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Comment by amvp | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It may be Off Topic, but it's incredibly important to shine a light on these things - unpleasant and uncomfortable as they may be. It's easy for us to look at history and marvel at the inhumanity that we're capable of, but Milgram's experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) showed that an individual's conscience is a reticent faculty, when isolated in the face of authority. It's imperative that we talk openly, and agree as a society what's allowed and what's simply unacceptable.

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It's better to steer clear of political issues which are covered more than adequately elsewhere.

They are by their nature divisive and tend to make people upset and/or angry. This coarsens the atmosphere and makes reasoned and intelligent discussion far less feasible.

I can be upset and angry and still participate in a rational discussion. What will we do when an issue is both important and divisive? Will we avoid it because it's divisive and may upset people? Is not being upset more important than the free exchange of ideas?

This is Hacker News. Maybe I am projecting something here, but I thought of us as explorers of ideas. Do we want to prevent, to silence, discussion?

>I can be upset and angry and still participate in a rational discussion.

The problem is that it would only take a few people who can't remain rational for a tipping point to be reached whereby the overall quality of debate badly degrades. (That's when some of the most valuable contributors start to disappear.)

>What will we do when an issue is both important and divisive

If such a political issue affected hackers directly then there'd be no way to avoid that discussion.

>Do we want to prevent, to silence, discussion?

Of course not. And that's precisely why politics in general should be avoided.

Aside from the eve psych, I'm with Eliezer Yudkowsky on this:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

"a few people who couldn't manage that"

That's what downvotes are for. That's why we should refrain from downvoting for disagreement and keeping it for shorting out comments that are damaging to the discussion.

It's already done so here. Look downthread, where, in an effort to make this story about torture and murder relevant to Hacker News, we've begun making an issue out of military censorship, as if that's what's imminentizing the demise of the Republic.

It's dispiriting that this article hasn't been flagged off the site yet.

Whats more dispiriting is that the number two article at this moment is about shoelace knots. I'd rather read this factual account than some crap about shoe laces given the choice between the two.

Milgram's experiments showed that an individual's conscience is a reticent faculty

Note, however, that this study only selected people who responded as willing to participate in a "two-week study on prison life". That sounds appealing to some people more than others. Then again, so does military service.

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