Comment by divided | Hacker News Reader

Comment by divided | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

To be fair, this isn’t the sort of argument you’d want to make with any historical knowledge.

At some point in history, a lot of extremely bad opinions went from “almost everyone” to “vast majority” to an ever shrinking minority. Just to name a few:

- black people are inferior - women are inferior - gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry - Native Americans are savages - Depression/anxiety should be stigmatized

Each of these opinions followed a predictable but long path where more exposure to better opinions eventually won out. I’m unaware of any progressive opinion on egalitarianism that has failed to become mainstream given a long enough time horizon.

I don’t see any reason why this current “debate” will turn out any differently.

> I’m unaware of any progressive opinion on egalitarianism that has failed to become mainstream

You really should try reading a bit of history and looking a little further afield than your own back yard.

Be a friend and share a few examples.

Extrapolating from a trend that has held in the West for a double-digit number of years to the entirety of the future of humanity is probably an extreme form of availability bias.

A trend that has lasted decades? Try at least centuries.

Egalitarianism and tolerance is a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking. Constitutions gave power to the people over kings. Capitalism gave individuals a chance to rival the power of vassals who were determined by a caste system.

I’d argue it’s a trend that’s gone on much longer, but progress was much slower when access to information and ideas was not the same as the last century.

It’s not to say there aren’t setbacks, but those setbacks have always been temporary or localized.

Now can something completely prevent this progress? Yeah, but it leads to very dystopian futures that everyone should hope to avoid.

>I’d argue it’s a trend that’s gone on much longer

Please, do enlighten us how the first multi-cellular organism was literally the Whig view of history embodied. It will be very entertaining.

I commend you at your attempt at humor. It’s a solid approach when losing an argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com