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Comment by anon7000 | Hacker News Reader

Added to that is user choice over moderation and algorithms.

That’s what’s truly interesting about BlueSky. It allows for side A and B to both exist, with people who want to be more isolated in a safe space (so to speak) to do so. That’s a really great property. If I want to engage with content I severely disagree with, I can put it in a feed I check infrequently so that it doesn’t impact my life.

Humans aren’t good at coping with a constant barrage of disagreeable (for one’s personal definition of disagreeable) or inflammatory content.

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I like that aspect about Bluesky too.

On “safe spaces”, as you hint at I think many of us don’t want to be shielded entirely from opposing or otherwise differing lines of thought. Speaking personally, I welcome it if there’s actual discussion to be had. Good faith discussions and exchange of perspectives is great, but I have no patience for trolls, circular logic, insults, “debate” that wouldn’t even pass for high school level, etc.

Then you need to choose the safe space option. Under no circumstances should you opt to advertise removing content for others. Because your justification with "circular logic" could mean anything. This is the safe space option.

That more free platforms employ spam protection is no excuse.

I think circular logic is fairly well defined (from Wikipedia, “Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy, but a pragmatic defect in an argument whereby the premises are just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion.”)

That said, yes it’s not grounds for a ban. I wouldn’t block over it either unless the person in question is being obnoxious and e.g. following me around between threads and trying to stir up argument about the subject of contention or resorts to personal insults or something like that.

You will never have an agreement on it. Some see statements as axioms and others do not. Without premises, every form of reasoning can be regarded as circular.

You can have an authority on it that determines something as circular or not. But then you will inevitably end up with dogmatism.

Someone once said that circular reasoning works if the circle is large enough. Knowing the fallacy might help you detect faulty reasoning in your own thoughts. It doesn't allow for much more practical applications.

Maybe, though that suggests that there can be no such thing as a ground truth, which seems kinda shakey to me since it can be used to justify practically any viewpoint imaginable, regardless of how divorced from reality or lacking in verifiable proof it may be.

I would love to see a respectful debate starter pack on bluesy get started. Maybe controled by a bot that looks for words that are insults like “troll” “don’t melt snowflake”, etc and will boot you if you get caught. I like political debate, sharing of trustable sources, etc. I don’t like someone telling me I’m just a melting snowflake or cuck, when I bring in a link from a scientific journal to cite as part of my argument

I've just started using Bluesky. How does it compare to Reddit? There are dedicated subreddits for the conservatives and the liberals, and every subreddit has moderation rules. I use the right and left-focused subreddits to keep track of what's going on in different universes. However, I must mention that you won't find a reasonable discussion of left vs right ideologies on the main sub-reddits, as Reddit users are predominantly left-leaning. But at least there are smaller forums where these two groups meet and interact, and there is some debate.

Bluesky is a lot more like old, early algorithm twitter.

Reddit is a cluster of independently operated communities that occasionally get signal blasted onto the main feed. The top moderator of a subreddit owns it and sets any standard they like.

With Bluesky there are no defined communities outside of collective engagement with particular topics or hashtags or networks of follows. There is also a "Show me [more/less] of this" button every post, and so far it seems like the platform is pretty solid at respecting your preferences. They also seem to be actively moderating the really open bad behaviour off the platform.

I don't think Bluesky is as good as a well-moderated subreddit for long form discussion, but if you spend a little time curating your feed I think you might enjoy it.

Thanks. I'll invest some time in curating my feed. I'm not finding a ton of interesting starter-lists yet. I suppose it will get better over time.

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