Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

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The world is full of people who disagree with you, but you need to learn more than ever to recognize and filter out what you don't care about. I don't even view replies to posts any longer, 98% of the time because I am not seeking validation sharing my opinion.

This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "broadcast something into the void" and ignore replies. But over time I came to realize that a. I don't scale to engaging with every single person who replies to something I say online, and b. I don't owe those people a response or any of my time/attention; especially the trolls and bots and other lamers that are so prevalent these days.

So now I'm more comfortable (albeit maybe not 100% comfortable) with treating things in more of a "fire and forget" fashion. I say what I want to say, and people can do with it what they will. I just can't be arsed to engage with the trolls and other randos. But... if somebody has a mature, reasonable, professional response then I am willing, on a selective basis, to dig in deeper and have a longer discussion.

I no longer say things online except some rare occasions. Mass social media online discourse will slowly vanish in the next 15 yrs

That's an interesting thought. What do you think will replace it?

Not sure but I think it will be more focused on offline life instead. AI and enshittification will make the internet and the core error in its monetization based on ads so bad that it will be replaced by a much smaller and more private version.

Is this one of those rare occasions? :)

I don't think HN is immune from the "redditization" of the internet, though it's certainly a better community than most.

I always feel kinda bad about starting/continuing a 1 on 1 conversation on here because of the "don't cross-examine" thing in the guidelines.

> "redditization" of the internet

'Redditation' of the world. If it were only taking place on the internet it wouldn't be all that concerning.

Hard agree with this - sometimes find myself typing out a well-intentioned response, but then cancelling because of the potential downside years in the future for some anodyne opinion held today. Not to mention Roko's Basilisk (all hail the benevolent AI! :)

Idk seems like you post comments on HN almost daily.

But do they say anything?

I'm curious. You say what to say. What's the incentive to do this? Educate people or...?

He doesn't reply anymore.

Mindcrime did in fact

I don't really put that much thought into it, TBH. I mean, yes, there are times when "educate people" is explicitly the answer, but not always. Sometimes it's just a reflection of some vague sense of desire to share and communicate with no particular purpose. That seems to be a sort of part of human nature for most of us, to some degree.

Probably you won't read this anymore but maybe some other people, or maybe nobody. But anyways I appreciate the answer(ing) you did!

Just to be clear, I don't mean to say that I don't reply to anybody, ever. Far from it. I enjoy a good conversation - *so long as it's some combination of productive, interesting, polite, professional, etc.*. I was trying to say that I'm more willing now to not reply when it's a response that is clearly just trying to start an argument for the sake of starting an argument, or somebody who is rude / disrespectful / etc.

I reply to people all the time, especially on HN where the S/N ratio tends to be a bit higher.

Indeed. When the conversation goes for example in the direction of: 'i am right, you are wrong', it is best to categorize as noise not begging a reaction.

> What's the incentive to do this?

That is no doubt one of life's mysteries, ultimately, but people writing down their thoughts seems to be a common practice amongst humans. One theory is that it helps the brain process information, but who knows? No matter the exact mechanism, though, the incentive is the same as why anyone writes something they are thinking about down.

> Educate people

Forum-going is a solitary activity. There are no people other than you. Just you and your thoughts, along with some software to prompt you with some ideas to think about (which is the value-add over a traditional journal).

And that is the problem with the 'Redditization' of the world being discussed. That solitary activity, which is fine when done in solitude – whatever floats your boat, is leaking out into the real world where other people are there to feel it and that has consequences. An increasing number of people are failing to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, thereby treating people in the real world as if they are software. But people are not software, so you find these social issues emerging.

How nice of you to give a rather elaborate answer to a question asked towards somebody else.

It's a funny take, a forum is just you vs software. If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back! Or maybe it's the other way around? These days, one never can be sure.

> How nice of you to give a rather elaborate answer to a question asked towards somebody else.

And how wonderful it is that you, dear software, provided another prompt after my last journal entry. I wasn't sure of what to write next, so this prompting has proven quite helpful.

> If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back!

Prompting is two way street, indeed. Input into the software from the person may produce a result from the software, and the output from the software back to the person may produce a result that is fed back into the software. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, this is the value that said software offers over a classic journal.

But, regardless, if that is how someone wants to spend their time in solitude, more power to them! But we do see a problem emerging where a growing number of people are not able to differentiate between people and software and are taking that solitary journaling with prompts out into the real world and are treating people as if they are software. But people aren't software, and this leads to social problems. Which isn't terribly surprising. If people treated other people as if they were dogs, you would find an emergence of social problems too. It turns out, for the best outcome of people, people need to be treated like people.

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