Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by asabjorn 3083 days ago
Groups like alt-right or social justice warriors seem aware that what they advocate are sometimes based upon factually incorrect statements.

I believe these groups are aware that they are fighting for an action through rhetoric that use factual statements that can easily be shown to be incorrect. Further, it seems like they believe better facts supporting their view could be found if their actions were implemented because they insist so much that their subjective truth should be respected to the same degree as real facts that disagree with their subjective truth.

My interpretation is that the awareness of their factual problems is what motivated these groups to develop a pattern of violent intolerance towards anyone that questions it, as people that do not agree with the action would otherwise outnumber them in the discourse and make it harder to implement the action.

There seem to be a synergy between alt-right and social justice warriors in particular, as both narratives need an antagonistic other that justifies why it is ok to be violently intolerant towards anyone that questions their view.

1 comments

I think most of them are aware that some of their statements are incorrect when interpreted in strict logical sense. But thing is, absolute majority of statements in natural language are either strictly incorrect or internally inconsistent.

Both groups are pretty sure that the core of their beliefs is valid. Maybe fact A is false and fact B is overblown but sum(A, B, C) is still a vector in the direction of their faith. So debunking their statements won't lead anywhere.

You are much better off agreeing to disagree and trying to discuss a middle ground. But that's not what happens in modern society.

I agree, but I think there is a solution that can help us all ask for and fight for proper discourse.

Alt-right and social-justice warriors both have a hard time rejecting objections from people with the right identities. If we created tools that helped crowdsource finding issues in their action and then identifying persons in the crowd with the right identities to highlight those we would be on the right path.

If the crowd in addition to this approach advertisers on the platforms they use to further their message, then we would also reduce their capability to scream loudly.

No leaders, no celebrities, no talking heads.