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Comment by Ma8ee | Hacker News Reader

Could you give me some examples?

Saying anything positive about online advertising is a ticket to downvotes.

Just turn on showdead in your settings. I also see very often comments that have died for no apparent reason (they are not inflammatory).

I find anything critisizing SV or YC company gets immediate downvotes, as do most critical of china, israel, and saudi arabia (or any company funded by them, lookin at you softbank). While there are more Indian, UK, and Canadian commenters who will actually argue, they seldom downvote. Oddly, most americans will go above and beyond to disparge their own nation more than any other (free speech is empowering!).

More people lately seem to downvote out of disagreement rather than to keep a thread in check. I thing requiring a comment to downvote would be a huge step forward in the quality of discourse.

This is not to pass judgement on any subset on the HN or general communities. Just apparent trends that have I have noticed. I could very well be victim to my own (american) bias.

> More people lately seem to downvote out of disagreement rather than to keep a thread in check.

Downvoting out of disagreement has always been endorsed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

You may disagree that it is a good choice, but it is not new phenomenon.

That typically means they're shadowbanned. I can usually figure out why by a quick look at their comment history. Even people who like to toss bombs throw the occasional dud.

Advocating for Nationalism is a typical example. Or restrictive immigration policies.

These seem to be considered by many to be synonymous with racism.

Can you give some examples where those "truths" have been downvoted?

Unironically, my very comment above (as well as others in this thread, the topic of which is heresy!) is gathering downvotes as we speak, despite it being technically correct. Normally this would bother me, but this time I find it pleasing because it illustrates the point.

My intuition is suggesting to me that your inclusion of "truths" in quotation marks suggests you are primed to expect me to reply with some things that I believe to be true, but that are false. Obviously I am speculating, but I find thinking about the nature of communication in fine detail to be extremely interesting.

Also, pardon the delay in reply as I'm quite sure my account is flagged and rate-limited for participating in flame wars, or more specifically, holding incorrect beliefs in flame wars. I believe this latter point because it takes two to tango in a flame war, and if you pay attention when warnings are handed out for such offenses here on HN, you may notice a pattern of the person receiving the warning is the one who holds the heretical view, despite many people being participants. I say this mostly as just an interesting aside, but I believe it does to some degree fairly illustrate the possibility of bias that exists on HN, including at the moderation level. Since the degree to which my speculation is true is not knowable, casual dismissals must not be based on pure logic, but rather a mixture of conscious logic and subconscious heuristics. Sometimes what's so easy to see in others, is near impossible to see in ourselves - such is the nature of the human mind.

As for some examples of what I'm talking about:

Here is a person taking the definition of Fascism and applying it to Nationalism:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21504768

Here is a person who seems to believe they can both read minds and predict the future (but apparently can not defend the facts they have learned during those exercises):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21501182

Here is a person who believes that it is impossible to love one nation more than others. Knowing such a thing would also require mind reading abilities:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21501200

More mind reading, and the stating of opinions as if they were facts (this is very common):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21500900

I mean, on one hand this is just people being people, nothing to lose any sleep over. On the other hand, this isn't /r/politics - is it asking too much that we strive for a higher standard of thinking and discourse here on HN? And furthermore, it might be worth considering if this sort of behavior might be counter-productive to the speaker's goals in more way than one.

So I've read each of these threads. Seems like you were engaged in particularily divisive topics with those that have strongly held beliefs. For what it's worth, I found your thoughts to be the more reasonable stance.

Strongly held beliefs are perfectly fine. Presenting opinions (or information derived from reading of minds or the future) as fact, is not - in my personal opinion that is, my opinion is clearly not shared by all others on HN. Perhaps the ends do justify the means.

Try advocating for open borders, an end to Capitalism and the dissolution of the Nation State. This, too, is beyond the pale for the bulk of Hacker News readers.

Likely because the discussions around them are pretty vapid. Open borders and the dissolution of the nation state are at odds with having any kind of social safety net, preventing violent mobs from taking over, preventing the remaining world powers from taking over, etc.

Ending capitalism hasn’t worked anywhere, ever. What are the logistics of that even if it doesn’t involve violently forcing people to stop trading goods and services directly? Who sets prices, who sets salaries, who decides how ore from mines is used and how electricity is divided?

In all of the posts I’ve seen advocating for those things, none include anything resembling intellectual curiosity. It’s always just a quip in response to the revelation that some people have less than others.

"Discussions around them are pretty vapid," he said, before diving into the most well-worn cliches on the subject.

You could do some deeper reading. It's intellectually dishonest to eschew a subject for your own superficial understanding of it.

1. https://crimethinc.com/books/no-wall-they-can-build 2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/187149.Open_Veins_of_Lat...

I have, and the two links you provided are perfect examples of the detached quips I’m speaking of. A whimsical rehash of Marxist ideas without any relevance to how it should work (you’ll notice this is how all Marxist books function) and a book about Mexican migrants that does nothing to address what replaces the positive features of a nation state in the context of fully open borders.

> a book about Mexican migrants

No, it's primarily about the people of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Just one of many trivially falsifiable positions you hold.

Anything seen to be advocating specifically for the benefit of white people is often seen as heresy around here, though there are pockets of positive sentiment.

Pointing out the environmental impact of having biological children is always unpopular here. A lot of HN-ers are pretty attached to the 'three kids and a white picket fence' lifescript.

Interestingly advocates of veganism (which has a similarly massive impact on your carbon footprint) are much more welcome, but I guess for most people the drive to reproduce is more inherent that the desire to eat meat.

Maybe because children are somewhat ingrained in us a species. Also, just because an idea is unpopular doesn't mean it is good.

Yes - it's not surprising to me that few people are willing to consider adopting or living a 'childfree' lifestyle, only that the suggestion that doing so is an extremely effective way to reduce your carbon footprint is received so poorly.

I would suggest that whether an idea is good and whether it is popular are mostly orthogonal, but also that encouraging people who aren't certain they want kids to not do so is, from the perspective of someone concerned about climate change, a good idea.

If the solution to a hard problem is that obvious and people aren't doing it then it's not really a solution and/or you haven't correctly identified the problem.

Those comments are unpopular because most people can see they're just smug self righteous twitter tier mic drops.

Maybe I wasn't clear; I'm not talking about comments on random threads about climate change suggesting it could be solved easily if people just didn't have kids. I don't think it's unreasonable, though, to suggest not having biological children if someone asks how they could lower their carbon footprint.

> If the solution to a hard problem is that obvious and people aren't doing it then it's not really a solution and/or you haven't correctly identified the problem.

I don't see how this is compatible with the observed reality that individuals make choices that are not best for society (whether due to rational self-interest/incomplete information/behavioral factors).

I suppose you could say there's room for that under redefining the problem, like "The real problem is that people refuse to employ known solutions to those problems."

That salvages the argument, but deflates it as an argument against talking about the known solutions: discussing them is part of the solution to such a meta-problem, directly, by leading people to employing them; and indirectly, by leading to insight on why people aren't employing them yet.

The former is hazardous (and verylittlemeat spoke against it): people fight for their views on the internet, and it degrades discussion more than it reaches people. The latter has leverage and is potentially highly impactful (i.e. the kind of discussion I come here hoping to find).

Many of the opinions downvoted on HN fit the same mold. They're what I call "if you're an alcoholic just stop drinking" arguments.

They're totally reductive and really just serve to stroke the speakers ego or shame others rather than actually address the issue.

I agree; it's sort of an escape hatch. There's no problem I can't solve if you always give me "Redefine the problem" as one of the options!

I mostly don't downvote anti-having-children(?) comments (I just ignore them), but I think most of them are counter-productive because, as others say, the desire to have children is ingrained to a lot of people, so not having children is a really tough sell. In light of the climate emergency we're facing, it almost sounds like deliberately advertising a wildly unpopular plan, detracting from other actionable plans with much higher chances of being accepted.

And the (not always, but frequent) I'm-holier-than-thou-because-I-transcended-ape-instincts vibe doesn't help.

Suicide is also a good solution from a climate standpoint. If you're seriously considering life choices which directly impair your reproductive chances you already lost the game.

> Pointing out the environmental impact of having biological children is always unpopular here.

1) Because you're treating an idealized version of "the environment" as a terminal goal.

2) The people most likely to agree with your argument are precisely the ones who should be having more kids.

Who should be having more kids? And consequently, who should not?

I didn't say anything about how anyone should have fewer kids. However, intelligence and political attitudes are highly heritable, so when smart educated middle class people (regardless of race or country) decide not to have children so that they can do their small part to "save the planet", what they're actually doing is their own small part in helping ensure that the next generation is turned over to people who are less intelligent and don't share their political beliefs.

Gender issues and workplace diversity.

"Gender issues" and "workplace diversity" are vague topics, not "truths" or even specific ideas we can discuss.

We all know what truths and specific ideas those terms encompass. Stating them brings a flurry of downvotes. Even pointing in their general direction gets downvoted.

People claiming that their ideas about those areas are "truths" can lead to a lot of downvotes, yes. Those people then claim that others are "suppressing the truth". They never seem to even consider the idea that their "truths" may in fact be mistaken.

Pretty much every comment on every subject comes down to someone claiming that their ideas are truths, though, and not every comment gets downvoted so much.

Not every wrong idea has a history of being contradicted so frequently, either.

Try posting Rushton and Jensen and see what happens.

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