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Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

> so many of the comments here that seem to lack even the most basic of human decency

Reading them, so am I. There is no sign of empathy: that understanding of another individual, the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes, that is fundamental to a healthy society and (IMO) personal integrity.

I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay. Yet lacking as you phrase it 'human decency', or for me, 'empathy', as so clearly illustrated in those harsh, inhuman, uncaring, comments that show no concern nor understanding of the person, the human, the feeling caring uprooted emotion-bearing trouble-striving human at the center of this...

I don't know. I feel like quite a few people in this post need to question themselves.

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I can't stand reading the conversations on HN about anything related to the well-being or suffering of other people. I try to limit myself to technical topics only, or I start to get depressed and/or angry.

There's a vocal contingent of PHB middle manager of the year contestants that are desperately trying to flood discussion with their inhumane opinions to make them seem mainstream. The previous "budding Elons" label is a good one, and we should be flagging these bad actors at every turn.

Even in technical discussions, you can observe arrogance and dismissal by commenters who are unacceptably underqualified in the subjects being discussed. This place has become a joke nowadays.

> This place has become a joke nowadays.

I wouldn't go that far. The signal to noise ratio is worse than it used to be, but there's still nothing else like HN and there are still a lot of interesting technical conversations to observe or to be had. I continue to learn more here than anywhere else. I'll cope with putting in a bit more effort mentally filtering out the unproductive conversations.

>but there's still nothing else like HN

yes there is, lobste.rs is exactly HN but with a lot more selective membership and hence better comments.

i would not say it's "exactly HN". lobste.rs articles are much more programming focused. majority of posts you find on HN you would not find on lobste.rs

which is fine, if that's what you want, but, as a daily reader of both, they aren't even close to being the same thing

So the site invite only? It looks interesting, but I’m not sure I know anyone on it or am interested in bumming around for an invite from a stranger. I guess that’s part of the charm.

It is, and I am not a member. I just stay logged out and read only

That’s generally how I use HN, so I suppose that’s fine.

I just ignore those comments (and perhaps some my own comments are deemed under qualified by some).

I prefer that strategy rather than have an environment of "gatekeepers".

"Basic human decency" might be the only gate worth keeping. Without that, harassers and trolls have more effective freedom of speech than their targets, and I for one find that unacceptable. See also: paradox of tolerance.

>paradox of tolerance.

Great observation.

Agree.

Having worked in tech for 25 years it doesn’t surprise me. Some people I’ve worked with are barely human.

A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.

I hope with ubiquitous communications now that we tell these people that no it’s not acceptable to behave like this! Compassion should be awarded.

>A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.

Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who ignored it, that lead to his rise. There are a fair number of potential 'hitlers' around us, but it's primarily people around those dysfunctional individuals that keep them in check.

Oh no he has. His grandparents were tortured to death by nazis. He’s been to Auschwitz.

There are two types: the ignorant and the complicit. The complicit are who you have to worry about. It was seen as a means to an end and was without compassion or care of others just the personal gain of rank or power.

Ah, near first hand experience. Unfortunately that wisdom will be lost in another generation, and to even most contemporaries that did not experience it, it's just another story. History will repeats and teching history will not help.

Indeed. My mother actually said that only fresh blood keeps the thoughts of war at bay. She wasn't wrong. I really hate this about our culture.

“Barely human”.. that’s a pretty nazi-esque way of looking at others. Perhaps people simply have different opinions and priorities.

Darned if you do, damned if you don't. You need to block fascists but need to stop short of fascist levels of intolerance or else you're the fascist. Strive not with monsters, as Nietzsche said.

I understand that there are different opinions and priorities but consider that a lot of people to be entirely lacking in any virtue and compassion restricted only by the power that they do not (currently) possess.

To empower those folk is how you end up with nazis, which is the point.

Unnecessary reference to Nazism. I agree with your general idea, but being intolerant and unempathetic isn't something only some people in the 30s started to do.

Below average empathy is pervasive and a pretty common human characteristic, like being tall or having curly hair.

If the total lack of employment rights (no maternity or paternity leave, no sick leave, no holidays, no protection against being fired) was applied in any other developed country, it would be the number 1 political topic every day until they were brought back.

Ask an American active in tech-orientated social media about it, they'll invariably say "Oh, well of course that doesn't affect people like me".

> Ask an American active in tech-orientated social media about it, they'll invariably say "Oh, well of course that doesn't affect people like me".

Until they want to go to a restaurant, but it's been shut down because the owners couldn't get it in their head that they should pay more than minimum wage and no one wants to work for that. Or the restaurant is open, with employees who cannot afford to stay home even though they are contagious, and the tech people get sick. Or their boss wants to shrink the workforce by 10-50% and so they make it undesirable to be there to avoid paying severance.

And it has to be them, not people in the same position.

But it's only some Americans who think like that. Too broad a brush doesn't work.

It's unsurprising when you consider the history of Silicon Valley and the Randian philosophy that underpins everything. All problems can be solved by the union of entrepreneurship and technology, and anything that stands in the way of progress is a distraction.

There's an Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace [0] that I think is relevant. HN (and even at this point broader programmer "culture") is a "fruit of the poison tree" in a sense - the philosophy of individualism and "greed is good" runs deep.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...

> I read a comment a few years ago that no-one thinks of themselves as a bad person. To yourself, you are always okay.

From my focus on emotions and conflict over the last 10 years, I'd say many people actually think they're bad people (or at least that they might be). I think one of the hardest things is to defend our own good intentions and I've found that as I get better at doing it for myself, I tend to also defend the good intentions of others.

I wonder if it's not a bit like the Dunning-Kruger effect. The good people around us struggle thinking that they're bad, while the bad people blithely go around thinking they're good.

That is a really interesting thought. Thank you. Now that you mention it, I'm thinking that having a conscience means getting "false alarms" sometimes. One way some people choose to prevent that is to disable the alarm instead of fixing the actual problem. I'm sure anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has seen the literal form of that.

That's very insightful. I suspect you're very right. Thankyou for sharing the thought.

Emotional empathy may be relatively prevalent in the world (though sometimes it is more in the virtue signalling domain) but true cognitive empathy is rare and very much needed in abundance if we wish to continue to thrive as a humanity.

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