Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

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> I'd like to think HN is generally better at this than most communities, but it's hard to imagine we're immune.

We're much, much worse. "Most communities" are built around consensus. Show up at your Facebook group organized around your favorite hobby and you'll find that everyone has a bunch of similar opinions about most things, and that's the way most people like it. Walk off the reservation and try to pick fights over something controversial and you'll find the community walks away.

That sounds bad, right? What if consensus is wrong? Don't we need free thinkers?!

HN is an enclave of antisocial nerds[1] who think they're smarter than the rest of society. We live for disagreement. Discovering that we disagree with our peers isn't a mark of shame, it's evidence that we've discovered a Magical Great Truth, that our "peers" at HN are all sheep, and that we're therefore smarter than the herd.

Sure, Facebook fishing groups or knitting sites or whatever breed senseless group think. But on the whole "group think" usually works out pretty well and keeps people from wandering off into the scarier weeds of the thoughtscape.

HN? We breed radicals. And therefore we're more susceptible to deliberately radicalizing sockpuppetry, not less.

[1] To wit: we're basically 4chan but with an older demographic and industry cred.

Doesn’t that also create a kind of immunity, though? If what I see is a cacophony of differing views, then I am unlikely to be influenced by any particular sock puppet account.

Whereas a community that tends towards groupthink might have a narrower range of views, but if those views begin to shift in a particular direction then it’s much harder for those who are disadvantaged by that shift to resist, because to do so requires violating the norms of groupthink.

I’m not sure which is better. My own preference is to tolerate a wide range of views in return for robust disagreement being the norm, but I can imagine some (most?) people preferring the opposite.

About your last point, you hit the nail for me. HN is 4chan without the pure chaos, with people talking smartly. Here you can find all the political spectrum (including nazis), but people will try to not be as inflammatory as 4chan users (most of the time, at least). There's no limit to what people will defend here. I don't think that it's something necessarily bad for HN, but it opened my eyes about how tech billionaires are a bunch of HN users that got a lot of power.

Its really ironic that I read the term radicalism in Hackernews as being against tech billionaires and this is the sentiment that I usually see here reasonably (atleast in my opinion)

But your comparison to HN radicalism to equating tech billionaires as HN users themselves flips my whole comment upside down.

I don't know much about the political biases here but I like to think that most people are pro open source and that they dislike the manipulative characteristics deployed by some infamous tech billionaires or those companies. Usually I think that's the case unless of course someone might have a bias themselves I suppose.

That is something we are susceptible to indeed. Our job is to grok complex systems, and that easily leads us to hubris like we can push historians and sociologists away. I think the same can be observed in econometric circles, where I see inevitable complexity arising from human social dynamics, be it historic, cultural, sociological, or religious in nature, often gets ignored.

Don't forget that HN is a cold house for women and young men are much more likely to be radicalised.

I feel like people are radicalizing in Hackernews because partially tech is becoming at forefront of finance for many cycles and this combination of tech and finance [for better or for worse] and they are very predatory for the average person (Crypto scams, AI bubbles and the list goes on)

They are also very sneaky in their predatory nature at times so the average person either doesn't know the extent or doesn't look out for alternatives (Open Source) and other issues

Most people on Hackernews are able to realize predatory nature of Big tech (I think) and are usually very supportive of Open source.

Personally I may be wrong but one of the most common things we can discuss in Hackernews is the extent that big tech or such aspects genuinely harm the average person.

If we try to talk about this nuance or other related topics with friends and family, they suffer from the same issue and as such Hackernews becomes a place where people discuss this more frequently

I don't know if this counts as radicalism but a lot of my political viewpoints stand from that one of the easiest ways to bring as such good points is when country can support Open source and can fight against unethical practices in a fair and square way in general.

> [1] To wit: we're basically 4chan but with an older demographic and industry cred.

Teenager from High school here. 4chan is genuinely a cesspool where trolling is the key purpose. I feel like hackernews is much more on the knowledge side of things so much so that I feel more confident about knowing certain projects or gluing things together and just this make shift attitude of make things work and curiosity with great influence to Hackernews and I cannot be thankful of it enough

Perhaps I try to be more agreeable though and see other person's perspective because I may be wrong I usually am and I think I just get this kick in having an agreeable conversation in the end. I think I can treat hackernews as a book for open source projects which are cool and interesting tidbits. I have found some really really great software which I must not have found if it were not for Hackernews and I am grateful for it

Ooh I got a question

Let's rephrase it this way, What would you prefer more, if your child used HackerNews or used tiktok?

Not being flippant: who _isn't_ radicalizing these days?

I 100% agree and I wanted to write something like this but In the end I chose not to, to point out all the other issues first

The reality of the situation is that in many places like Reddit or even twitter which are radicalized, firstly they become echo chambers and secondly, instead of being radical for bringing change for all people (Think focus on open source but I think its not a radical idea but still) but what ends up happening in those places is that they literally treat each other as another species and the rift grows even further and secondly that they also mostly don't have ideas but rather ideologies to implement.

In this sense, Hackernews is far more effectively radical atleast in my opinion. I must admit that I am a little surprised about the comment of HN being radical because usually, its mostly knowledge based and sure there are some political comments but nobody's forcing somebody to acknowledge those

So in essense, a lot of people are being radicalized, either some just dont know how to approach things or they try to focus absolutely on the us vs them dynamic where the major systemic issues are just not focused on (inequality,poverty etc.)

The world is radicalizing also because its leaders are usually radicalizing it too.

I must admit that the world feels like on the brink of war and no this time its not hyperbole. There are systemic issues in world and instead of addressing them, we are trying to force the focus outside these by all the recent political issues happening and I am not even sure if somethings can be done or the domino has fallen already and I am sure I must not be alone in this when we see massive wars erupt all around the world.

> Not being flippant: who _isn't_ radicalizing these days?

To be deliberately flippant but making a much more serious point than it should be: migrant laborers in the USA.

For the most part they're just honest folk trying to make a buck while a bunch of cosplaying superheroes wander the streets trying to hunt them down.

> Teenager from High school here. 4chan is genuinely a cesspool where trolling is the key purpose.

Middle aged curmudgeon here. And the older I get the more I realize that the hyperliterate technomagical credential flinging you see in the comments here is... basically just trolling. We do it to make ourselves feel smart.

Sure sure, we all want to imagine ourselves geniuses changing the world with the power of our intellect. But that's hard, and most of us settle for getting in a good barb or three in the comments.

Yes, you might be right. Still I feel like there are people who share some genuine info on products and other interesting projects for fun.

I think I can agree with you that perhaps sometimes comments might be getting barbs (first time I heard this phrase, I guess a still lot to learn xD) but also that this behaviour isn't rewarded in the context of an article or anything usually.

Most articles are about coding related software and the pretext around it thus makes comments mostly helpful, or atleast have genuine reasons that one can weigh against

And that behaviour is what's rewarded even in somewhat political posts on HN as compared to something like reddit which might not be helpful in a general stance and especially so in its political posts (or anything related to it)

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