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Comment by thewebguyd | Hacker News Reader

> you aren't allowed to have any positive or nuanced opinion of the tech.

I'm finding this isn't unique to AI, it's as if our entire society has become black and white, overly tribal. There's little room for shades of gray now.

Look at the issue of public drug use by the unhoused in PNW cities, as an example. If you state any opinion other than silent acceptance of the issue, you get called a far-right nutjob. Trying to stand up for your right to a safe public space brands you as evil.

There's no room for a middle ground or nuance anymore. You are either entirely in one tribe, or entirely out.

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> I'm finding this isn't unique to AI, it's as if our entire society has become black and white, overly tribal. There's little room for shades of gray now.

I grew up in a small village, 300 people. There you learn to accept your neighbor political rant, otherwise you're socialy dead and that's a pretty bad place to be. I learned to dissociate the person from its opinions.

I'm living now in the city, where you don't need to listen to your neighbor because you can find a more fitting social circle. People are not able to listen and compromise, they'll just turn around and ignore you once they understand you are not on their side.

I was explaining this to a woman who was going to move in a village, and she said "how can you be friend with a person from the other end politicaly?".

It's a strange situation where the far right rural nut job are more open minded than city dwellers.

>are more open minded than city dwellers.

I mean it's a bit difficult to be open minded to someone that would gladly have you killed.

"how can you be friend with a person from the other end politicaly?"

how can you be open minded and avoid being stuck in a bubble if you can't be friends with someone like that?

> Look at the issue of public drug use by the unhoused in PNW cities, as an example. If you state any opinion other than silent acceptance of the issue, you get called a far-right nutjob.

Are you having these conversations about politics in person? Or are these conversations happening on Twitter/Reddit/HN/whatever?

In my experience, online forums don't really work for political discussion for a bunch of reasons.

If you change to getting your fix of politics from long-form articles and radio-style scripted podcasts by professional journalists, you'll probably find there's a lot more room for nuance.

> Are you having these conversations in person?

I can't speak for the other poster but I've had the experience they described in-person, when I was living in Victoria

I rented an apartment downtown Victoria and had pretty frequent run-ins with addicts on the streets. My friends who lived and worked further out away from the downtown core had very strong opinions about it any time I had anything negative to say about the experiences

However your experience isn't necessarily where the other poster is coming from.

As a counter point, I have more nuanced conversations in person and am able to do it online; however I have also moderated a community for several years and learned how to do it.

From what I can remember of research, is that there is a difference in how people express themselves online vs offline.

"Our entire society has become black and white, overly tribal" It might be a recency bias, because the 19th and 20th were extremely polarized, politically… from entire nations split up on one issue, up to political assassination, civil wars… slavery, women’s vote, antisemitism, prohibition, civil rights, asylum, universal marriage, and much more.

Thanks to people being glued to social media & other rage bait machines on their phones.

The overly tribal, lack of nuance, is overwhelmingingly from the millennial generation. I don't see older people being like that.

This is a terminally online thing. It makes people more extreme. It also prevents them from realizing just how intense their POV is when everyone in their internet bubble is one upping each other.

In the real world I still encounter more moderation than not except from people who spend a lot of time on TikTok.

I am pretty certain that the book of at least 1 of the Abrahamic religions explicitly states that you either believe all of it, or you are not a believer.

What you’re describing is religion applied to every opinion.

> There's no room for a middle ground or nuance anymore. You are either entirely in one tribe, or entirely out.

A question I find myself selfishly asking a lot is: why do I have to be the one who is accepting or tolerant of others when they may not be accepting of me or my friends and family? I should speak respectfully of rural areas and their inhabitants but cities are free game to be portrayed as dens of crime, drugs, filth, and illegal immigrants? I should respect evangelical Christian communities but my transgender friends can't enjoy the same rights, benefits, and protections of society as cisgender/heterosexual people anywhere they go in the US? To make it explicitly political, Democrats are being asked to moderate and not be so intolerant but no such demands seem to be being made of Republicans or their voters.

You know what you are

>Look at the issue of public drug use by the unhoused in PNW cities, as an example.

This is such a wild thing to bring up unprompted.

Would you assume he was a far-right nut job?

Would I need to assume?

You are incredibly proving OPs point

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