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Comment by ParetoOptimal | Hacker News Reader

> The fediverse makes these bubbles so much worse, with servers of like minded moderation creating a trend towards groupthink as opposed to representing a variety of opinions.

You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed.

> regression towards the normal mean.

Yeah, the normal mean is something to strive for... If it already benefits you.

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No one questions that living in a bubble is comfortable. But your comfort comes at a cost, which is that people you disagree with aren’t exposed to disagreements with you. They’re now in a bubble (or “safe space”) where everyone agrees with them, so they’re more convinced than ever that they’re right.

And yeah ok, you say that’s not your responsibility. That’s fine, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when society is torn apart by these differences.

This comment is the slippery slope fallacy because the person responding to you has rightly pointed out that not every situation that's described as a "groupthink bubble" actually is one; sometimes it's just people not wanting to hang out with guys who drop the N-word "as a joke" or overtly support authoritarianism or whatever. Maybe the assholes getting shown the door in such situations always tell themselves that "Society is about to get torn apart by me getting treated this way" but thinking it does not make it so.

> sometimes it's just people not wanting to hang out with guys who drop the N-word "as a joke" or overtly support authoritarianism or whatever.

When they exit, the remainders are going to more and more normalize these, as more and more of the moderates exit. Eventually it could even become the default norm.

(The process has occasionally been compared to evaporative cooling[1].)

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...

>sometimes it's just people not wanting to hang out with guys who drop the N-word "as a joke" or overtly support authoritarianism or whatever.

those people were formed due to and in part of a bubble; and denying them the opportunity to have their bubble popped as it causes you discomfort is the exact opposite of being able to express oneself at all - it always comes with the chance of making someone uncomfortable.

"In order to be able to think, you must risk being offended." -JP, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BW9haau6Hw

I’m really confused here. Are you saying black people live in a bubble for not wanting slurs thrown at them? It’s not like black people are unfamiliar with that word or the word is particularly enlightening? Who are we making uncomfortable by barring calling black people racial slurs, here? This is absolutely baffling logic when applied to racial slurs and black people.

The kids call the kid the n-word because they are in a bubble where that was okay.

Until they get their bubble popped.

But you think it's better to all live in separate, but presumably equal, bubbles.

Maybe this is some cultural difference, but I kinda don't get why using n-word is different from using any other slurs. Most people would agree (I hope) that slurs are not part of normal, civil discussion, and I cannot understand why would anyone try to create a safe space for discussion with someone who calls them "motherf*** fa**". I think such person has no interest in polite conversation, unless, of course, in other countries being showered with word vomit is considered a normal conversation starter, akin to "We have different views, let's talk about that"

The problem is that like there are safe spaces for people to not hear slurs, there exists safe spaces for people to say slurs without backslash. The first is not a problem but the second very much is.

If you can exclude the ppl that say slurs, the ppl that say slurs can do the same, ending up in slurland, were they get worse and worse until they go to the street and kill someone.

I really am not convinced that for the sake of the not-serial-killers-yet racists we have to let them call people slurs everywhere. Choosing to commit hate crimes is purely in the realm of irredeemable pieces of shit and society barring them from calling black people slurs on social media shouldn’t be considered a causal factor to it.

No they aren't irredeemable, or at least weren't always.

This doesn't respect the power of the radicalization pipeline and let's others escape accountability for their part such as avoiding conflict when their friend says a racial slur or joins an incel forum rather than providing a less extreme take.

The cost of freedom and liberty is the occasional tolerance of offensive things and ideas.

Small price to pay for a functional democracy comprised of unprecedented individual liberties.

But since some of the least-creatively-programmed amongst us want to use the "n-word" as an example (how surprising,) let's.

When and who get to decide which buzzword becomes a slur today? Tomorrow?

There are black Americans who prefer the word "negro," instead of the latest white-savior siccophant, acting as a virtue-signaling intellectually degrading euphemism.

Basketball Americans do not need your saving, thank you Mr Mayonnaise Man.

I was being exagerated a lil bit with the go to the streets and kill someone. What I mean is that bad people start creating circles of bad people and people that are slightly bad and would become good otherwise end up joining these circles and going extreme.

It is not that we must allow people to say slurs, is that it is better for those people to say slurs in a public multicultural site, so that good people can essentially social pressure the slurers into simply not saying slurs. This was possible with centralized social networks, but with decentralization is not possible as the nature of decentralization means that those kind of people now can create their own bubbles of hate instead of having to behave to be in the public spaces.

The parent's point is by separating everyone has a different mainstream imagine they believe everyone else normal lives in. Some of those bubbles may deem your bubble groupthink a certain way.

We had segregation at one point. I'm not sure that benefited everyone equally. Why return to that?

Woah, how did we get from “we don’t call black peoples slurs here” to “WHITES ONLY drinking fountains”?? White people arent weird troglodytes unable to be around a black person without slurring them. Calling black peoples the n word is not an essential part of being white!

You are helping the troll string up a straw man, no one has mentioned blacks aside from him.

And the left is completely ideologically unable to be around a black person without first acknowledging their privileged presence by an oppression tirade of apologizing blithering woke-double-speak.

The left and the right are equally racist for similar reasons, for example; they both think blacks should had gotten the vaccine first.

Dude I’m literally just saying that I don’t get how calling black people the n word is some kind of bubble. Basic human decency is a crazy social filter I guess. I feel like this jump is hysterics.

You don't understand how social bubbles THEMSELVES lead to kids normalizing the 'n' word?

You and OP are confusing "safe spaces" for "bubbles"

> But your comfort comes at a cost, which is that people you disagree with aren’t exposed to disagreements with you.

Whats the alternative? That most shared discourse happens in a single space? I think its fairly clear that that doesn't work so well when everyone has write access to that space: it either dissolves into q conflict zone, or bubbles form within it, or both.

Before social media there was less of a problem because of gatekeeping by traditional journalism and state regulation, and because print media moves too slowly to permit high-freqency positive feedback loops to form.

I'm not suggesting going back to the situation before social media, but I'm not convinced that "comfortable bubbles" are the main problem. I suspect that the frequency and scale of discourse are at least as important.

Bubbles are safe until the day you realize a bubble that would like you dead has now grown large enough to vote in a like minded government in your country. Then nothing is safe.

Jesus Christ the hyperbole. Name a single example of a country where a government that "wants certain people dead" has been voted in recently, other than such countries where this has been happening for decades anyway without social media even existing.

That's the pint isn't it? Social media is relatively recent however I'd say all those countries you tried to discount essentially had real life bubbles of various sorts.

Social media has been around for 15+ years. That's 3-4 election cycles in most countries. And the way I see it, the same kind of people are getting voted in that have been for decades. Yes, that includes Trump, who is just Reagan with a fouler mouth.

Myanmar.

USA. They only didn't succeed with their coup.

Myanmar has been in a nearly continuous civil war for decades. It's a failed state and always has been. That has nothing to do with social media.

And no US government in recent history, including the one before the current one, had killing people on their agenda. That's just complete and utter horseshit.

Fun fact, both of those countries don't use SI for everyday measures.

There are two kinds of countries, I guess. Those that ~landed on the moon~ voted in fascist leaders and those that use metric system.

> You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed.

There is a real risk that avoiding topics or people one finds offensive can make a person less resilient. Its a totally reasonable response to the internet where you have the opposite problem of being exposed to more than you otherwise would have, but creating too tight of a bubble can have downsides.

What you described as a safe space can quickly become, ironically, an intolerant one, albeit not for you, as you self-selected by joining.

I think OP is addressing the paradox of tolerance, hence the call for differing but not hateful opinions. There’s a fine line between the two and cloistering oneself among likeminded people seems to inevitably lead to some form of intolerance.

> You say groupthink bubble, I say place where I don't have to brace as much for racist or sexist views being expressed.

Creating a space where you don't have to face the fact that your fellow humans are sexist or racist is the very definition of a bubble.

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