Comment by lovehashbrowns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovehashbrowns | Hacker News Reader

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I'm guessing your comment got downvotes because:

1. this is obviously not going to stop the actual issue; calling people delusional over a strawman is pretty disingenuous.

2. Clearly there's mental illness and lack of gun control at play. There are candidates who try to address this in their platform. There are media outlets mentioning/discussing this. People want free healthcare, i.e. free access to mental health resources.

3. Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped, but you're welcome to stop by *chan and have a logical debate with them. These are people who think their race is being targeted and that their race & culture is being destroyed, so I'm excited to hear the results of your well-reasoned and perfectly-logical debates.

While you're having your debates, I'm sure people will be happy to have these extremists congregate on an easily-available website like 8chan (not applicable at the moment, obviously) and also hope they don't have to dodge bullets while they're celebrating garlic, trying to get groceries at walmart, or wherever the next shooter is gonna bring his toys next.

To me it's a lot like blaming the violence on video games, and I'm not even saying they aren't a cause, they just aren't the most important cause right now. This is not an unsolvable problem, we're just getting bogged down on the wrong things when we NEED to laser focus efforts on the biggest problems first. Rather than pat ourselves on the back for taking down what is basically just an open forum for communication we need to focus on bipartisan legislative measures to address mental healthcare deficiencies and at least make it a little harder for people to get a gun.

I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.

I strongly believe forcing them further underground will only result in more violence long term.

I agree entirely on addressing mental healthcare and gun control, but sadly neither of those is going to be possible for a while. This is an "easy" thing to do for now, like low hanging fruit, and it's hard to expect people not to go for it when it involves such tragedies.

It's easier to manipulate people into this than it is to get them out because making up facts is easier than correcting them. Look at how many people still believe the moon landing didn't happen. It's literally one of the easiest conspiracy theories to debunk. Debunking the flat Earth idea is also easy, but at least some of it requires a bit of math and logical thinking.

The racist ideas about crime in the US, rapes in Sweden/Europe, and immigration are harder to debunk. Not because I can link an article that debunks them, but because it's an entire cemented world view that keeps them from even looking at the article in the first place. My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum.

To your other post, yes, I do concede that it has gotten better in a lot of ways. But it's my opinion that arguments aren't what made things better.

"My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum."

This is a very good point. It's interesting because it could happen on an image forum but it would probably be hard to make it meaningful in the way that you describe (and that is so important).

I can't help but thinking the internet might at least be part of the solution though. So much opportunity for diverse groups to meet and interact.

The internet is the solution and the problem. I'm not sure how it works, exactly. It's easy for me to come on HN and see myself as interacting with great people from all over the world, but it somehow doesn't come off that way on Reddit, YouTube, or something anonymous like an image board.

I did spend time on image boards, like 7chan and 420chan, but from what I remember, they still felt isolating more than they made me feel connected. It's a weird dichotomy. I feel that way about Reddit, too, so it isn't just the anonymous aspect of image boards that makes it harder for me to feel connected.

> I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.

Society: Take responsibility for yourself, either accept your lot in life or affect change through self-improvement and the democratic process.

Degenerates: It's not your fault, it's XXX.

I think you're missing my point but maybe you can clarify. Do you think it's possible for a site like 8chan to radicalize someone or do you just see it as a site for people who are inherently degenerate to congregate? If it's the latter than maybe you're right, but my argument was targeted at people who believe the former.

It probably makes you feel better about yourself to label someone else a despicable degenerate and simultaneously scrub your hands of the problem and any possible attempt you could make towards a solution but it's not doing anything to make the world a better place.

There are powerful tools that have been used throughout history to dramatically change the world and change the types of people you would label as degenerates. We just have more work to do.

My assumption is that this is primarily a site for engineers who are highly effective practical problem solvers and I think we would all benefit if more people treated this like a solvable problem.

One other thing I think is critical:

"Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped"

I think you have to concede that over the past couple hundred years race relations have improved significantly.

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