Please keep these wretched ideological flamewars off HN. Think of it as an experiment in not having literally every internet forum burn with the same rage.
I doubt you have the time or any remaining patience to care, and I can hardly blame you, but I would like to point out what I think is an important point: while this discussion may seem like just another ideological disagreement, if you look at my participation in it I hope you could see that I was approaching it from an epistemological perspective, not (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20150162) an ideological perspective.
I have a theory that a large percentage of seemingly ideological disagreements (same set of facts, but difference of opinion) are in fact rooted in epistemological problems of perception. This is why my counterpart was unable to provide evidence for what he (genuinely, and with good intentions) believed were facts.
My intentions were not malicious (I think this is observably plausible based on my words and tone, or at least I hope so) in the conversation - I wasn't trying to score a "win" for "my side", I was genuinely trying to see if it is possible to get someone who believes something not-absolutely-factual to examine the foundation of those beliefs. "Defending" Stefan Molyneux was probably not the wisest place to do such a thing, but it is almost always topics related to "-isms" where these sorts of cognitive behaviors manifest themselves, so it is almost always going to look "obviously stupid" to have chosen the specific subject when taking such experimental stands.
Personally, I wish more people would try (if no one ever does anything, how will the problem stop getting worse) to figure out what is going on with the increasing polarization of opinions between people and try to figure out a way to fix it. But at the end of the day, even if I am completely correct in this theory, perhaps there's nothing that can be done about it (although, among all the downvotes and flags, one person maintained objectivity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20148991), and expecting HN mods to tolerate the messiness is a bit much to ask.
So, my sincere apologies, I will try to refrain/minimize such behavior going forward. But at the same time, I think it is fair to point out that in such disagreements, it takes two to tango, and perhaps the person holding the popular but technically not-objectively-correct position might be deserving of a warning as well. To me, dishonesty is a much more toxic and harmful behavior than disagreement.
> if it is possible to get someone who believes something not-absolutely-factual to examine the foundation of those beliefs.
That's extremely unlikely to happen, especially on the internet, and you can do a lot of damage in the process—especially if the way you go about it isn't obviously distinguishable from simply arguing the opposite side.
True, and perhaps "common sense", but I think questioning common sense now and then isn't a bad idea.
My theory was, when you find yourself in a situation like this, if you remain cordial and repetitively bring the conversation back to the same question over and over, eventually it will be ~impossible for them to not realize what is happening. I now realize I executed poorly on this until the very end, where it may have suddenly become easily distinguishable that I wasn't just arguing and what was actually going on, but by then it was too late.
As always, I will work on improving my behavior, but my sense is that this general problem continues to grow, here and elsewhere. Censorship has an upper bound of effectiveness, something lower average quality communities are grappling with now. I worry that kicking the can down the road might ultimately not be a good idea.