Please stop posting inflammatory ideological rants to Hacker News. Please also stop posting personal attacks, which this comment crosses into and which you've done before. Those are not allowed here.
This thread by its definition is controversial and lends itself to subjective option and heated discussion, more than others. At what point does opinion become 'ideology' as every single comment can be described as such, who decides the thin line between ideology and opinion and worse cross it to label and dismiss a 'comment' in this context as an 'inflammatory ideological rant'? This is extremely subjective and dangerous territory.
Abuse, snark and insult do not lend themselves to subjectivity and are easily flagged. But in this case I think the comment makes a genuine attempt to engage, reason and articulate a point of view, and is not dismissive or abusive but veers slightly to the personal as did the original commentator. But still deserves to be heard and not hidden. The warnings about abuse or bad language is not subjective and hold.
But it would be unfortunate to want to hide away articulated and reasoned responses one may not agree with as that inevitably leads to an echo chamber bereft of diversity, pushing away diverse opinions, and in effect making discussion pointless. In my case, rightly or wrongly, it discouraged me from reading the rest of the thread, as it appears anything diverse will be flagged and leave behind a sterile and uninteresting discussion.
Perhaps Hacker News is not the right forum for this discussion. How does one discuss violence against people and sometimes entire populations for political or other ends with a distant and dispassionate tone without coming off as passive and unfeeling, unlike a more technical subject in which passion may be misplaced and derail discussion.
'danharaj responded by cherry picking a quote, calling it "fucking garbage", and then writing a short essay about why 'stdcredzero is a bad person.
Just because a comment doesn't contain the string "LOL UMAD" doesn't mean it's civil. There are very few occasions where a comment whose purpose is to single someone else on HN out as a bad person will survive, and I'm glad of that.
I'm glad I found this weird little thread, though, because I think those 'stdcredzero comments are great.
The problem here isn't just one comment, though, but a history of making HN threads more toxic with incivility and inflammatory rhetoric. Doing that doesn't improve discussion; in the long run it destroys it. The whole of HN is organized to try to stave that off. If we have an existential concern, this is it.
I don't think bit-flipping arguments are valid here, i.e. arguments that acting to dampen one thing (incivility) will flip the system to its binary opposite (sterility). That's not how complex systems work. There's plenty of room for thoughtful discussion to flourish. On HN this happens when people take up the challenge of remaining civil and respectful, even when others are wrong or provocative. One can do that while still feeling strongly about a topic. Yes, it's hard, but not because of any contradiction in the spec.
Like, I'm not going to tell you how to run this ship because moderation can be a thankless job at the best of times.
The combination of ideology with indignation is most destructive of the discourse we want here. That doesn't mean your views aren't welcome. If you would err on the side of courtesy, it would probably solve the problem. Many HN users, including some of the most courteous commenters we have, have gone through a similar transformation. It mostly takes willingness, which comes more easily when you understand the problem the community faces.
The counterargument that matters of high moral importance deserve to be discussed with strong emotion has some truth to it, but only emotion that isn't contaminated with personal abusiveness qualifies. That takes self-discipline, especially in an online forum like HN, where we don't know each other personally, have only sparse signals to go on, and the bias when disagreeing is to fill in the picture uncharitably. To avoid that requires a conscious effort.
It's because I do not trash an arbitrary group of people. Instead, I condemn very specific emotional states resulting in very specific kinds of behavior -- ones which are specifically recognized as being uncivil and inherently intellectually dishonest. (And if you think otherwise, please provide quotes and justification. As I've noted elsewhere, you have this habit of assuming falsehoods about me and writing them in this thread, and never acknowledging them when called out.)
My understanding of your objection is this: Either you are embarrassed because you do these things, or you feel that I have concocted the above construction to purposely tar certain (unspecified) groups in a dishonest way. Please note that in your comments, you apparently jumped to conclusions about my political views. Can you provide quotes (relevant) which say what they are? (You'll be able to do this somewhat with sibling quotes, but this doesn't logically help you in terms of demonstrating you did not jump to such conclusions.) My objections are to particular psychological states and succumbing to the resulting cognitive distortions. You then proceeded to provide a demonstration of precisely these phenomena! Thank you!
I haven't thought my posts were toxic because they get good replies and they don't get downvote-hidden.
Strange, but some of your longest posts were very clearly downvote-greyed, particularly the most salient one referenced in this thread. This seems counter-factual.
Another falsehood of yours: You stated that I discount emotion. This is another clear example of your jumping to conclusions. Emotion cannot act as an "oracle" but nowhere do I state that it is worthless.
Let's break this down simply. I spoke out against (unspecified) misguided words and actions in the name of "activism" which are motivated by anger and outrage. I say that the same psychological mechanisms that are involved in out-grouping and hate are involved. You then produced a very long post trying to justify (unspecified) words and actions through the magnitude of crimes of oppressors, and apparently did this in a way many interpreted as a personal attack against me. (Then edited, apparently)
I would ask this -- what psychological state are you in, where you can have such a strong reaction to a opinion about unspecified words and actions? What psychological state are you in, where you keep on jumping to conclusions, writing falsehoods, then fail to acknowledge them?
Is it correct to say that you are attempting to defend and justify some prior words and actions of yours which were guided by outrage? Are you defending intellectual dishonesty, stereotyping, and emotional bullying done in the name of a cause? I sincerely hope you are, because in doing so, you have done much for my own cause. (Which is politically neutral and specifically against a particular group-psychological phenomenon.)
I disagree with the "ideological rant" part. Yes, Western military action in the Middle East is a classic flamewar topic, but for an article about violence that the perpetrators think is the moral thing to do, it's very much on-topic. Also, nobody else seems to be talking about the Overton window with regard to "extremes".
Ideally, everyone would steer clear of personal attacks regardless of the topic and regardless of provocation. (I see "it would seem that my writings have touched a nerve" as provocation.) But that's an awfully high bar to hold people to.
I vouched for the flagged comment because of its unique contribution to the discussion, even though I didn't like all the "you" parts.
Well, for one thing, are you asserting that it's not self-evident that he was incensed? It's pretty evident that he is. If the gentleman is indeed in a state of cognitive distortion driven by hate and groupthink, it could be useful to point it out to him. Getting him to at least the point where he acknowledges his hate, then has to justify having that hate is a step in the right direction.
Also, pointing such out for 3rd party readers may be beneficial for related reasons. He has at least admitted openly that he is in a state of anger and is in the process of justifying why he is right to be ruled by this mindstate.
It's the same as if you had said, "I see you're feeling emotional about this." It's technically true, but carries an implication that he's favoring emotion over rationality, when he could simply be rationally deciding that the status quo of how the West uses its military is something that one should be incensed about.
Some of those 3rd party readers may themselves be incensed. Some of those 3rd party readers may be so engaged in their anger-driven thought processes, they might benefit from an self-awareness of their being anger-driven. This is the sense in which I made my point regarding 3rd party readers.
It's the same as if you had said, "I see you're feeling emotional about this." It's technically true, but carries an implication that he's favoring emotion over rationality, when he could simply be rationally deciding that the status quo of how the West uses its military is something that one should be incensed about.
I thought it was clear that I'm not against his interpretation of military intervention as being either unjust or harmful. On that, we actually agree. Nor have I ever said he's wrong to feel outrage. (Note how he jumped to conclusions on both those counts! Part of the psychology!) Rather, I'm pointing out how he has used his outrage stemming from that as the justification for moral license based on moral relativism.
It's not the particular positions I'm speaking out for or against. I'm speaking out to raise awareness of certain psychological states which can arise in the practice of activism, and pointing out the problems they cause.