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Nothing gets resolved in offline arguments either. That isn't the point. The idea of a non-factual disagreement is that both sides get to make a case and state their perspective, and everyone learns from it.

You self-selected to be here on hn, just like the rest of us did. In a sense, this is a bubble of a certain kind of thought and perspective. But it's a really big bubble that has some diversity.

I think the key is to avoid situations where you're constantly exposed to vehement disagreement. On hn we mostly respond to posts individually and get into various disagreements along the way. I think this is far preferable to something like a political discussion site, where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again.

> and everyone learns from it

Do they?

> where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again

Funny, I would describe HN as the same.

I'm on HN because the topics interest me as a computer programmer. But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that. Some of those within the HN bubble think very highly of themselves, but they may not be aware of the utter contempt that many outside the HN bubble have for "the orange site". (By the way, I could share a little CSS to add dark mode support and a few other tweaks to HN, if anyone is interested.)

> Do they?

If the participants are doing a good job of explaining where they're coming from, then yes. If they're just talking past each other, or worse, angrily insulting each other, then of course the answer is no. At that point it's no longer really a discussion at all, it's the online equivalent of monkeys throwing filth at each other, and it debases all involved.

> > where both sides end up arguing the same philosophical issues over and over again

> Funny, I would describe HN as the same.

Sure, some hot topics will keep coming up until the end of time. Copyleft vs permissive licences, for instance. I think that's fine though, and the ongoing discussion isn't pure retreading, it will evolve over time as the surrounding circumstances change.

A discussion forum like HackerNews shouldn't aim to be the equivalent of StackOverflow where there's a single authoritative page for each question, and duplicates are rebuked and shut down. That approach makes sense if you're trying to build a question/answer repository, but a discussion forum is something different.

> I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere. IMO there's no evidence of that

My opinion is no more well grounded than yours, but I disagree. HN discussions very often have input from experts. Anecdotally I think this happens less often on other forums. HN also has uniquely good moderation.

> HN discussions very often have input from experts.

Who are predictably downvoted!

I think the upvoting/downvoting mechanism by itself makes discussions unnecessarily competitive and hostile. Here's a crazy alternative: make the order of comments random and rotating. Of course you could still have flagging and moderation to remove bad comments, but otherwise get rid of the voting. You could still have nested conversations (though the UI for this is really bad on HN when the conversations become long), but the comments at each level would also be randomly ordered.

The theory is that the "best" comments rise to the top and the "worst" to the bottom. In reality, that rarely seems to be the case. It's typically a combination of popularity, controversy, accidental timing (some variation on "first!"), and the existence of replies to the comment.

Let me chime in on the voting issue (or I think what you mean is mob voting issue?)

Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it. But due to randomisation, it doesn't get enough traction. Note that this problem will become bigger the more top level comments you get.

This is the same problem with democracies also. Everyone gets to vote but the outcome might not be the best.But the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems.

Do you know any platforms which have successfully done the randomisation thing?

> Imagine a discussion on Linux and Torvalds comments on it.

This seems like a rarity. The vast majority of HN discussions don't have this situation, and it seems odd if the only purpose of HN voting is to upvote "celebrity" comments. There are much better places to follow the comments of celebrities than on HN.

> the alternative of randomly selecting people to govern also has its problems.

I strongly believe this is actually the least bad form of government, and vastly superior to elections, which are glorified high school prom royalty pageants.

> Do you know any platforms which have successfully done the randomisation thing?

No, though I have no idea what "algorithm" Twitter uses to determine the order of replies in a thread. (Probably not totally random.)

I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people. A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form. It's not important however, because I agree it's unlikely and I do see where you're coming from (I also share your sense of cynicism about democracy).

I don't use Twitter that much but I hear that twitter is really toxic. Assuming some part of twitter tweet section is random, does that inspire confidence that such a system might work.

> I didn't mean celebrity but more like knowledgeable people.

That's my point though. A celebrity like Torvalds will likely get upvoted, but in my experience, non-celebrity knowledgeable commenters often get downvoted by people who are much less knowledgeable.

> A random system, just like random election, does not guarantee best or betterness in any form.

I don't think any system guarantees betterness. :-) But random seems to be at least pretty fair and least subject to abuse.

> Assuming some part of twitter tweet section is random, does that inspire confidence that such a system might work.

There are different parts of Twitter. The Twitter timeline is definitely not random. It's either reverse chronological or "algorithmic", depending on your settings. But any given tweet can have any number of replies, and I don't know how Twitter determines the order of display of replies to a tweet. But it's overall a very different format from HN, so comparisons are difficult.

I see. My only contention would be that abuse is stopped but use is also equally degraded (due to randomness).

But I see what you're saying. Some combination of voting and randomness might br worth it. Also, another thing is maybe some sort of sentiment analysis can help (abuse mainly comes from trolling, virtue signalling etc).

I don't know, if ther was a way to figure out what value a comment adds (or inverse), then that, combined with voting and some sort of randomness might make the system fairer and better?

Well, there's a lot of forms of randomness...

One could use Thompson sampling. Every comment starts with 1 up and 1 down vote. The total number of up/down votes determine a beta distribution. When displaying comments, draw from the beta distributions for each comment, and present them in that order. High quality comments drift reliably to the top over time, but other comments have their own chances at the top to accumulate votes and better determine their place in the stack.

> But I don't share the common HN conceit that commenters on HN are better than elsewhere.

I think this is better expressed as “people almost everywhere else are terrible.” Its not that HN is better (although the crowd here is learned, intelligent, and generally aspires to professional behavior), its that most places online with more than 20 average daily users are trash.

> I could share a little CSS to add dark mode support and a few other tweaks to HN, if anyone is interested.

Please

I've resolved several online arguments that started in response to opinions I've shared. The methods the article mentions are methods I've used, usually because they seemed like natural ways to chill the situation.

I'm not sure I've ever changed anybody's mind online, but I try to always keep in mind that that is not my goal. When others disagree I try to make sure my opinion is understood, and I try to understand their opinion too.

One benefit to online argument over in-person is that it's easier to take time to reflect on my own reactions to others. I can take time to decide how to react. In-person it's often impossible to do that.

I agree with most of what you wrote - I like being able to choose when to be "in the bubble" and when to not be in. I think we'll really benefit over time as people learn how to use these different forums better.

I'm sorry, but where's your argument here? Virtually every stable system humanity has ever devised is stable precisely because that stability is adversarial.

Your argument against people becoming hostage negotiators relies, as far as I can tell, on this being an extreme state for humans, and therefore totally unsustainable, but like... why? It's like arguing that bridges can't stand up because they are subject to extreme forces from all sides.

The sanity to which you speak is actually just passivity, In the hostage negotiator analogy, it is what happens when the hostage negotiator hangs up before the negoatiation is over. In the bridge analogy, it is what happens when one of the forces acting on the bridge stops acting on the bridge.

Sustained human existence is work, your proposed sanity preserving option is just nihilism, and it is unsustainable, or at least mutually unsustainable with existence.

> Virtually every stable system humanity has ever devised is stable precisely because that stability is adversarial.

Where's your argument here?

> Your argument against people becoming hostage negotiators relies, as far as I can tell, on this being an extreme state for humans, and therefore totally unsustainable, but like... why?

No, my argument against people becoming hostage negotiators is that it sounds very stressful, unpleasant, and dangerous. I simply don't want to do it. Kudos to professional hostage negotiators, to be sure, but it's not a job most people want. At least professional negotiators get paid, I assume.

> It's like arguing that bridges can't stand up because they are subject to extreme forces from all sides.

Why are you comparing people to inanimate objects? I'd rather not be walked on, thank you.

> Sustained human existence is work, your proposed sanity preserving option is just nihilism, and it is unsustainable

This is a weird attitude. Humans have existed for thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years. All without online social networks. We could ditch them all and be fine. Arguably better than now.

> Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience.

I've found this to be less true than perhaps it used to be, particularly in places like HN. I don't think you'll change anyone's minds overnight on a big issue like climate change or racism, but I regularly see people share insights and perspectives in a reasonable way. Over time, these add up into real change, even if you don't see it happening in the course of a single thread.

> Over time, these add up into real change, even if you don't see it happening in the course of a single thread.

Without evidence, this is a difficult claim to accept.

Live long enough and you get it. It's just how people work. Seeing it happen is the evidence.

You don't need a study to prove gravity or magnetism.

I have certainly changed my own positions as a result of civil discussions. it never happens after a single exchange, but over time people can be convinced.

> Do they ever get resolved? Not in my experience. In fact I fully expect the same (non-)outcome in any replies to my comment.

Consider that it might be to the benefit of the reader to hear all the different possible ways of expressing the different arguments and counter-arguments, even when the participants themselves don't budge.

Also, I often find that while I don't usually change my opinion in the middle of an argument, it still helps me to have the weakest areas of my opinions highlighted so that I know not to invest too strongly in those aspects as time goes on. After reading a compelling counter-argument online and then seeing first-hand evidence of the strength of that counter-argument later on, I think I'm much more likely to change my opinion.

During an argument I think it actually benefits all participants to stick to a consistent viewpoint and defend it as strongly as possible to make sure that its strengths and weaknesses are fairly represented.

> During an argument I think it actually benefits all participants to stick to a consistent viewpoint and defend it as strongly as possible to make sure that its strengths and weaknesses are fairly represented.

My feeling is that a "debate" format — under which we can include online comments and replies — is actually one of the worst ways of informing people, and vastly inferior to other educational methods. I was serious when I said "go offline and read a good book".

Debates almost invariably become a show. It's about entertainment, about "scoring points", winning and losing. But the biggest loser is always the truth, which becomes lost in the back and forth. Debates encourage taking sides. They encourage the mistaken view that there are only 2 sides to every subject.

You can try very hard to avoid these pitfalls, but it's important to note that they come with the territory. Debates inevitably fall into these pits without very hard work. It's just not a great format for information and education. But a lot of people enjoy them immensely, which is why they happen, regardless of value.

The online arguments I get involved in are resolved often. Because I try to have them resolve. Plenty of times it's totally easy to resolve an argument. It can go like this: you spend some time thinking, realise that the person you're arguing with is correct, then you say "Oh, I see your point now. I didn't realise x which is what lead me to think y. Thanks for helping me realise this mistake and gain a better understanding of the issue."

> Thanks for helping me realise this mistake and gain a better understanding of the issue.

Are you on Twitter? I'd like to follow you. :-)

to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive.

This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community.

Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Michael Sandel called 'skyboxification'. Everyone sorts into their own group, often commercially, rather than having shared experiences with people from different walks of life.

The promise of the internet was that it would be easier for different people to have these interactions. It's sad that in reality it has devolved into a shouting match (it should be noted very often between people who are actually alike and engage in some Girardian terror of small differences, rather than between genuine strangers)

> the author is right that conflict is also productive

Could you explain why?

> The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community.

The Greeks put Socrates to death, so call me skeptical.

Regarding conflict, I think it's certainly true that some ideas are so poorly understood that it can be useful to have someone else approach the same idea from a different perspective, so as to 'pin it down' as it were. Martin's 'The Opposable Mind' is a great discussion of this dynamic, the book describes a single person changing their mind on a topic deliberately so as to 'grasp' it but a similar dynamic can work with two people.

Of course, disagreement doesn't necessarily mean conflict if the rules of civil discussion are agreed upon. I wish we had a way to filter our bubbles by what we find acceptable behaviour when disagreeing as opposed to what we agree with.

This is a common misconception, idiote was often used interchangeably with citizen and should be understood as a citizen operating in his capacity as a citizen (and not say in a formal poltical or emissary function) but by no means one who wishes to disengage from the polis. As for Socrates, as he is at pains to emphasize in the Apology, he was no 'idiote'.

There is a middle ground: alone is not enough, and too much is too much.

IMHO every really useful-and-not-harming work happens thanks to a small group of workers (where a little bit of 'conflict', let's say disagreement about a given subject, is often useful because it creates emulation).

A major promise of the Internet may be to alleviate the need for such a group members to be in the same place at the same time.

Agreed. As for the reason I’m on the comments here, it’s because this place selects for slightly more intelligent than average commenters and a community that does a good job and maintaining a reasonable tone.

Everywhere else I run a plug-in that removes all comment sections from the web and I don’t use social media.

Could you share the plugin?

Not the OP, but I did a search for Firefox extensions and I found this:

Hide Comments Everywhere-An anti-social social extension to hide commenting systems like Disqus, Livefyre, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, etc.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-comments...

Obviously uBlock Origin is a necessity, too.

Another tip: Prior to going to a shopping website (such as Amazon), I go to my Firefox browser settings, and I disable all images. This keeps me from buying useless junk via addicting recommendation algorithms, and removes the temptation very well. I also never go to one of these websites, unless I know exactly what I am planning on buying. In other words, I make a paper list of things I need to buy before I get onto one of these sites.

That plugin is for desktop browser. My biggest distraction is the phone actually. And firefox for phone doesn't support it yet. Somebody should really port it. Grease monkey also doesn't work on mobile browsers.

What a great idea. I have myself disabled colors on the screen to avoid those addictive contrasts.

I also try to do a phone fast every Sunday, where I give my phone to my wife and just live without it for a day. It's amazingly rewarding. You should give it a try :)

> I also try to do a phone fast every Sunday, where I give my phone to my wife and just live without it for a day. It's amazingly rewarding. You should give it a try :)

Amazing :-)! You know this is exactly the correct way, to reset your brain, to be motivated, so that you can work hard! I will definitely give it a try! Thank you :-)

> That plugin is for desktop browser. My biggest distraction is the phone actually. And firefox for phone doesn't support it yet. Somebody should really port it. Grease monkey also doesn't work on mobile browsers.

I do not know if this is helpful for your situation, but I keep my laptop [Windows 10 Professional] always on. I always keep my Synology NAS on. I usually remotely access these devices on my iPhone or my iPad. I prefer the iPad though. I essentially VNC in, and I then get on the internet via Firefox Desktop with extensions loaded.

Sometimes the remote connection is not an ideal situation. I keep a Rock Pi X, with a Windows 10 variant loaded on it, with me, when I am out and about. I have it configured with the Desktop browser extensions that I like to use and I basically VNC in: https://liliputing.com/2020/10/the-59-rock-pi-x-is-like-a-wi...

A smaller form factor like a Raspberry Pi Zero with an Ubuntu variant may be a better option, though.

https://rickyromero.com/shutup/

> Some people claim that you shouldn't live in an online "bubble", but I, uh, vehemently disagree.

You've crossed the digital divide here and misused the word "bubble" in the process. It's not anything like a "self-selected" group of like-minded people in a room. It's more like a group of people snookered into working for a pyramid scheme. At worst-- as with Qanon-- it's like a cult.

And even cult de-programmers-- people who know the "creation myth" of a cult, know its tactics, know its adherents, and are skilled and patient enough to "snap" cult members out of their stupor-- know not to physically put themselves in the midst of a cult for any extended length of time. Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone.

There's something creepily similar about the people who helped build online bubbles outright banning their children from using the devices/social networks they helped to create. They do that because the systems they built are quite literally the opposite of self-selecting.

> You've crossed the digital divide here and misused the word "bubble" in the process.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man.

> Because given enough time (and you can't easily predict how long that is) anyone will fall prey to those tactics, and then it's near impossible to get out using will alone.

Where did you learn about this? I'd love to be better informed.

I would guess it's an evolved survival strategy. You need to go along with the tribe you're in. It's just part of our nature to do this.