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Comment by CoastalCoder | Hacker News Reader

For in-person discussions, we should probably factor in the nature and depth of the relationship.

For example, if I'm just chatting with someone at the park, I don't expect them to welcome a serious critique of views they espouse.

But if I've known that person for a long time, and we're invested in each other, then I'm more likely to challenge or at least discuss touchy matters.

Internet discussions, depending on the forum, tend to be somewhere in the middle. Being in a particular forum signals that people want to discuss certain topics. And anonymity allows a certain boldness, but it also means greater risk of being misunderstood or being treated uncharitably.

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There's also the fact that when you're online there's a zero risk of being punched in the face when you say something the other person is likely to find unpleasant.

I was going to say it's mostly about the threat of physical violence (or lack thereof.)

Equal parts "non-zero threat of physical escalation" and "empathy triggered by proximity to another human."

It's hard to stare into someone else's eyes and feel... nothing.

It's pretty easy to look at text on the screen and forget the person on the other end is like you.

it is lack (or significantly lower risk) of pretty much any threat. In real life people with different opinions are punished in many ways, not just physical (is anything i'd say the pure physical punishment is frequently not the main concern). Being anonymous online (or hard to reach in some other way, like say residing abroad) allows at least some freedom of speech.

The idea that there are folks who believe that people with differing opinions should be punished that I find disturbing.

It's dehumanization. We use that word in a bad way most of the time but in the case of online discussions, it's quite normal. Like I know that you're a real person and you know that I am a real person; however, when were talking online that fact can get ignored by our brains.

It goes from "I'm talking to a person" to "I'm responding to brabel". In a physical conversation it's impossible to achieve the same level of "dehumanization" because you're staring at the person.

That's my Sunday couch quarterback explanation.

Online you may also be communicating with GPT3

>"I'm responding to brabel"

More like you are responding to a graffiti he has left on this website. Just like people draw (often stupid) messages on the walls of public toilets.

But you’re discussing topics and sometimes bringing data or links to resources that are impossible in real life. Oral language conveys an extremely poor density of actual information, compared to a book for example - that’s why politicians win using oral language.

Reading online is like reading in a book: You can learn a lot, on topics where you’d need to travel 1000km to find the first expert.

Unfortunately, writing online isn’t made with the same dedication as writing a book: We don’t spend time collecting proof and links and quotes and performing regressions and meta-analysis before presenting our results. But HN rules entice people to do that, and people doing it was the strength of HN until ~2010.

If that’s what one calls depersonification, I’d argue that an engineering book is very depersonated too, and it’s its strength. No emotions, just raw information all the time.

Also in real conversation it's unlikely that one just adds a quick comment and leaves.

i would not go that far. just the risk of putting you into a grumpy mood is deterrent enough. who wants to sit next to a grumpy person for the rest of dinner for example?

It seems like a lot of internet internet comments think physical violence is a near unthinkable action to respond to non physical violence with and a lot of others think most people are a couple sentence exchange away from getting punched in the face.

I think with a few sentences it is often going to be possible to convince someone to punch you in the face.

I know a few people who can easily be pushed to violence but, speaking personally and for most people I know, there's no words for which I would punch someone.

I’d argue even more than physical violence, irl you risk making yourself a total pariah a lot more.

but online the relationship has the reverse effect.

if i know someone in person, or at least have developed a deeper online relationship (through remote collaboration for example) i am going to treat time like i would in person, whereas if i don't know them as i don't know you it becomes much easier to say "you are wrong!" because i don't have to fear your negative reaction. as you say here, anonymity allows for a certain boldness

i occasionally find my self starting a comment on hn with "that's wrong" but once i write the actual explanation i realize that i can make my point without that aggressive lead, so i remove it. and then i go over the text and see where i can reduce the boldness without weakening my argument, for example by prefacing statements with i feel or i believe or i understand instead of stating them as absolutes or indisputable facts.

but this is usually a second editing step that i have to consciously think about. though maybe after doing it often enough, it can become a habit or second nature to my writing

The difference is danger. The internet, when you are safe and sound in your home saying what ever shit you want with close to zero chance of getting punched in the face for it. Talking to someone on the street is different, you mouth off and there is a high chance you will get beaten, thus we are more polite.

This is 2 dogs interacting but my thoughts are that it is similiar. In this metaphore the internet is the gate.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=goRogFQWkZU

i don't know where you live, and maybe the wild west was like that, but in the rest of the civilized world, physical violence is rather frowned upon, so the risk for it to happen unexpectedly is really quite low, unless i am talking to someone who is already unhinged. otherwise we would have to have had a serious argument that escalated to a shouting match before physical violence becomes even remotely a risk factor.

as they like to say in china: don't start a fight, if you loose you go to the hospital, if you win, you go to prison

as i stated nearby, just the risk of changing your mood because i disagree with you, as this comment might do, is deterrent enough to have me try to make my point in a more friendly way.

this comment is intentionally snarky, because i feel the idea of physical violence as a risk just doesn't fit into my understanding of the world.

> i feel the idea of physical violence as a risk just doesn't fit into my understanding of the world.

If you don't purposely act as a rude and offensive person in real life you probably wouldn't encounter violence. If you are the type of person who levels insults and slurs, argues about religion or politics, or makes accusations of misconduct, you may encounter violence. As a rule, "upper class" people have codes of politeness and don't do these things, but it's not necessarily so for others.

that is a weird perspective, if i may say so. i don't think rudeness has anything to do with class. there are plenty of polite and friendly people as well as rude people everywhere.

The “and“ is important. Rudeness alone is rarely enough to provoke violence. Perceptions of what is acceptable vary quite a bit across class and culture as well.

sorry, lazy typing, i really meant both as you said it. and i still disagree. yes, there are differences, culturally and maybe even class wise, but not in a way that they can be generalized, at least not until you get to a very local focus.

As a very logical person who developed social intelligence much later in life. One very surprising thing I noticed, unthinkable to my younger self, is that many people only engage with people they are interested in.

If upon initial judgement and they find you not interesting, they basically tune you out, and won't attempt to find out what interesting things you have to say.

> If upon initial judgement and they find you not interesting, they basically tune you out, and won't attempt to find out what interesting things you have to say.

if they find you not interesting then why would they hang around? They've already made the decision. To them, you'll have nothing interesting to say ever.

> if they find you not interesting then why would they hang around?

I currently have the issue of appearing interesting, but not actually being so in reality. It’s shocking how many people approach me these fast, but for the most party anything will fall apart outside highly casual acquaintances.

On the other side, you only need to be really interesting once, or at most a few times. After they judge you attention-worthy you can basically stay quiet and they will drive the conversation for you, speaking as if there's no tomorrow.

I addressed this a few years ago in a blog post (submitted to HN today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31413840)

>Asymmetric communication is wonderful – it’s how we learn of ancient peoples, news stories from around the world, etc. But it has a major drawback, too.

>Because asymmetric communication takes less effort on the part of the communicator, they can refuse to engage with their audience in a focused fashion. Indeed, that is the benefit of being able to write: being able to reach an audience without having to focus on them while you are talking.

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