The Dying Art of Disagreement
nytimes.com>Yes, we disagree constantly. But what makes our disagreements so toxic is that we refuse to make eye contact with our opponents, or try to see things as they might, or find some middle ground.
This bothers me so much. In my social circle (and I expect many of yours) simply understanding the other side is demonized. It's a sin to admit that, despite their conclusions being terrible, these human beings have some sense somewhere.
When you hear a view you disagree with, instead of disagreeing, first try to understand. These are intelligent human beings who will surprise you. Most often, it turns out the point they are making isn't quite the one you thought, or at least it has some nuance and the truth is somewhere in between you.
It's bad even here on HN. There was a post last week about using genetic algorithms to solve jigsaw puzzles. It looks like this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nemanja-m/gaps/master/imag... .
One commenter was disappointed at the test image used, because:
> At best, it's crass and tasteless. At worst, it's openly disrespectful and hostile to women.
Another commenter asked:
> Why is it crass and tasteless? And why is it openly hostile and disrespectful to women?
The response was:
> If I need to explain to you why using a nude image of a model (taken from a pornography magazine, no less) is hostile and disrespectful, then I suspect you are part of the problem.
As typical, treating your "opponent" as an intelligent moral person, trying to understand them first, applying the slightest bit of empathy, then even if you agree that the picture is crass/hostile/whatever, it's much more respectful and likely that the asker simply did not know the history of it, rather than the asker being immoral (from that POV).
Jumping straight to "you are part of the problem" is an extreme version of what happens in most of these disagreements. There's no respect or effort towards empathy and it makes me really sad.
I generally agree with you, but:
applying the slightest bit of empathy, you'd immediately realize that the questioner simply didn't know the history of the test image (the original uncropped image was from playboy).
You are implicitly agreeing that with the idea that naked pictures of women are fundamentally crass, tasteless, openly hostile and disrespectful to women. I think this is not really a good thing to do, though I realize it is politically correct and the safe route.
I'm female and occasionally rant about how fashionable misandry (or the demonization of anything hetero male) has become, a la: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/11/having-sad.h...
I have a lame hypothesis that if a woman makes such comments, maybe people will see the logic. Experience seems to not support that hypothesis. Haters keep on hating anyway. Sigh.
I'm trying not to implicitly disagree or agree with either side. The point here regards the meta discussion about disagreement and arguers not respecting and trying to understand the other side before jumping on them.
I'll try to clarify what I meant more concretely. The parent commenter in that thread seemed to think that any good person who knew the context would understand why it was bad. The next comment didn't see why it was bad, so the first person decided the next must not be a good person. Had they examined the other premise (context), they would have seen that lack of context is more likely. Of course there are other buried premises and assumptions, and all of those are more likely in some way imprecise or something rather than the next commenter simply being a bad person. Even in the most extreme cases, miscommunication happens all the damned time. Fixing those instead of deciding you're better/smarter/whatever is where I think those discussions should go.
The point is how the disagreement looked from the point of view of the person making those comments. I figured my own point of view isn't relevant to the meta-discussion.
One framing that would avoid the implication:
"Even if you agree that the picture is crass (etc) due to being from Playboy, a much more likely and respectful explanation is that the asker simply did not know the history of it."
There may be others. It is incredibly hard to sidestep the wider cultural framing that women exist solely as sex objects, they are prey and men are predators. It is a problem space I have thought long and hard about. I think my statement that your statement implicitly agrees with certain things is accurate.
However, it wasn't intended to accuse you, personally, of anything. The degree to which it does so is an error on my part. It is late. I am tired. Etc.
I wholly agree with you that jumping to accusations was poor form. I did not witness that particular discussion of the Lena test photo, but I have seen such discussions before on HN. They tend to be incredibly uncharitable. This is really common when anything vaguely related to sex enters discussion.
I do my best to respectfully critique it. I am aware sex is a very sensitive subject. But the subtext of most such derails is that all heterosexual sex is inherently abusive of women. I really think that needs all the gentle, kind push back humanity can muster. I do what little I can.
Best.
That's fair. Communication is hard. I edited my original comment along the lines of your suggestion. I hope that it's still clear and concise and now does a better job of not taking sides. I think sometimes I go overboard in trying to empathize with the side I disagree with and end up appearing to agree with it.
:-)
> You are implicitly agreeing that with the idea that naked pictures of women are fundamentally crass, tasteless, openly hostile and disrespectful to women. I think this is not really a good thing to do, though I realize it is politically correct and the safe route.
Respectfully, I disagree. It's not a given that the comment implicitly agrees that naked pictures of women are disrespectful. The comment might implicitly agree that the economics of nude photos is disrespectful in this case, or in general, since this particular image is one that was sold. The comment might also be referring to the history of criticism of the Lena image: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna#Criticism
I've posted this quote a few times before, and I find it fully relevant to this discussion:
> He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
A few months back I read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", by Jonathan Haidt. I'd highly suggest reading it for anyone seeking to improve their understanding of the ideological landscape in modern America. From the publisher's summary: In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
The biggest problem I'm seeing with many online communities is the unwillingness to engage with others. There's no discussions, they just tell you that you're wrong and evil, and then they ban or block you. That's no way to change people's mind; it just makes people more likely to dig in their heels. If you want to change people's views you need to engage them calmly and with respect. One of the greatest example of this that I can think of is Daryl Davis, a black man who converted ~200 people from the KKK just by befriending them.
This is a very high-minded concept, but I just can't see how it would work in practice.
To take an example less divisive than politics, I'll use religion (yeah–go figure).
Say you're an agnostic biologist. One Sunday, you meet your new neighbour, who happens to be an Eckists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckankar#Teachings). After a few weeks of infrequent small talk, he becomes dead set on helping you find you way to God's graces through a series of 25 two-hour rituals of singing the 'Hu'. He's also really excited by having someone to share his theory of the spiritual fluid "yam" that separates the living matter from the dead, and he considers "DNA" to be a hoax perpetrated by the Christadelphian Conspiracy.
You make what you believe is a very good case against any God existing, give an even better overview of the basics of molecular biology, and point out some of the most glaring inconsistencies in his theory of life.
But he comes back at you with the full force of someone spending about 500% as much time thinking and reading about religion and "yam" than you do. He always has an argument, and sometimes it takes a sleepless night to figure out where his argument actually breaks down.
Through no fault of yours, his internet connection starts developing the ugly habit of showing rather immoral photos of all genders where he would usually expect to see completely wholesome photos of the Eckankars' last Day of Celebrating Celibacy and Celery. He finally moves out.
You new neighbour is Frances. He is excited to tell you everything about his Christadelphian faith, and how the walnut is actually the most intelligent brain on the planet. He also has all the answers.
Now imagine there's an endless supply of these people, and they start showing up at work, starting to make legislation to cut your funding, and march across campus with their "Torches for the Glory of Walnut Yam". Do you actually belief your study of mitochondrial diseases will be improved by debating every single one of them? Remember: they don't operate by your standard of reasoning: whenever you find the missing link between hamster and opossum, they just see it as two new missing links in the chain of evolution.
The scenario you described is a bit of a straw-man that assumes the most extreme position of every opponent you come across: that every person who believes in god is unreasonable to some extent or another. This allows you to take the extreme position of dismissing every one of your opponent's positions by assuming there is some bit of irrationality at its core instead of embracing the possibility that someone can maintain a different perspective than you and not necessarily be labeled as wrong.
Not every single opinion on the planet requires you to truly embrace the possibility that you may be wrong. But when enough people have that opinion, chances are that there is some other motivation for their belief beyond mass delusion.
While everything you said is true, I think it misses the point. It's clear that in order to have a reasonable discussion, we need to have two reasonable people who are willing to discuss. And you may just include "is not a conspiracy theory nutjob" or "is able to express his/her point of view in a clear way" in your definition of reasonable (of course, you should'nt include "agrees with me" in your definition of reasonable").
The point is that you should try it out to see whether they're "reasonable". And if they are, then you're supposed to have an open, genuine discussion with them.
In that case, we do indeed agree. Except, probably, where exactly those lines get drawn. There is obviously a grey area, and we probably have more nuanced options to react, rather than just a binary engage/ignore.
I believe my argument was based on those culture war examples of the last months–most notably Charlottesville, where this idea of debating ideas on equal footing was frequently invoked. But it may be my German schooling that puts the ideas aired at those rallies firmly outside the Overton Window.
Sadly, the piece does not actually seem to model the behavior it advocates. I wish it were more well written.
It is a really hard problem space to address well. But, I think a good place to start would be to acknowledge that with 7 billion people on the planet and the existence of the internet, humanity has an unprecedentedly challenging circumstance that makes it inherently harder than ever to find common ground with people with whom we disagree. Then challenge people to up their game.
This piece is guilty of the very sin it decries: Being not genuinely respectful and empathetic to the people it criticizes. I think acknowledging the unique and extreme challenges of modern life as a starting place is the only way out.
First, admit that agreeing to disagree is fundamentally harder than it has ever been before in human history because there is so much more opportunity to interact with people whose views and choices are utterly alien. Then, invite people to rise to the occasion.
Otherwise, you are merely pissing on people and provoking them in the exact way the article describes and decries as a bad practice. Most of this article merely slams parents, educational institutions, etc for their failures. There is zero acknowledgement that these failures might amount to crumpling under extreme stress.
> We express our disagreements in radio and cable TV rants in ways that are increasingly virulent;
And Tweeter. I never signed up, but from the posts and tweets I've seen, I can't imagine a worse platform for sharing ideas or views. I don't see a stream of 140 character insults or smartass comments ever resulting in someone saying "Hmm, that's a great point, maybe I'll rethink my position. I guess I am a dumbass just like you described. Thanks".
> Then we get to college, where the dominant mode of politics is identity politics, and in which the primary test of an argument isn’t the quality of the thinking but the cultural,
There is an element there were colleges have started to treat students (and parents who pay for the tuition) as customers. Don't offend anyone, build clubs for every need and hobby, luxury dorms. My university last I heard built a huge rec center with a pool and a lazy river going around it. Oh the irony. Tuition has risen dramatically and the idea is anyone who pays that much is not going to tolerate being inconvenienced, or challenged in any way. If they do, they'll "demand to talk to the manager" so to speak. Take their money and go some other place. And maybe mentality extends to ideas and what is taught and so on, not just rec centers and facilities.
> This is the baroque way Americans often speak these days. It is a way of replacing individual thought — with all the effort that actual thinking requires — with social identification
Another thing I noticed as an outsider, that maybe people from America haven't noticed because they are immersed in the culture, is that just as much as there are victims and oppressed groups, there is an equal and greater amount of those who want to gain an upper hand by either identifying as a victim in some way or claim to speak for some victims "My heart aches for the struggles of group X and I'll go on a Tweeter rampage to support them". And yet they've never interacted with that group in any meaningful way to understand them, and are simply doing this dance to brag and gain some kind of status. Can't tell how many times I've heard people trying to one up each other concerning how many minority group they know. "Oh you're friends with X and Y. Aha but I have a friend who is X, Y, and Z. And everyone gasps, oh wow, that's really cool you're such a good person". Once you see it a few times, it's hard to miss it.
> And Tweeter. I never signed up, but from the posts and tweets I've seen, I can't imagine a worse platform for sharing ideas or views.
I firmly believe in the idea that the tools that we shape shape us in turn as we use them. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing an greater upsurge in rancor as social media becomes more entrenched in our day to day lives. If a system rewards people for doing something, you can bet that people will adapt their thought processes to maximize their gains. Nuance is going to be the first thing jettisoned in a short format that rewards instant emotional gratification.
> ever resulting in someone saying "Hmm, that's a great point, maybe I'll rethink my position. I guess I am a dumbass just like you described. Thanks".
Because there is no magical system that does this, and expecting it is slightly silly.
Discussion alone suffices to enable people to regularly change their views. The problem is that Twitter is specifically built to inhibit reasoned discussion. It's meant for one liners and zingers. This tiny post is now at 315 characters, well over twice as long as any thought capable of being expressed on Twitter.
HM is pretty good I think, one of the best compared to reddit and others I've seen. Community here does encourage discussion and throwing insults and running away is flagged pretty quickly.
> Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. [..] These quarrels are never personal.
This, like many of today's rosy views of the golden past, is slightly misleading: while Socrates many have high-minded intellectual quarrels with Homer, one can't just ignore that he was murdered ("sentenced to death") by his fellow Athenians for supposedly corrupting the youth.
In comparison to drinking hemlock, the criticism today's divisive figures have to endure seems manageable.
It's worth knowing the context to this. The author was invited to present a prize in memory of Mark Colvin, but the Colvin family took offence to the arrogantly foolish things he has said about the greenhouse effect. There's an element of knowing when to stop digging here.
Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. Locke quarrels with Hobbes and Rousseau quarrels with them both. Nietzsche quarrels with everyone. Wittgenstein quarrels with himself.
If only Newton and Boltzmann made the reading list.
Excellent article.
However, there is one glaring issue. I completely agree that part of the increasing radicalism among younger Americans is coming from an increasing sensationalistic media that will say anything and do anything for clicks. [0] Unfortunately, there is a reason for that. Another absolutely phenomenal article that was written by a 50 year veteran of the news industry is "The Bad News About the News." [1] It describes more in detail precisely why the media has become what it has become. And the answer can be summed up in one word: money.
For many decades a small handful of media organizations had an effective monopoly on news, and access to information in general. That entailed a practically endless stream of money. Ethics and integrity cost nothing in a world where money is no concern. But then enter the internet. It, as a competitor to traditional news outlets, started very slow. And that slowness led traditional news media to fail to appreciate its potential. In short order the internet not only showed its potential but turned traditional media outlets borderline obsolete. They died from a fatal case of myopia. And we replaced them with social media which has shown that negative news, partisan news, emotionally charged news, and sensationalized news is what gets clicks. Even better when you combine them together.
And in the end, if you can't beat them join them. This has likely only been urged on by the ownership of the news media today. Time Warner owns CNN. Comcast owns NBC. Disney owns ABC. These are not exactly the first names you think of in altruism, which is what valuing an informed public over profitable quarters comes down to. The BBC is a peculiarity. They have ostensibly no profit motive, but I'm not familiar enough with their funding/directives/etc to even try to hypothesize why they've also jumped on the bandwagon. I can say something about ostensibly not for profit organizations in the US like NPR. NPR has been struggling. In the past 10 years alone they've had to buy out contracts and downsize multiple times. The only way they keep afloat is by donations, and mostly large donations. With them barely staying afloat if they publish anything that might cause a corporate donor to pull their support, it would be enough to put the company back in crisis. The company itself ends up beholden to special interests in a way that's even more insidious than Time Warner owning CNN. That's a direct and visible line. The line between donor interests and 'not for profit' organizations is less apparent to many.
I'm in no way defending what the news media has become. But like the article emphasizes, I think the first step before judging a group is to try your best to try to genuinely understand why they behave/think the way they do, in lieu of just attaching a label to them and calling them evil.
[0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg
[1] - http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/bad-...
> [0] - An image that sums up the state of the media today. https://i.imgur.com/PxU76c0h.jpg
I see maybe one or two people in that crowd that could be professional photographers or cameramen. It just shows how people in general may prefer whatever sin is implied.
And while TV probably gets more attention today, real journalism has always and still does happen mostly at newspapers. The WSJ/NYT/Economist/New Yorker of today are no worse than they ever were. In fact, it's not that long ago that almost all publishers were unabashed propagandists for some cause or party.
But it's true that changing economics have roughly halved the revenue journalism has available, and contrary to all the armchair publicists everywhere, we have yet to find a way to stop the profession from further deterioration. Those large organisations above may survive by virtue of their size, and the goodwill of people enamoured with what they represent. But at the local level, many communities will soon have to function without any good sources of news. And voting without information means all the incentives, and the mechanisms, of democracy will seize to function.
It's en vogue now to disparage all journalists as hacks of similar low caliber, differing only in the name that signs the cheques they get for pushing their benefactors' viewpoints. But that really doesn't help, because it removes all incentives to do good work. If some journo at The Economist gets "You're a lying puppet sucking Wall Street's dick" on twitter every morning, they'll soon run out of any remaining idealism.
So I'd wish people would be as appreciative of good work as they are critical of shoddy work. Highlight the excellent shows on NPR just as often as denouncing the drivel at MSNBC. Note how CNN fires staffers that approved a story they ultimately couldn't prove just as often as reminding everyone how wrong the NYT was about Iraqi WMD 16 years ago.
Here [1] is the New York Times on Watergate, just before the 1972 election and shortly before Nixon would genuinely be impeached. It clearly explains the entire situation without speculation or judgement. It provides all information necessary and pertinent to the issue at hand, nothing more - nothing less. Nearly all statements of fact are well sourced and verifiable. There is the most bare minimum usage of anonymous sources. That is journalistic excellence.
Consider their articles today. For instance the first non-opinion article I received when searching specifically for their site and Trump Russia was this [2]. The following 7 statements are the leads to 7 different paragraphs in that story.
- "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team"
- "“They seem to be pursuing this more aggressively, taking a much harder line, than you’d expect to see in a typical white-collar case,”"
- "“They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,”"
- "The moves against Mr. Manafort are just a glimpse of the aggressive tactics used by Mr. Mueller and his team of prosecutors "
- "The tactics reflect some of the hard-charging — and polarizing — personalities of Mr. Mueller’s team"
- "Admirers of Andrew Weissmann, one of the team’s senior prosecutors, describe him as relentless and uncompromising"
- "Some lawyers defending people who have been caught up in Mr. Mueller’s investigation privately complain that the special counsel’s team is unwilling to engage in the usual back-and-forth"
The piece reads like a trailer for a new low brow crime TV show. There's practically 0 valuable information, but it creates drama and starts building up characters to get readers ready for the next exciting entry. If you didn't get it - this prosecutor, he's a serious hardass - wow! Isn't that incredible!? In case you somehow missed it, they also added a picture of him looking like a hardass with the caption: "Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I director, is known to dislike meandering investigations that languish for years." What a cowboy! The sheriff is in town boys!
It's sad that we now find this sort of journalism acceptable. And it's certainly not the reporters' doing it. That article carries no less than 3 names on the byline with 3 contributing reporters as well. It's like blaming developers for a shoddy piece of software. They create it no doubt, but the conditions and direction of which they are operating within are outside of their control so long as they continue to retain their employment there. That Watergate story was phenomenally interesting and informative, but it wouldn't hit the lowest common denominator. For that you need that emotional attachment - the characters, the story, the sensationalism. And so that is what the NYTimes today delivers.
I hope that the NYTimes new paywall push is a resounding success. So long as they are a slave to clicks, their quality will continue to deteriorate.
[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/01/archives/the-watergate-mys...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/mueller-russi...
This seems to just be examples of two different styles. I can't help but notice that the Watergate article would probably get ripped to shreds by today's critics on the internet: it makes judicious use of unnamed sources, it includes a lot of hearsay and speculation, and even the title ("Mystery") would today be construed to be a partisan attack.
Here's a different story on Mueller from todays NYT, which I believe is much closer in style to the Watergate article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/us/politics/mueller-russi...
Look at what the article is doing. Let me ask you a few questions that would seem relevant to the bill itself:
- How many members are on the senate judiciary committee? How many have stated they would vote for the 1st bill? How many have stated they would vote for the second bill?
- How often do bills that leave committee become law?
- Why, specifically, are the lawmakers sponsoring the bills uncertain if their legislation would end up on the senate floor?
- Why do the senators feel that these are bills that Trump would not veto (or do they feel they can achieve a veto overriding supermajority)?
- What, specifically, are the constitutional issues these bills face?
Very basic questions I think that all seem like they'd provide critical insight to what's going on. Most are completely ignored, or answered in the most unbelievably lazy ways possible. For instance the final paragraph actually mentions a concern that these bills could simply be vetoed by the president. The final sentence: "Other legal scholars disagreed." So is the NYTimes suggesting that legal scholars are saying Trump can't veto these bills? That's certainly what they seem to be implying. That is completely incorrect and certainly deserves vastly more than a 4 word sentence.
The rest of the article back to the theme of character building, drama, and salaciousness. I may have no clue what's going on, but did you know that some politician on the council just said 'They have concern about the president's respect for the law'? That quote is also a misleading nonsequitor. The entire point of this is that it would be completely lawful and legal for Trump to dismiss the investigator. The committee's goal seems to be to try to change the law to prevent this. I would add that quote was not only within the article itself, but also attached to an image as well. Again, character building and drama.
It would be really amazing if those who choose to comment in this thread would try to do their best to disagree with each other thoughtfully, charitably, and respectfully.
I would love to, but those others are just spouting thoughtless nonsense that is impossible to argue with. /s
But seriously, thoughtful comments take time; and are often formed by trying to explain why the thoughtless comments are wrong.
Indeed they do take time. Aren't we (HN in particular and our fellow humans in general) worth it? Figuring out what each other means and why we ourselves are misunderstood makes us better people. Like so many things, that does take effort, and does get easier with practice.
Maybe, but most people want to see that the article (and therefore) there comments will actual get read before investing the time. Combine this with the fact that thoughtless comments simply get written faster, and you have a trend where you get a disproportionate amount of low quality comments at the beginning of a thread's lifecylce, and high quality comments show up later.
Sure. I'm having a hard time figuring out what you see as a good way forward for HN should be if the goal is to have substantial, constructive discussion. Or at minimum, civil discussion. The low quality, incendiary comments degrade discussion and can deter those who would otherwise engage in quality discussion.
Edit to add: What's motivating me continuing this discussion is that I feel like you're pushing back on encouraging people from doing better, from improving how they engage with others. I'm not sure if that's really what you intend, so please do elaborate on that point. Clearly this is important to me, so I appreciate that you're taking the time. (Though, with that, I'm signing off fir the night. It's late :)
First, big shoutout to dang and team for culling the worst of the comments and maintaining a culture of relatively thoughtful comments. Practically speaking, effective moderation is the only way forward I see
As an empirical matter, I would note that most threads (both here and on simmilar sites, such as reddit) seem to follow a predictable life-cycle. An initial wave of low quality posts gets down voted and gives way to more thoughtful discussion. In less trolly topics, the "low quality" posts are actually ok, but still give way to much higher quality posts through upvotes.
We can argue about the cause of this lifecycle. I think the general effort calculus I explained above is a part of it. However, I think that often times having low quality posts to respond to can be an effective prompt for high quality posts to respond to; or for a poster to consider why the thoughts expressed in them are wrong, and write a better top level post. Of course, this would be better done with high quality posts, but those take more time.
Put another way, the best way to get a good answer is often to give a bad answer and have people correct you.
edit for your edit:
I am pushing back because: A) I think you initial post is low quality. As such, it has led to (in my opinion) fruitful thinking on my part, and hopefully a fruitfull discussion. and B) Underlying your initial post is, in my opinion, a fundamental misunderstanding of how these threads work. I don't like you insulting everyone who comments on this thread just because you saw the thread at the ugliest part of its lifecylce.
Thanks for taking the time to respond and detailing your take on my initial comment. Commenting as I did early in the thread was deliberate because of what I've observed in threads. I agree with your take that thoughtful comments tend to come later and can rise to the top. Another behavior I've observed is that an early hot comment can stick at the top, acting as a defacto root and coloring the resulting discussion.
I also think that one of the reasons for low-quality comments is due to people reacting reflexively and emotionally rather than reflectively and thoughtfully, and the intent of my comment is to remind people to take a beat before commenting. It's not motivated by the idea that the commenters are "bad" in some way, or to insult them. I get caught up often as well: I've certainly written posts that I then decide not to submit, or delete soon after submitting. As mentioned above, it takes effort to do this, but I think that many people do want to comment well and constructively, and that for many a reminder is useful.
One of my goals here is to minimize the initial period of low-quality comments and hopefully quiet the more heated subthreads. My comment wasn't a response to the comments that were already there: I hoped to get in early enough that those early commenters might see my comment and reflect a bit before posting something thoughtless and incendiary. I understand that this isn't going to stop all low-effort/low-quality/less-thoughtful comments. If we can shift the default towards more reflection, I think this can have a net positive effect on discussion quality overall, as well as perhaps encourage people to refrain from responding to the less-thoughtful comments, or responding in a way that can guide the discussion back on track. I know this isn't a novel idea, and it might be fruitless.
(As an aside, I had read this particular op-ed before it had been submitted to HN. I think it has some interesting points, and some that I disagree with, which is fine, and could be improved, but it is one worth discussing. I thought about submitting it, but had a pretty good idea of how the discussion would go on HN and decided not to.)
I think my thinking is consistent with how you understand threads like this work. Would you agree? Perhaps one difference between your position and mine is whether or not we can do anything to improve the sutation. Like you, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the work 'dang and 'sctb have done in moderating HN. Whatever quality has been maintained here is in part due to their efforts and those in the community who respect the place HN is. One point I do disagree on is the utility of low-quality comments. I'm glad you can see some positive effect from them. I'm a bit chagrined that you felt my initial comment was of that variety, but admit that it might have been better. The few times I've attempted this type of comment before have been longer, and I can see how "It would be really amazing if" can be read uncharitably. It reiterates to me the importance of the effort of all participants in communication.
You mention in another comment "This thread would seem to be a counter-example." Do you think our discussion may have played a role in that? It's impossible to ascertain this definitively, of course, and I chose the word "may" deliberately. Perhaps a better posing of this question is do you think discussions of the kind we're having could play such role? If you think it's possible, what is a better way to craft such a comment?
> As an empirical matter, I would note that most threads (both here and on simmilar sites, such as reddit) seem to follow a predictable life-cycle. An initial wave of low quality posts gets down voted and gives way to more thoughtful discussion. In less trolly topics, the "low quality" posts are actually ok, but still give way to much higher quality posts through upvotes.
Maybe this is true on HN to some degree, but this is definitely not the case on reddit as a general rule. Here's an observation from an ex-mod of TIA:
At bigger sub sizes, unpopular opinions don't get that little bit of extra breathing time to justify themselves. Instead, the votes come in just too fast; circlejerks rise to the top immediately, while different ideas either get downvoted or simply ignored, languishing at the bottom of the comment section.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3qjsga/what...
You can see this happen on all sorts of different subreddits where people who post thoughtful opinions that go against the current "meta" of the subreddit get down voted viciously no matter how correct they are. For visibility being first and being in tune with what the community wants to hear supersedes being right or being thoughtful. That's not to say that thoughtful and well written posts don't rise to the top. That's to say that the system frequently does not work this way at all. Especially on subreddits where the community is majority polarized in a certain direction.
I think the upvote system is flawed and needs to be evolved into a better system that rewards content based on different metrics. Maybe things like time spent on the page linked, or time spent writing content, or even word count should add subtle multipliers to comments that help promote their visibility.
Low effort content that incites a reaction is a hallmark of the upvote system and currently the only thing that I've seen curtail it is human moderation.
In my opinion the upvote system gained popularity not as anything like an effective means of content ordering (even if that was its original intent) but because it's an effective means of site growth. It turns discussion into a game where you can get, or lose, points and creates an emotional response system not all that dissimilar to the blinking lights of a slot machine.
An interesting thought experiment. Imagine a site like Reddit disabled all external numeric displays of score for a year. You'd only have indirect indicators like order prioritization and apparent visibility based on the number of comments responding to a post. Would usage increase or decrease relative to what it would have otherwise? In my opinion it would not only decrease, but somewhat precipitously. There are a vast number of people that seem to participate almost solely as a means of increasing their score. And even for those not fully addicted to the system, it certainly provides an emotional feedback mechanism. Without this, I do not see these users participating as much - nor do I see a sudden influx of others to replace them. On the other hand, I also imagine this would likely substantially increase overall quality. Like you mention low effort content that incites a reaction is a hallmark of gaming these score systems.
This thread would seem to be a counter-example. The top of the thread looks much better than the bottom. As far as I can tell, this was done entirely without moderator intervention [0]
[0] Dang does have a comment but, if I understand the meaning of [flagged] correctly, it was user downvotes that triggered the killing, and Dang just provided commentary. There is also a perfectly comment marked as [dead], which I assume is a shadow-ban for an unrelated matter.
Not exactly. HN is a community that is relatively small and has a strong culture. This is one of HN's greatest strengths in preventing the same sort of issues that occur in reddit. Larger subreddits show the breakdown of the upvoting system quite dramatically. Subreddits that become heavily polarized also suffer from this. You can see HN having the same problem in heavily contentious topics or flagged posts. This is where the left leaning majority demonstrates it's influence the most. Comment quality hits the skids right off the bat and never really recovers.
Inevitably it is the culture of the posting community and the adherence to that culture that allows for this kind of thoughtful posting to occur. Moderation is a fundamental requirement as well. I've seen many instances in large subreddits that experiment with relying on the upvote system that end in total failure. For a time the community policing works, and then the front page is dominated by low effort content and shit posting.
I’m not sure how you’re supposed to respectfully disagree about someone like Kissenger who got hundreds of thousands of people killed through his ideas.
You can start by saying what ideas of his you think are wrong, and why they are wrong. Then you can listen to why he (or those he agrees with) believe those ideas are right.
If I think your ideas are morally wrong and getting people killed, I am compelled to either try and stop you, or resign myself to cowardly inaction. I of course choose cowardly inaction—I’m selfish and enjoy the comfort of my life and don’t want to disturb it. But I don’t try to make that out to be a virtue!
Why do you think his ideas are morally wrong. In my experience, almost every disagreement that is perceived to be moral is actual factual. That is to say, we have a disagreement on what the consequences of certain actions will be. These disagreements could be deeply rooted in ideology (as in, what is the consequences of wealth inequality), but are factual, nor moral.
Further, by not engaging, you miss the opportunity to present why you think his ideas are wrong. If people hear both sides, they can make an informed choice. If they hear neither side, they can only make an uninformed choice. If you think this arrangement benefits you, I would question how confident you are in your beliefs.
The way to stop people like him without killing the foundation of our democracy is to explain rationally why his ideas are terrible and why no one should listen to them, not to prevent him from speaking at all. No one is suggesting that you do nothing.
Debating ideas is one thing. Thoughts are thoughts. Inviting architects of mass death to speak at your university is another thing. Thinkers and speakers get to pull the academic debate card. You should be able to say whatever the heck you want. But once you’ve got blood on your hands you’ve gotta be judged your actions, not on your ideas.
So unless their ideas end up working perfectly in practice, we should close our ears to anyone who has practical experience?
That's a weird and ugly dichotomy, between organizing and ordering the mass killing of thousands of innocent children, and "working perfectly in practice". How many children before it stops being an oopsie-daisy?
Yes but in the long run, unless you are to be crowned the ultimate arbiter of what ideas are correct, the only effective way to do this is to persuade people (sometimes including the aforementioned immoral actor) that these actions are wrong. The alternative is constant policing of every action, instead of trying to shape the way decisions are made.
Karl Marx's ideas have been responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people (and counting), yet they still seem to be granted plenty of airtime at our universities.
> Karl Marx's ideas have been responsible for the deaths of about 100 million people (and counting), yet they still seem to be granted plenty of airtime at our universities.
Karl Marx's economic ideas are part of history. Isn't airtime at universities based on what has influenced people and shaped the world, whether good or bad? Learning what went wrong in history is a feature, not a bug. Hitler gets plenty of airtime too, and unlike Marx, he was actually and directly responsible for millions of deaths.
"The countries associated with some Marxist nations have led political opponents to blame Marx for millions of deaths,[259] but the fidelity of these varied revolutionaries, leaders and parties to Marx's work is highly contested and rejected by many Marxists.[260] It is now common to distinguish between the legacy and influence of Marx specifically and the legacy and influence of those who shaped his ideas for political purposes.[261]"
Marx wrote books, and he died in 1883. The split between Marxists/Trotskyists/Stalinists is well-documented, and reading Das Kapital, you'll see it takes as much of a twisted mind to go from his ideas to Stalin as it takes to get from the bible to the Westboro Baptist Church.
Kissinger was an active politician, and he's criticised not so much for his ideas as his actions. I seem to remember that quite a few people during the Charlottesville brouhaha were keen to insist that people should be judged by their actions.
There's also a difference between a study of Marx/Kissinger, and attending an event that has them as guests. A famous speaker's attendance is an honour for the host, but it also honours the speaker. I'm sure there are scores of left-leaning researchers and students who have read Kissinger's work or studied his actions while being highly critical of him.
The obvious example is that it's just as common to read Hitler's book and speeches as it is to read Marx when studying history.
> The obvious example is that it's just as common to read Hitler's book and speeches as it is to read Marx when studying history.
I'm sorry, that is not "obvious" at all. It's trivial to name dozens of academics who are self-admitted Marxists, and who give Marxist ideas fulsome praise in the classroom. They outnumber self-admitted Nazi academics by thousands to one, at a minimum (I can't think of even one example of the latter, off-hand, but I suppose there might be one or two out there).
There is a difference between ideas and people who put those ideas into practice. Marx was just a writer. Lenin or Stalin—I don’t think you can respectfully disagree about them.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose government routinely murdered gay people, among other nasty behaviors) gave a speech at Columbia University. While the speech was (rightly) protested, he was not shouted down, nor was he forced to flee from a violent mob.
Ok, so let's simply stipulate that whatever adversity Kissinger faces, so too should Ahmadinejad, who is also loathsome.
Kissinger's a monster in my opinion. But everyone's monster threshold is different. Refusing to engage based on monsterhood is a road to a war of all against all. We're walking that road now. That's a far worse outcome than the odd monster slipping onto lecture stages.
Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.
The article is talking about something more than protest.
Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash.
That's basically mob violence. Respectful protest and disagreement is to hear someone out, not intimidate and violently stop them from speaking. It's just an odd mindset. You're at college, so presumably you are there to be educated, to experience different points of view, to learn.
edit: Asked if modern media or some other factor was the biggest cause of this, saying this so the reply makes sense.
> Or is there some other change in society that is a bigger factor?
Tribalism. We seem to be hardwired for it, to seek it out. As the immediate bonds in family/religion/neighborhood/etc are being torn down by modern individualism, so new tribal bonds are formed.
In the age of the internet, as you said, you can find a voice that validates any belief. A community forms around the smallest nugget of common belief.
And so tribes are formed.
Mind you we also seem to be living in a society that increasingly believes that anything you think, you immediately believe to be true. That to hold opposing beliefs, or at least to inspect and consider thoughts that are “wrong”, immediately makes you ... I dunno. Almost like thinking something immediately makes it your sole belief.
So it becomes impossible, dangerous even, to allow opposing beliefs to even be expressed lest they take you over.
Thought police basically.
The trouble is, once this perspective gains a footing, it metastasises to the point where civil disagreement becomes almost impossible anywhere, and on any topic. That seems to be happening now. Here in Australia, for instance, we have the marriage equality postal survey going on as mentioned in the article (a daft exercise in fake democracy to appease a far-right party faction, but let's put that aside for now). I have personally been called a homophobic bigot by a 'yes' campaigner, not because I'm against same-sex marriage (I'm strongly for it, and voted accordingly), but because I refuse to cut off friends and family who are on the 'no' side. Polarisation has reached the stage where, according to many, we are literally required to ostracise anyone on 'the other side' (of pretty much any debate).
A capacity for, at a very minimum, civil debate, even where you disagree strongly with the other side, is a crucial foundation stone of the Enlightenment. There are edge cases for sure (I don't know how to have rational discourse with self-professed Nazis, for example), but actual debate (as opposed to fighting, spurning, hating and ostracising) needs to be a strongly-held default, or we are totally stuffed.
I picked the names in the parent comment carefully.
I'm not advocating no-platforming as a blanket policy for anybody I disagree with. I'm just saying if you have a death toll attached to your name, maybe you don't deserve the same respect afforded to somebody who simply has an unpopular opinion.
Certain jobs involve making certain kinds of judgement calls. Acting like the person fulfilling the role is unquestionably immoral and at fault for the fact that people die when nations have conflicts is, at best, naïve.
I was a hippie tree hugger type. I got married at age 19 to another 19 year old. Being a soldier was his dream career, in part because he was very patriotic and loved his country. My twenties were spent being genuinely surprised that some soldiers go to church and they are not all bloodthirsty villains. In fact, most of them fervently want war to not happen because their own lives are at stake.
I am still kind of a hippie tree hugger type. But, I am a pro military hippie these days. "A man of peace must be strong." If you think America would be a kinder gentler nation if we got rid of our military forces entirely, think again. The US would cease to exist. It would be promptly invaded and taken over.
There is a lot of not nice stuff that happens in the world. "Freedom for all" gets paid for in part with the blood of patriots. That is an unfortunate reality.
Even when you qualify with your "death toll" litmus test, you ensnare many who enjoy some fame and respect depending on one's worldview. A few names that come to mind include Ayers and Dohrn, Chelsea Manning, Mumia Abu-Jamal, OJ Simpson, etc. Each of those is considered a hero to some, and murderer to others.
When hysterics and the worst rhetoric are reserved for a Jewish lawyer (Ben SHAPIRO) who is loud, direct, and otherwise harmless, one begins to recognize that the knives are primarily reserved for those who provide the best opportunity to score political points or for those who present the greatest threat to undermining one's point-of-view.
And that's why I find the moans about "divisiveness" and whatnot to simply be more political theater.
The only strategy I've found to maintain civil discussion is to separate the person from the topic. And I don't do it for the sake of the discussion or the other person, I do it for the sake of my own mental well-being.
Yes I understand and am sympathetic with you on the specific case. However I see a strong risk of this attitude spreading to infect public discourse more widely. As is now happening with I believe potentially catastrophic consequences. I am suggesting that shelving individual judgements, at least as a default, in the interests of a healthy polity might usually be the wiser course. The risks of public civility breaking down usually seem to me to be more significant than the risks of the likes of Kissenger getting an occasional airing.
Kissenger may not (and does not in my view) 'deserve' any respect. But the concept of debate being a means of dealing with conflict to be preferred over more primitive recourses does.
>I am suggesting that shelving individual judgements, at least as a default, in the interests of a healthy polity might usually be the wiser course.
It looks like we're mostly on the same page then. I understand the value of civil discourse; I come from a conservative family and I had openly fascist friends in university. Me, my parents, and those friends didn't find much to agree on, but I came to a better understanding of my own beliefs through our exchanges. When somebody says "I can't read X" or "I can't listen to Y," it's usually to their detriment.
But liberal high-mindedness has its limits. I personally draw mine at architects of mass murder. I don't think refusing somebody like Kissinger a platform has to indicate a trend towards incivility, since most humans--no matter what they believe--haven't killed thousands of people.
Listen to your enemies, they have more to teach you than your allies.
"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." -Neil Gaiman
That's bs, easily proven by it's absurd consequences: It would mean a biologist should talk to religious fundamentalists more often than their peers.
While 'should' is going a bit far, I'd argue that that's actually not a bad idea.
For me, and many ex-evangelicals like me, a crucial part in our deconversion involved respectful conversations with other-minded people who provided arguments and didn't assume I was just a dumb religious nutjob.
I'm sure it must've been difficult sometimes for these people to deal with my, in hindsight, rather less than stellar arguments in favor of things like creationism or my logical proofs of God's existence. But they did a good thing, and I wish there was more of that.
A conversation can have much more of an effect than might be immediately apparent. People don't want to lose face; it took me years of sweeping doubt under the rug before I had to admit that my beliefs weren't tenable anymore, and I know many like me. And yet the actual people who played a role in this might never know how much of an impact they made.
Furthermore, even if someone remains staunchly 'ignorant' (which of course happens quite a lot), these respectful conversations are never fully isolated. Whether it is bystanders who maybe do take the arguments to heart, or later conversations between the ignorant person and others, I think every little bit of 'respectful connection' matters, and more than it appears.
There's the competing argument that engaging in debate can suggest legitimacy for a belief that it doesn't deserve.
If, for example, scientists started arguing with flat-earthers, publishing op-eds "The World is rather round" etc., the flat earth conspiracy theory would stand to gain from it. Part of that is the unfortunate effect that for a certain demographic, anything said by what they perceive to be the "establishment" is reflexively opposed.
I believe the wish to "silence" some viewpoints is often misunderstood as an attempt to be spared some supposed personal pain from being exposed to it (the "safe space" idea). But, more often than not, it is actually an attempt to fight it, using a method that has a track record at least as good as engaging with it: making someone a social outcast when they, for example, advocate for another holocaust obviously comes with high costs for that person. It's a potent tool to change people's behaviour, and unlike laws, it's "strength" can be adapted with almost limitless flexibility.
It's the same mechanism that everyone uses when, for example, no longer inviting that one relative who always gets drunk and starts a fight, or that child that can't share their toys.
That's a very interesting argument, and I do agree that the efficacy of shaming is often underestimated.
The problem I see is that the efficacy of shaming or engaging depends entirely on context.
For example, I think shaming racists on a societal level can be quite effective, if not necessary. Because I do believe much of our current 'liberal' society is a thin veneer over essentially the same kinds of people that have done terrible things through racist beliefs even in recent time. We need to fight to keep that veneer from chipping away too much, and perhaps to discover ways to make it less than a thin veneer.
But shaming a young-earth creationist colleague is likely to have little positive effect (to the degree that these things can be quantified, of course). Said colleague has a sufficiently cohesive, comprehensive social world where their ideas are perfectly legitimate. I'd say in this case the effective approach, if one cares enough of course, is respectful engagement. I've seen it work.
But... in a society where young-earth creationists are sufficiently large to significantly affect your reality, well, perhaps more of a fighting approach is appropriate, at the cost of changing the mind of one person at a time.
Obviously I can't prove any of this. I just know that I've seen overt skinheads and very serious Christians (myself having been the latter until well in my twenties) change their mind and while shaming them might've had some effect, in the context of Dutch society at least, engaging them was by far the most effective.
So personally I try to take a two-pronged approach. Shame/societal pressure in the aggregate, and respectful engagement, even with ideas that I find repulsive, on the personal level. I'm still very much in the dark as to what the right mix is, and what my role in all of that is in the first place, but this is my current approach. I do think you make a good point though, to be clear.
I do agree that there are limits to shaming as tactic. I think society is actually quite good at, for example, being more lenient with younger people to afford them second chances (unlike the criminal justice system).
I also think it's a tactic that stops working once a movement has grown to a certain critical mass: the thread of social boycott dissolves when they can easily fulfil their social needs within a community of like-minded extremists.
The last point connects neatly with the common theme around echo chambers, just from a somewhat different direction.
This has nothing to do with "students refusing to see" certain people.
It would be absolutely lovely, if it were solely that.
What this has to do with is with students preventing other students from engaging with certain speakers.
This is about insane protestors assaulting people, blocking entrances to venues, disrupting the actual events, and people trying to convince public universities to literally break the law by engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
The examples that the NYT used were situations where people were attacked, and literally sent to the hospital. IE, the 50 year old democrat teacher from middlebury who had to go to the hospital, because some protesters assaulted her for protecting a speaker as they were trying to escape a mob of people who surrounded them, and wouldn't let them leave.
Please, please, please lets all go back in time to when if you didn't like a speaker then you just didn't attend the speech.
Their actions aren’t preventing the speakers from getting compensated, but rather preventing them from delivering an address.
You might imagine, then, that a university would begin to narrow the breadth of intellectual perspectives it allows, to align with the students’ wishes.
However, tuition is only part of the story. Universities are highly sticky - students aren’t going to leave Berkeley because Milo was invited to campus. However, the university risks both contributions from alumni, and branding against the echelon of students they want to attract.
Your perspective reflects only immediate concerns, which must be accounted for. But hopefully, I’ve shed a little light on these more complex decisions.
While former politicians do get compensated handsomely for giving speeches, I'm not sure about those they give at Universities. I believe those (as well as classes they sometimes teach) are usually part of their philanthropic efforts.
I once attended a lecture by Justice Scalia at my University, and I'm absolutely certain that the University can not legally pay a speaker anything close to the 6-digit sums that someone of his caliber would get on the commercial speakers' circuit. I once sat on a committee that organised such talks, and it took us a year of politics to get approval to invite the XKCD guy, who, unlike the usual academic visitors, charges a fee. Usually, speakers are afforded a stipend to cover their travel expenses only.
That is what you got out of this lecture?
I'm perfectly willing to engage in respectful dialogue over a simple difference in opinion. Less willing to financially compensate murderers in the name of liberal civility.