Hacker News Reader

Comment by CapsAdmin | Hacker News Reader

> is happy with whoever rules whom and how justly

This is an assumption. How about neutral, or even hopeless? There's also the position of just not caring because you think it doesn't affect you.

It feels a bit like saying anyone who does not want to fight or talk about a war are on the enemies side.

> You can turn off the non-technical comments by ignoring them.

This also feels like an odd thing to say. If you're going out with a bunch of friends to eat out, and half of them always talk about how immoral it is to eat meat amongst themselves while you're eating meat, I think that would affect me negatively at some point.

View on HN

You're right about neutral/hopeless. I meant "happy" in the sense of "OK with / resigned to let exist". Not necessarily "this is great".

The meat-eating morality point I think is also an interesting example. It could affect you negatively, but they strongly believe it to be immoral and are witnessing you committing what they believe to be an immoral act, so should they be forced to be silent on the subject? Why? Whose beliefs and preferences win? If they're your friends, you reckon with the issue and ideally come to a space of agreement or cordially agree to disagree. Or your mind is changed! Or theirs! But if the groups dig in ("We can't let this go", "We just want to eat meat and not feel bad about it") then that's a friendship-ending juncture, isn't it? Or you agree not to share that sort of space/context any more. But it's also different with friends vs an open space, which this is.

For certain viewpoints that are fundamental ly hard to challenge, a reasonable middle ground to me is to just talk about something else and respect other peoples viewpoints. This is usually how religion is (or should be) treated in open public spaces. But it's by no means easy and I can't really blame vegetarians for being passionate about it either. But I see this more from the perspective of how to behave around other people and not so much what I personally believe, but maybe that's largely cultural. (Norwegian)

For example, I have strong opinions about people believing in things without sufficient evidence, but unless I'm in the correct space or is invited to, I'd rather keep it to myself.

Yes I'm with you culturally speaking (British). I suppose the difference I see here is this is a forum for the exchange of ideas, not a social space where there are other, more important factors at play e.g. the maintenance of friendships, of having a pleasant evening etc. I think as with everything there has to be some judgment, but if someone brings up Grok, for example, I don't think Elon's politics are _irrelevant_ to the discussion, unless the discussion is literally "Let us all now turn to the question of memory architecture" or what have you. But if it's just sharing a link, then to me the implied discussion space is quite broad.

> This is an assumption. How about neutral, or even hopeless? There's also the position of just not caring because you think it doesn't affect you.

Still effectively the same point.

I think then it's pedantry. I can kind of see how not having an opinion about what to wear tommorow is by itself having an opinion on what to wear tommorow, but that's not what people usually mean when they say they don't have an opinion about something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com