[flagged]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427915
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25615692
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25779614
In reality, HN is divided on any topic that is divisive in society at large, including all the variations across the different countries represented here. That's a lot of variation.
Once you get over how both $X and anti-$X users pronounce HN to be an "echo chamber" (or "cesspool", an old favorite) controlled by their opponents, it's a bit of a puzzle how that is even possible. How can people come up with 100% opposite views of exactly the same thing?
I think these false feelings of generality are generated by the mind because the comments one dislikes make a much stronger (and more painful) impression on it than anything one likes or agrees with. The more one dislikes those, the more pain they cause, and the mind responds by creating an image, almost like an organ might secrete a membrane to protect itself. This explains both why these views are so identical (except for the high-order bit) and why they're most often posted by the people who have the strongest feelings for or against $X.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Unfortunately this creates a situation where everyone with strong passions feels like the site is dominated by their enemies and they're basically surrounded by demons when they spend time here. That's not so good for community.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
In reality, HN is probably less hostile than similar places of comparable size on the internet. It's just that it's organized in a way that keeps everyone together, so you're much more likely to randomly bump into remarks that you passionately disagree with. On other sites people protect themselves from this by subscribing or following or connecting primarily with users of their own tribe, and come into contact with the other tribe only when going out on skirmishes. I wrote a mini-essay about that if anyone cares:
The right has adapted a generalized "No U!" line of discourse, most prominent in the moral panic of "cancel culture". It's always based on the distortion of semantics and therefor false equivalency, ignoring context.
Please show me examples of actual arguments leaning politically left, which got upvoted and tolerated by the Hivemind. Please, try it yourself.
It is not both sides. There is a difference in intention and semantics.
> Let me ask you, should my comment be flagged and downvoted?
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903933, of course it should! It breaks more than one of the site guidelines, e.g. the ones that ask you please not to use HN for ideological battle and please not to go on about downvotes.
I'm sorry, but the phenomenon I'm talking about could hardly be clearer: the hivemind, to use your term, has both right-leaning and left-leaning devotees, some of whom are extremely passionate; the deep irony of the situation is how much they resemble each other. Both show up a lot on HN—their presence in the comments is likely far greater than their numbers in the community, because passion makes one more likely to comment on the internet. Both deny that their side is as common or as influential as it really is, and both make out that the other side is the dominant one and that therefore HN is under its control or in its pocket.
All that is just empirical observation. Whether the psychological mechanism I'm proposing to explain it is true or not, I don't know, but the empirical observation is the important part. No one can look at these things objectively and not see the similarity, indeed the isomorphism, between them.
Otherwise, I guess we have to agree to disagree.