Hacker News Reader

Comment by robonerd | Hacker News Reader

If carbadtraingood was upfront about wanting the change as political activism, I wouldn't have responded to him. I don't think it will ever be an effective way at combating racism, but at least such a position is honest, upfront and respectful to others in the conversation. I have a lot more respect for people who admit they want to ban 'blacklist/whitelist' to effect social change than I do for the people who pretend they want the words stricken for for wholly apolitical reasons; that's simply cowardly and insulting.

View on HN

I don't know what to tell you, you seem convinced I'm lying on an anonymous web forum. My responses have netted me like 3 karma, so clearly it earns me no clout to hold this opinion. There's no incentive for me to lie here.

Me: My opinion is A

You: No, your opinion is B, and you are cowardly and insulting.

Me: Genuinely, my opinion is A

You: You are pretending. No one believes opinion A.

I'm not sure what's so challenging here. Either I'm not aware of my own opinions or your worldview needs to be updated. I'm happy to discuss further if you'd like to understand the curious specimen I am better.

Just, maybe can we do that with fewer insults?

Depends on what opinion A is.

What does it take to convince you that the opinion someone expresses is their genuine one?

Given there's literally no motivation to lie, Occam's razor would suggest that the belief is genuine.

There are plenty of reasons to lie, so stating "there's literally no motivation to lie" is a pretty bad start in convincing me you are genuine..

Can you supply a few? Again, this is a fresh account on an anonymous internet forum, and the posts I make generate single digit upvotes.

So what are the motivations to lie in this thread?

what are the motivations to post at all? start there.

you keep referring to upvotes, but hn internet points are pretty meaningless either way - the validation behind them is probably more important.

Motivation to post: discussion is interesting. Sharing and hearing opinions is interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com