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Comment by PlaceFan | Hacker News Reader

The problem being that as soon as you start bringing the left/right dichotomy into the picture, you've lost all hope of having a sensible argument or even an intelligent discussion.

I mean, it's not like it's all that difficult to rephrase the question in a way to be less thought-terminating (and this is literally one substitution, you can imagine even more eloquent ways of phrasing it):

> "Is the problem "single mothers" or is it the people who conspire to create, perpetuate, and steadily increase economic inequality?"

I want to believe that most people KNOW this, and it's merely "virtue signaling" as another poster noted. An easy way to vent frustration, maybe. But it's not a question that asks for sensible discussion. It's a "when did you stop hitting your wife?" type of question - one that insults the very people you really want to answer the question. How do you expect to have a reasonable discussion like that?

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Sure. It's a question of how much self-censorship you want to impose on yourself in the hope of fostering a good discussion. And how much you are focusing on expressing what you feel vs. starting a conversation with people you disagree with. Different people will make different choices, even in this discussion. For instance, I could rewrite your comment:

> I want to believe that most people KNOW this, and it's merely "virtue signaling" as another poster noted. An easy way to vent frustration, maybe. But it's not a question that asks for sensible discussion. It's a "when did you stop hitting your wife?" type of question - one that insults the very people you really want to answer the question. How do you expect to have a reasonable discussion like that?

As something like:

> This type of comment probably isn't the type that would best encourage an open debate with someone on the Right. My personal suggestion would be something that addresses individual policies and avoids a monolithic view of one side of the political spectrum.

It would be more diplomatic, sure. But is that closer to what you really wanted to express? Maybe not.

> It's a question of how much self-censorship you want to impose on yourself in the hope of fostering a good discussion. And how much you are focusing on expressing what you feel vs. starting a conversation with people you disagree with.

Sure, and that's my point: Are you just venting? Fine. You're making a choice to vent your frustrations and not hoping to actually have a discussion. You're making yourself feel better. There's nothing wrong with that, either. We all vent in different ways.

It's just unfortunate that many people choose to make internet comments the location of their venting. Worse, this becomes the sort of discourse that we come to expect from any sort of public internet forum. We don't expect reasonable discussion: We expect angry people yelling about the other team and how their team is the best team. It's become a stadium full of drunk fans.

> It would be more diplomatic, sure.

Eh, not really: I never mentioned left/right in that chunk of text on purpose (because I think both "teams" do it). So your rewrite is actually significantly less diplomatic because it singles out one group of people who previously were part of a larger group.

Might seem annoying of me to call you out on this (and I fully understand why you assumed that given the context of our discussion), but I think it's an important correction nonetheless.

> Eh, not really: I never mentioned left/right in that chunk of text on purpose (because I think both "teams" do it). So your rewrite is actually significantly less diplomatic because it singles out one group of people who previously were part of a larger group.

You were directing your remarks at the writer of the comment and those that write similar comments. Not everything is a Left/Right divide.

I'm not sure where you find issue with the comment "This type of comment probably isn't the type that would best encourage an open debate with someone on the Right" since you're saying that making the comment about the Right shuts down discussion and that you would remove it. I think it's more diplomatic to comment to make about the author than saying something like "I want to believe that most people KNOW this, and it's merely 'virtue signaling' as another poster noted."

But perhaps that brings about another point - different people have different opinions about what kind of discourse is more diplomatic and which is less. I think my revised version of your comment is obviously more diplomatic; you disagree. You think your revised version of the NY Times comment is obviously more diplomatic; it's quite possible that the author would disagree.

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