsewhere is that a thoughtful post is surprisingly well taken even if it's not pretty. Actual case, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19783291 last night and expected to get crucified because... well, for obvious reasons. I very nearly didn't post. It actually got upvoted. So, steppenwolf, don't assume the worst of people.
>It strikes me as weird to go from a long well worded post describing how different personal opinions legitimate, to seemingly dismissing someone for having an opinion.
I guess my writing style isn't conducive to conveying my meaning. I won't rehash what I said previously[0] about this, but I answered (without much detail as I couldn't answer their question reasonably as I just don't know).
Perhaps that's something I might think about.
I am a little taken aback with this, not because folks are downvoting me, but because the first assumption folks seem to be making is that I'm writing in bad faith.
Aren't we supposed to (I know I try -- not always successfully -- which doesn't reflect well on me when I don't) to read others' comments in the most charitable way/assume good faith?
I'm not really sure what seemed dismissive there, I certainly didn't intend it to be so. Thank you for taking the time to express this.
If I could impose upon you to clarify what, exactly, seemed dismissive, perhaps I could express myself without that impression in the future. Thanks!
> This community is hugely biased towards an american, transhumanist point of view.
I used to think this too, but after thinking about it a little more, I've come to the conclusion that the perception of bias towards a certain viewpoint in any thread is colored by the day of week (some old-timers frequent on weekends), the time of day (US lunch breaks and close of business), and the members who are drawn to the topics that you are interested in.
In other words, my perception of the "prevailing" bias tends to fluctuate with the time of day (I don't have a fixed schedule for visiting HN) or topics I currently have open.
Sometimes, out of curiosity, I click on a random thread (typically high comments/upvotes) with a title that I would ordinarily have not clicked on, just to get a sense of what the community is yapping about :).
> You really went out of your way to attack me personally and read my past comments.
I went to check if you had an history of bias, which you clearly have
> Please report.
No, I have wasted enough time on you.
> I suspect behavior like yours is way more detrimental to the community.
Calling out people who have a clear political agenda and participate to the discussion in bad faith has its risks, but I think I did the right thing by exposing the reason you would support such a weak argument.
>I just noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35563286 - yikes, that's really not ok. But I'm going to assume that your intention not to do that kind of thing backpropagates to cover earlier cases as well.
I noted your attention to that comment earlier today, but am only responding here and now. And yes, your assumption is correct. Thank you for (in this case, and in general here on HN) for embodying the ideals in the the HN guidelines.
I can't speak for anyone else, but your example makes me more inclined to calmer, more reasoned and good faith posting.
In fact, when I joined HN 2.5 years ago or so, I left behind a different news aggregator (which shall remain nameless) because I realized (not without provocation, but as you correctly point out, that's not a good reason to be a jerk) I was acting just as poorly as those I would castigate there. And I didn't like what sort of person that made me.
HN, its users (for the most part) and the consistently enforced guidelines led me to be more measured, thoughtful and mindful of the impact of my interactions with others.
As we've seen, I'm not perfect, but I'm much more of the kind of poster that I want to be thanks to that.
Just to confirm my understanding WRT the comment referenced, it was the last three words that were the bulk of the problem, yes?
> personalized filter bubble to confirm your pre-existing views
I seek learning through intelligent and insightful rebuttal. HN is a good forum to learn from others directly, and indirectly by reading other people’s threads. I want a forum that does this better, via network effects of judgements about comment quality.
Your comment contains many baseless assumptions about my motivations. Is there irony in that this thread is not on Facebook, that you are attempting to disagree with my point but I am engaging with you, and that your comment likely breaks multiple guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> You should really think before spouting off, and you should honestly admit if you're biased in this instance.
The ivory tower comment which you complained about up-thread read to me as "this is a possible cognitive mistake we might make, let us avoid it" (note that it used the word "us").
On the other hand, there is no charitable reading of the first line of your comment. It's just nasty, much nastier than the even the worst reading of the ivory-tower comment.
> I am not patronizing anyone living outside the USA and please don't sling around accusations like that.
Funny that my comment was so heavily upvoted. You are patronizing people, and I accuse you of it deliberately, knowing both that it is an accusation you may not welcome, and that it is difficult to infer from text-based communication.
I suggest you pause and consider that this is a recurring accusation with several upvotes, and that you may not realize that you are being patronizing.
You can't post like that to HN, both because it's personally uncivil and because national/ideological flamewar is not welcome here.
The world is big. People have vastly different perspectives. One person's experience doesn't contradict another's. Commenters here must remain respectful, and it costs nothing except a bit of effort to do so.
> to me it seems that OP comment was just pushing for agenda using some hyperbole and hate.
The operative word in that sentence is seems, and you can't know that for sure so you shouldn't respond as though you do. HN has some pretty specific instructions about that.
> How you raise a topic like this is by far the biggest influence on whether the conversation develops curiously.
An influence surely, but in my experience not at all the biggest. Curiosity is a two-way street, and there are some topics that most people here simply do not want to be curious about.
But yes, I’m mostly just spending karma fighting an info-war. Success in that context is not only about the quality of discussion, it’s that more people see the controversy. If the collateral damage is not acceptable I understand.
And if I end up getting kicked out, please just take to heart that your effort to apply the rules impartially is not unappreciated. The opposition here is used to receiving wildly-inflammatory escalating nasty replies that rarely get flagged or moderated, but it’s still better than most places: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25017661
> I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a little rude here.
No, please don't. On HN, it's necessary to make your points respectfully and neutrally, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. If you can't or don't want to do that, please don't make them here. We certainly did not need the dozens of comments' worth of petty bickering that this thread devolved to.
Please don't resort to personal insults on HN. It's a violation of the guidelines[1] and makes for poor and uninteresting discussion.
Instead...
> It's extremely hard to figure out who we're talking to.
...don't resort to personal attacks, and assess the argument that the individual is making, without setting up a straw-man argument. If you're unclear what their assumptions are, then ask.
> A comment that reveals more about your leanings than anything to do with reddit.
It can’t be both. Either Reddit is biased and I don’t lean the same way or my comment said nothing about my leanings. Figure out what point you’re trying to make before throwing vague statements out.
> Are you sure you're sufficiently equipped for a discussion about echo chambers and politics? Doesn't appear so. A moment of introspection might serve you well.
Says the person who was incapable of actually engaging in a discussion about echo chambers and instead engaged in a personal attack.
> I spend a significant amount of time trying to respond to something in good faith and then someone comes along with their four accounts and downvotes every comment I got because I'm not sufficiently ideological,
As someone who's been in academia for a while, you should be amenable to the idea that unless you have actual evidence as to the single quadruply-accounted person and their ideological motivation, your statement of the case here is with considerably more certainty than is really warranted.
Speaking in general, I've noticed that people are very willing to assume they have intimate knowledge of the circumstance under which their comment / post / etc. got one bit's worth of negative feedback when in fact they have very little to justify their assumptions.
Some time ago, I came to the conclusion this is really a variety of projection, but you could simply see it as symptomatic of the very human tendency to fill gaps in knowledge with imagination in accordance with pre-existing bias.
Unless we communicate perfectly in the difficult medium of online text-based discussion, it's best (IMO) to allow for the possibility that the particular form we chose to state our views or conduct a debate is deficient in a way we hadn't perceived, take the negative feedback, and look for ways to improve it, rather than impulsively reject the feedback by making hasty assumptions about why it occurred.
Yikes, can you please edit out personal swipes from your comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are? We're here for curious conversation. It's also best to avoid denunciatory rhetoric, not because things don't deserve denouncing, but because it degrades internet discussion quality badly.
> Unlike the rest of us, you've signaled mainstream virtue with your comment.
You're taking this thread into personal attack, plus slinging a lot of sarcasm around, which has the effect that trolling does. Please stop doing these things.
> No one responding to you knows one another. The politics of people responding to you vary widely. Everyone agrees you’re wrong. That’s a huge indicator to take some time and self reflect.
Man, there are 3 people under my topmost comment, including myself. And the one who is neither you nor me claimed I am against discussing the topic in the discussion of the topic which I started. Imagine how ridiculous this statement of yours is from my perspective in the light of that.
I find your presumption, that other people are more biased than you, somewhat offensive.
> i'm interested to hear what people inside the bubble think.
I find your presumption, that other people are less capable of independent thought than you, very offensive.
My experience from posting elsewhere is that a thoughtful post is surprisingly well taken even if it's not pretty. Actual case, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19783291 last night and expected to get crucified because... well, for obvious reasons. I very nearly didn't post. It actually got upvoted. So, steppenwolf, don't assume the worst of people.
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