Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobAldridge | Hacker News Reader

I actually think this is one danger of the internet and increasingly specialised communication channels - individuals are never exposed to contrary opinions, and either gradually grow to believe that their opinions are the only valid ones or fail to see legitimate threats to their world view.

The best example I know is politics - so many partisan sites exist that individuals who are firmly within one camp can get all of their news through their preferred filter - unlike MSM which at least pretends to be objective and achieves somewhat middle ground.

For HN, I think it's fair to say there are some characteristics we have in common which are not common in the wider community (say, respect for rationality and intelligence). I hope we're not too insular to only find news and conversation here; if we're are insular, we may wake up one day to discover our values have been even more marginalised in the wider community and we didn't even see it coming.

For those interested, this is basically the theory of law professor Cass Sunstein in his book Republic.com. He calls this problem the "daily me," the idea being that content can become too personalized to one's views, resulting in irrationally extreme perspectives on those views and their correctness.

I would recommend the book, and also the numerous criticisms of his theory (that prompted him to partially retract his argument in the second edition), easily found online.

A book? Yes, a book! Go out and stare at a fixed-content display for a while.

"For HN, I think it's fair to say there are some characteristics we have in common which are not common in the wider community (say, respect for rationality and intelligence)."

I believe that at least a portion of this "respect for rationality and intelligence" comes from a lack of the constant conflict among users that you see on more mainstream websites (because they attract people of a wide variety of different opinions). Even the most imperturbable of us are only capable of maintaining a civil tone to a certain point on more controversial topics. The way I see it, the key to success for maintaining healthy discourse is to achieve a balance between homogeneity and diversity of user beliefs/viewpoints.

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