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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Actually, I'd suggest you do sometimes see people saying that about Linux, especially when Linux "on the desktop" comes up. And the reason is that neither project is simply a neutral software development project, but are politically charged. Linux at this point really just has a political "tinge" to it with the free software stuff, but Bitcoin is drenched in politics. So people are responding with their political brains rather than their raw technical brains.

I am not trying to imply this is bad. The politics are intrinsically worthy of thought and discussion. I could wish for a higher level of discourse on political matters, but humans have been doing that for lo these many thousands of years and I doubt this is the year that's going to change. Our "political brains" are complicated, messy things, tied into tribal instincts, personal identity, and all sorts of other messy things that make it difficult.

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I think you're spot on with this.

The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up.

We seem to be able to leave each other alone when it comes to using vi vs. emacs - the odd joke comes up, but that's about it.

But politics? There seems to be this attitude of conversion, missionaries, convincing, it's kind of frustrating. I think it's healthy to question one's views sometimes, but not to face a constant onslaught.

Looking a bit harder, the language people use here is quite clearly politicized and strange - people use past tense, which I find difficult to interpret as anything other than trolling. No-one would say 'Linux was a good OS', because it currently exists and is used daily...?

Experimentally it can be informative to refresh one's controversial comments as this can show the total may have received many more up and down votes than the final total suggests.

My inner statistician would be interested to see up & down totals as a metric of controversy.

FUD merchants, social media management, astroturf, superpacs, brigades, vendettas are common enough on Reddit and the Post-Snowden zeitgeist demands we consider Orwell's '84 where the mere possibilty of being observed is enough to bring general opinion & behaviour to heel.

The debate about Linux desktop or bitcoin need not be political. But I'd like to offer an indicator for when things inevitably become 'political'; when there's no provably correct answer and the use of force is involved.

> The debate about Linux desktop or bitcoin need not be political.

I agree, but that doesn't mean we should silence people who bring up political issues.

> But I'd like to offer an indicator for when things inevitably become 'political'; when there's no provably correct answer and the use of force is involved.

That's a good indicator that pretty much everyone would agree.

However, what constitutes "use of force", however, changes from people to people. Some people believe that merely having a state is "use of force". Other people believe that having a billion dollars to bargain is "use of force". It gets crazier: other people believe it's neither. Or both. Etcetera.

> The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up.

Yeah, politics is the mindkiller.[0]

Dan Kahan's research could lead to some interesting suggestions about why this might be.[1] There are many questions we answer dispassionately about facts, but then there's this other series of questions about the world, where we really don't answer with reference to specific knowledge. They seem primarily to serve as litmus tests for measuring group identity.

As it happens, contradicting someone who is really just talking about their identity just makes everyone upset.

Certainly conversations can change some people's minds on some political topics[2]. I've had a few rare 'conversion' experiences when talking with friends. But it's usually in really specific situations with certain approaches to open discussion that are just really hard, sometimes it takes multiple discussions, none of which seem that monumental, but have a cumulative effect. Both conversants have to rely on a lot of care and patience. All of that is made much more difficult by the impersonal and ephemeral nature of conversations on the internet.

[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

[1] http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/4/23/what-you-bel...

[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/584/f...

Thank you for this comment. The links are fantastic. On the reading list. :)

> The general quality of discourse on any thread seems to drop hugely whenever politics comes up.

I'm not so sure about that, especially when compared to other forums. People here often cite specific laws, articles, and papers when making political points[citation needed].

Maybe the year of the Linux desktop will also be the year of rational political discourse...

That'll be the year of the GNU/Linux desktop, then? ;)

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