Then the ideologues and political commissars showed up, giving zero shit about tech or logical reasoning, this pulled the discourse down to the lowest common denominator and the rest is history.
Why should I take the moral high ground and listen to an argument I dislike if I'm not offered the same courtesy.
Old man here, No this was never the case. Nerds were always hysterical and used the ban hammer frequently. the difference between then and now is that there were more distinct islands of nerdary you could escape to, and they wouldn't blend together.
also they generally had a "no outside opinions" rule that meant that forums were single subject. This allowed you to socialise with degenerates like emacs users in different contexts without descending into flame wars (mostly...)
Nerds were often seen as poorly social since "logic and reasoning" would go against socially accepted norms. This where the fedora tipping meme comes from: "everybody understands that religion is not literal, but we have to all accept the lie for social cohesion". But "nerds" would be the ones willing to take the ridicule and ostracism because truth would be more important than conformity.
Reddit was the place to be for nerds and spread like a pandemic. However, karma points turned this on its head since you have a mechanism to enforce conformity in non-conformity that was the basis for "nerd communities". Nerds hobbies that would be the gateway are gated behind such platforms that enforce a social credit system in a totalitarian way. The would have been nerds are thus mostly integrated into the redittor archetype that is so fundamentally opposed to the nerd archetype; a contorted version of itself trying to fit through distorting mirrors.
I'm not disagreeing with you; but why did the nerds not destroy the ideologues with logic and reasoning if not for the horizontal pressure of other "nerds" subverting the concept?
Why should I spend my energy to discuss with someone who doesn't want to listen, and not rather build something I like or learn something I wonder about, or converse with the people I care about?
Life is too short to talk with walls disguised as humans. Talking with a wall, the ocean or oneself is more productive than doing unproductive self-torture.
One of the reasons why I stopped going on Facebook, even though a lot of communities I care about have moved there. I wrote a long comment about someone's suggestion about car maintenance, only to get a reply "I didn't come here to discuss this, if you don't like what I said then go somewhere else". Like, WHY EVEN BE IN A PUBLIC FORUM THEN. But I feel like that's just me and my early internet sensibilities. Nowadays people want to post something, get some likes, and not be challenged. Even a mild disagreement is met with immediate aggression a lot of the time, because people are just not used to talking on the internet at all(imho).
I don't think nerds are/were seen as poorly social because logic and reasoning go against social norms. I'll bite on the religion focus. If everyone understands religion is not literal, being smirk about taking it literally is not logical or reasoning or making anyone look smarter. It just makes you look like a dork. Subtext and not being meant to read literally are a core part of social interaction.
I see the same in school, when some overly literal students argue about the interpretation of a book they are assigned to read. "the author can't possible mean that" or "show me where it says that on the page" is a common lazy criticism with little value. Some people are just like that, and (warning: personal observation) nerds tend to be a bit more like that. But the arguments I hear from that corner against religion are seldom great, they are just some minor gotchas.
I don't want to get into the whole religion debate, and I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
It's quite sad that social mechanics in our society don't work well for some people, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and it doesn't make everyone except nerds "illogical".
> I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
There will always be people falling off on one side of the spectrum or the other. Personally, I haven't met anyone who takes the bible literally, and I know a _lot_ of Christians, including pastors and priests. Some people simply just believe that there is something more, others have a feeling that you can sense that, some just need this believe to feel safe, etc. I guess it depends on where you're from, I believe biblicism is more common in North America, or at least more visible.
Additionally, the "everyone understands religion is not literal" was citing my parent. Usually, "everyone" is kind of understood not to mean "exactly 100%". It's a device to communicate intent.
> You could just as sensibly flip the argument and argue that the garden-variety 'nerdy' atheist is talking literally about atheism but really doing negative theology ("your idea of God is totally wrong and does not exist, because the true God is necessarily inaccessible to human reason") but that would be silly and make you look like a dork too.
Yeah, it'd make you look like a dork because it'd be obviously incorrect. The intentions of your garden-variety nerd talking about atheism are pretty clear, and it's not to make some greater theological point. When you talk to people who talk down on religion and believers, it's usually really easy to tell whether it's because only they themselves understand the True Intention Of God or whether they just think Christians are stupid and if you're smart you have to be an atheist. Said garden-variety nerd is the latter.
I agree about the underlying intentions, but I was talking about the typical, literal arguments for garden-variety 'rational' atheism. The point that these arguments tend to map quite cleanly to negative theology would usually be considered a pretty strong one as a matter of philosophy. Of course, this can only be said to further highlight the difference in intentions.
First, the argument of your garden-variety nerd atheist don't always map so cleanly to negative theology. I've seen plenty of arguments in the realm of "The bible contradicts itself, so you're stupid if you believe in it. Checkmate", etc. You get the idea. Just some of the arguments map well to negative theology.
Secondly, the context is missing. In my original comment, I was talking about how being very literal is seen as poor social adaptation because subtext, inaccuracies etc are part of social communication. Pretending to not understand that, or not understanding that, does not make one a logical being, it just makes you look like a dork.
Your argument is applying a very literal take of the hypothetical garden variety atheist we've brewed up. This is the same as taking the bible very literal and then calling people stupid when they believe in it. It's not arguing the main point, but picking out something that's easy to criticize and building your argument around it. My point is that taking something very literal is exactly a sign of poor social adaptation when there is a relatively big agreement on not taking it literally by society.
Now, your garden-variety nerd's arguments hold up very well against people who actually do take the bible literally, but I'm getting to a point where I want to get off the religion debate, because that's not really what I wanted to point out originally.
Circling back to my original: Logic and reasoning is not against social norms. Being a dork who pretends to not understand or actually doesn't understand social norms just to make a point is. Being hurtful just to feel superior is against social norms. Pretending you're interested in "truth" and that's why you are not conforming to social norms is also a pretty stupid take, imo. Yeah, social norms aren't always great, and they certainly don't work for everyone and a lot of people are left out being the "weird" ones, it sucks. But the reason these people are the "weird" ones is not because they're on a noble crusade for truth and logic.
I'm pointing this out even though you're not the original commenter I was responding to because we kind of got derailed into the details of this thing that was more meant as an example than really the main argument.
I think you're seeing a relatively big agreement where there really isn't one. It's not just the U.S. or biblical literalism, it's also about most people not really being familiar with the notion that even the strangest religious doctrines might be "true in a non-literal (but still worthwhile!) sense". From that POV, the garden variety atheist's argument is raising that very point. You don't have to take the atheism literally to understand that it's hard to believe everything about religion in a literal sense.
I grew up, and still live, in a conservative state and a conservative family. That hasn't been my experience at all: I know a lot of people for whom the bible is a literal truth.
According to one survey I found[0], around ~20% of Americans (25% of Christian adults) say the bible is the literal word of god. Not exactly a huge amount of people, but a very considerable number nonetheless. I didn't find any numbers for other regions, but maybe it would help to see number of followers by denomination and try to derive some data from that. The official stance of the Catholic Church e.g. is that the bible should not be taken literally. Most protestants in Europe also don't practice much fundamentalism, but there are an estimated 25 million Evangelicals in Europe, around 2.5% to 3% of the population. There's probably more people preaching biblicism than only fundamental evangelicals, but I just wanted to look up two examples real quick.
[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word...
Because everyone has bias and ego and nobody has perfectly logical reasoning.
Why brag about how smart you are to people who’ll just think you’re arrogant and annoying? Why tell someone their religion isn’t real if they’ll just think you’re a heretic, or “best case” despair they’ve been living a lie? You don’t study (especially in lieu of fitness) unless you have motivation which is ultimately based on emotion. I believe it’s usually the same ego that makes alpha men, just that these nerds (usually men) are too weak to be jocks.
Nerds have always had their own social norms, with illogical conformity, groupthink, status signaling, gatekeeping, etc.
I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.
I remember Usenet in the 90s being 50% interesting conversations mostly about niche topics and 50% randomly devolving into flame wars in larger communities.
Even "Eternal September" as a concept was something from around 1993/1994 right?
Same for the 2000s era online-bulletin-board. I often go to thegearpage.net and am appalled at the amount of shilling, dismissals and disrespect, but then I remember that in the 2000s the main guitar forum was Harmony Central, which was mostly kids calling other kids moms names.
EDIT: But coldtea makes a good point about some (IMO) more recent changes: tone-policing, excessive marketing. There's IMO also a different attitude towards curiosity today.
Otherwise, my memory of early 90s internet supports exactly your conclusion. There may have been better opportunities for small discussions, but big ones devolved the same way they do today.
It was never a very placid or friendly place. There was more tolerance for vigorous debate than there is now. The debate didn’t change many minds, I suppose.
Not to mention for a good while, FOSS was a big nerd holy grail (informing many discussions and forums, away from corporate solutions shilling and careerism), and a big goal of every tech nerd (unlike after about 2010).
Also nerd culture was by nerds, for nerds, not dilluted and "championed" by every mainstream hipster.
Remember when even Comicon was something mostly nerds, the kind "normie" people used to point and laugh at, went, and sci-fi/superhero movies excited the same small demographic niche?
This feels like maybe even the majority of the problem.
In general corporate social media favors memetic content and disfavors "inconvenient" content. Inconvenient meaning things that cause non-trivial numbers of users to mash the thumbs down or "report content" button. The premise of that is supposed to be that people are reporting spam and trolling etc.
The problem naturally being that people will also use the platform's "make it go away" mechanism to penalize anyone who tells them things they don't want to hear. And then the sort of people who insist on telling the technical truth even when it's inconsistent with the political lie tend to get shadow banned into irrelevance, which leaves what in everyone's feed instead?
Slashdot really highlighted this for me - if you followed the site and the core forum of founders, dealing with moderation was horrible. The writing of CmdrTaco over the years really made it sound like it just made him miserable.
Oh, it kept the trolls and Nazis just fine (even brought some close to power).
What the investment killed was the regular curious / not-for-profit nerd.
Strong disagree. Having lived those times, it really really was different, and there are a bunch of reasons for it.
1. First, back then (90s, early 00s) there was very little financial incentive to participate in discussions. BBSs, IRC, forums etc. were mostly non commercial. People joined without any expectation of making a profit, just for "the fun" of it. And for something new, interesting, evolving. Way less perversion of topics for monetary gain.
2. People back then made a clear separation between being online and offline. We literally had the term IRL coined. So a lot of discussions were "in abstract" and much less prone to be taken literally or seriously. A lot less identity / ideology stuff as well. Having a clear separation made it easier to not confuse your real world self with your online persona. Having an idea debated wasn't about you / your identity.
3. Politics was much less divisive back then. There was political debate, but again a bit more "abstract" and theoretical. I'd say the moment when this changed was 2008s US presidential campaign. Until then the Internet was seen as "not important". It has changed a lot since then.
4. Entry barrier. This might sound elitist or disparaging, but it really was a thing back then. The people online were mostly tech inclined, or curious enough to learn. It was much more educational, and (linked to point 1 above) everyone wanted to learn the cool new thing, without any monetary incentives. Much more sharing of pure knowledge, helping out and so on. It of course changed over time, but the early days were really something beautiful. I have very fond memories.
> 3. Politics was much less divisive back then. There was political debate, but again a bit more "abstract" and theoretical. I'd say the moment when this changed was 2008s US presidential campaign.
At least as one of the "first ones" from the AOL days (too young for the Eternal September, old enough to have gotten online too early) - most of "us" were young and didn't care about News. We were more interested in Mr. Burns getting shot and whatever internal drama was happening in our online fan clubs. I remember 9/11 happening, but instead of switching websites I continued to read online webcomics and my "Learn VB in 24 Hours" book.
A lot of us were just younger then and our social groups were more focused on other things. I am in an indie game Discord right now that's clearly not my demographic anymore. I don't interact, I'm just there for game updates. But, those kids are making their own memories right now. I think as adults, we just sort of ~forgot~.
I'd claim a relevant axis is argument as deduction (common in mathematics) vs argument as rhetoric/persuasion (common in politics).
It's not that the former type is necessarily rational. "All birds have wings, planes have wings, therefore planes are birds" is the former type of argument and fallacious, whereas "are you really comparing birds to planes?" is the latter type.
I feel the former can allow deeper exploration of some topic, but sometimes involves things like playing devil's advocate for stances outside of social norms - and requires others to engage at that level rather than taking the rhetoric path of shaming you for even considering it.
But besides bots, there's also "low value" comments, the "who's listening in 2026" type comments. Undiscernable from a bot, adds no value, can be omitted and you wouldn't miss anything.
And the worst part is that LLMs can generate more interesting comments than a large chunk of online people can.
I don't remember this internet. Ever since I got my first modem, I remember the kinds of vitriolic posts that led to the publication of IEN 137 (On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace).
Whether it was endianness or RISC vs CISC or ZModem vs Kermit or Microsoft or Kirk vs Picard or Kimagure Orange Road, flame wars erupted everywhere. The smaller the stakes, the bigger the war.
I think you're seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses. In some FLOSS circles the discussions were dominated by ideologues, to the point some discussions seemed like Monty Python skits. I mean, your choice of window manager, let alone Linux distro, was something you'd be judged by.
I'm sure it has a different meaning, though
And HN isn't it...
Speaking for myself, kids even with a hands off parenting approach are a ridiculous amount of work.
If you belong, you'll find them and know how to get past the gates.
Also time passes and people change. Many of the people on HN today were once dialup users. They are the same people but also different.
Shitposting, trolling, and harassment has been around since the very beginning of the public internet. If you didn't see it, it has to have been because you were (unconsciously or not) looking away.
The "ideologues and political commissars" didn't ruin your "friendly technical discussions", they merely pointed out how toxic a lot of those communities had always truly been.
If anything, if you really want to focus on the technical details, you should welcome their attempts to make it a friendlier and more professional space!
I did see a lot of trolling and a little harassment (not of women or other disadvantaged groups).
I mean not using the Dutch translation of the n-word as part of your username and thinking you're clever for hiding it in a plausibly deniable way would certainly help with me believing you're arguing in good faith.