| HN Mirror

How do we get back from where we are now? I have to admit, my social skills are lacking, my patience is low; and the problem just seems so vastly overwhelming that I can't imagine where to even begin.

I suggest that we fully acknowledge in comprehensive, "dimensional & behavioural complexity", that which lies at the bottom of all of these problems: the human mind. [1]

And then, to ensure that all that hard work does not go to waste, modify the HN guidelines (or, introduce a brand new, experimental mode that includes these modified guidelines, to be used when discussing culture-war topics) such that ignoring this aspect of reality is explicitly forbidden.

There's no way of knowing whether this technique would fix the problem unless we actually try it. But as long as all social media platforms refuse to try this (or similar experimental ideas), choosing instead to only pay lip service to the idea of trying new ideas to improve the situation, I do not foresee humanity escaping this mud pit that we have built for ourselves.

[1] This is the fundamental root problem, but there are a few subordinate ideas that should be addressed simultaneously to maximize the chances of success.

The problem is not on HN. Making changes here will have precisely zero impact on society.

I'm curious: how does one know such things?

Is there no possibility that you may be somewhat mistaken?

Note:

- your first statement references the entirety of HN; it is plausibly likely that you have not consumed (and comprehensively perceived with complete accuracy, and remembered) the entirety of forum discussions on HN

- your second statement involves events in the future - as far as I know, the ability to accurately predict the future in a multivariate scenario has never been proven

If I am incorrect on either of these two items, I would appreciate any corrections you may have.

"precisely zero" was an exaggeration to be sure, but it's rather close to reality.

Look up a Fermi problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

That's a good place to start with these kinds of questions.

I figure this is true simply because of the remarkably low population of Hacker News compared to society at large; there's simply not enough people here for changes to this specific site to make an impact on the larger social media ecosystem.

To be more realistic, I'll estimate that getting the social media platform Hacker News exactly perfect from a systemic standpoint might have an impact on around 0.001% of the societal social media problem. We've then got 99.999% more to impact.

And if you believe that people reading Hacker News are somehow more influential to society than the average social media user or something... well, we would not then have that belief in common.

To review, the question was:

>>> How do we get back from where we are now? I have to admit, my social skills are lacking, my patience is low; and the problem just seems so vastly overwhelming that I can't imagine where to even begin.

I suggested a novel idea:

>> I suggest that we fully acknowledge in comprehensive, "dimensional & behavioural complexity", that which lies at the bottom of all of these problems: the human mind.

>> And then, to ensure that all that hard work does not go to waste, modify the HN guidelines (or, introduce a brand new, experimental mode that includes these modified guidelines, to be used when discussing culture-war topics) such that ignoring this aspect of reality is explicitly forbidden.

What I meant by the root problem being the human mind, is this commonly recurring issue where people make stuff up, and assert it as fact.

And lo and behold, observe the response.

> Look up a Fermi problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

Ok...

> In [physics or engineering education], a Fermi problem, Fermi quiz, Fermi question, Fermi estimate, order-of-magnitude problem, order-of-magnitude estimate, or order estimation is an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of [extreme scientific calculations], and such a problem is usually a back-of-the-envelope calculation.

> Example questions given by the official Fermi Competition:

> "If the mass of one teaspoon of water could be converted entirely into energy in the form of heat, what volume of water, initially at room temperature, could it bring to a boil? (litres).", "How much does the Thames River heat up in going over the Fanshawe Dam? (Celsius degrees).", "What is the mass of all the automobiles scrapped in North America this month? (kilograms)" [2][3], Possibly the most famous Fermi Question is the Drake equation, which seeks to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. The basic question of why, if there were a significant number of such civilizations, ours has never encountered any others is called the Fermi paradox.[4]

These are pretty extreme, needle in a haystack class problems. Funny thing though: I seem to be able to find "needles in a haystack" on HN with about 75% of my comments. This is suggestive that perhaps these needles may not actually be as rare as you perceive, and claim (with evidence that consists of nothing but rhetoric).

> I figure this is true simply because of the remarkably low population of Hacker News compared to society at large; there's simply not enough people here for changes to this specific site to make an impact on the larger social media ecosystem.

My thinking is that if one group of people could learn how to have honest(!), non-imagination-presented-as-fact based discussions about the nature of reality (which includes massive amounts of unknown variables), something no other social media site (or perhaps even individual human being) that I know of seems to be able to accomplish in the year 2020, perhaps this knowledge could be shared to other subreddits, and we could get some sort of a grassroots anti-delusion movement underway. I know of several subreddits that have been trying different things to get people to stop fighting, I doubt they'd turn their nose up at a technique with a proven track record.

> To be more realistic, I'll estimate that getting the social media platform Hacker News exactly perfect from a systemic standpoint might have an impact on around 0.001% of the societal social media problem. We've then got 99.999% more to impact.

More imagination-based numbers, with no concern for the details of the underlying idea, or what might actually be possible. No concern or intent to improve the world. Must. Win. Argument. Must. Support. Tribe.

> And if you believe that people reading Hacker News are somehow more influential to society than the average social media user or something... well, we would not then have that belief in common.

Alternatively, you could consider the possibility that you are not omniscient, and that someone you disagree with may actually have a valid point.

ianai 2037 days ago

Sever the internet connection to certain, key nations. Or even targeted strike stuff. Foreign propaganda is not to be tolerated as “free speech” like it came from a citizen.

dane-pgp 2037 days ago

> Sever the internet connection to certain, key nations.

And to nations that have connections to those key nations, right? Because encryption and steganography and VPNs all exist, and the amount of dangerous foreign propaganda in tweets is probably only being generated at a few bytes per minute.

Someone should write a techno-thriller set in your alternate universe where spies are investigating a WiFi connection between north and south Cyprus, with the endpoint in the north connecting via Turkey to Russia, and the endpoint in the south connecting via Ireland to the US. It could be a fun read if you can suspend disbelief.

tomjen3 2037 days ago

Reinstitute the draft, or national service where every young kid has to spend a year fighting along side people they didn't know before hand, far from home. Or spend a year traveling the US doing worthwhile projects (fixing up broken jungle gyms in schools) again with people they didn't know.

It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America when you spent a year working with Fred the Farmboy before you headed to Princeton. Fred could probably swap stories with a kid from the ghetto and may be they would come out with the understanding that they were not quite as different after all.

Of course, like any draft it would be a huge violation of the persons personal freedom.

(Replying again as I can't seem to edit my original).

> It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America

This is a strawman. Relatively few people "dislike" heartland America in and of itself. The objection has always been to people voting for bigotry, and on top of that, it's always to their own detriment, plus it is all too common that it is "heartland America" that are the ones who need to exercise more empathy and are the most likely to disparage "others" and outsiders because they are not exposed to them. There's a reason people become more liberal and in favor of progressivism as they move towards higher population centers and become more educated and exposed to the rest of the world.

> It is a little bit less likely that you dislike heartland America when you spent a year working with Fred the Farmboy before you headed to Princeton.

I find it interesting you choose this as an example, and not rather say that "Fred the Farmboy" might actually see those "librul coastal elites" or "ivory tower intellectuals" as people like himself. The latter are terms I've actually seen used.

But on the topic of a Civilian Conservation Corp, yes, definitely bring that back!

tomjen3 2036 days ago

I choose the example because I assumed that there would be more people here who would be "coastal elites" than farm boys.

In addition I think that if you are destined for the elites then it is more important that you understand (really understand) the life of the others, than if are apprenticing to be an electrician.

npsimons 2035 days ago

> In addition I think that if you are destined for the elites then it is more important that you understand (really understand) the life of the others, than if are apprenticing to be an electrician.

Two things here:

  1. What exactly makes you think the college educated are exposed to fewer points of view than those from the "heartland"? Everything I've ever seen points to the opposite being true, where going to an institute of higher learning puts you in touch with a *vast* array of different people, and living in an urban center does the same. Which leads me to my second point:

  2. Why exactly do you think it's not important for someone from the "heartland" to exercise empathy or be exposed to other viewpoints? It's pretty obvious that a large factor in the problems of today is tribalism and "othering", which gets pretty quickly destroyed by exposure to those same "others", something you don't often get in the "heartland."

Both! We all need to understand each other better, and off of the internet.

lotsofpulp 2037 days ago

What is there to understand when two people’s assumptions are different and in conflict with each other?

For example, someone wanting others to act according to their religion.

I spent decades with my parents, but there’s nothing to “understand”. They speak a different language (even though we have the ability to use the same words) and live in a different world than me.

I don't think it needs to be everyone.

If we can think about 5% of the population who simply have different life situations and backgrounds having a better appreciation for why they think what they do, and those 5% become less extreme and more understanding of compromising for the benefit of others, then you've just changed society completely.

> I find it interesting you choose this as an example, and not rather say that "Fred the Farmboy" might actually see those "librul coastal elites" or "ivory tower intellectuals" as people like himself.

I wonder, if he had instead chosen your example, would you no longer have found it interesting, but other people would then have found his new comment interesting (who did not find the one he made here interesting).

Abstractly, it is quite interesting what humans find to be interesting, and how that interest level can be so easily inverted by simply injecting of new values into various seemingly innocuous variables.

Well, I find it interesting anyways. But most other people I've encountered seem to kind of consider such topics to be....~"not appropriate for discussion in polite company", in that they often have strong negative reactions to the very idea, if not outright demanding that you cease engaging in discussion of such topics ("starting flame wars" is the formal terminology used during Overton Window enforcement) - and if you do not, they themselves will disengage from discussing the topic (while maintaining an air of extreme confidence and certainty in their alternative ideas). "Gaslighting", "whataboutism", "gish galloping", etc are some of the most common rhetorical accusations that I have experienced in my journeys (if any are given at all that is).

My apologies; I was being sarcastic, but my writing ability does not match my intent, which in any case was not in good faith.

My point is that many on the right claim there is no attempt at empathy from the left, meanwhile there are many on the right (not always the same people, I acknowledge) who will say "fuck your feelings" and use (from their POV) epithets against leftists instead of addressing grievances or even ideologies.

I myself have what I consider enough perspective on the heartland; my parents grew up in Iowa, and both sets of my grandparents worked in the agricultural fields. This is not to claim I have first hand knowledge, but I am white and I recognize the many aspects of privilege I am afforded. I feel I have enough of that perspective.

Meanwhile, it seems glaringly obvious that many on the right are not even making attempts at understanding why BLM exists, and can't seem to comprehend systemic racism, because they've never been a victim of it. FFS, when Bloomberg admitted to stop and and frisk, that I felt should have been a turning point. For decades people of color have been telling us about this, but they were commonly dismissed by white americans as imagining it.

To elaborate on why I am not willing to empathize further than I have, I have no wish to empathize with bigotry. One set of my grandparents were also homophobes, which was laid bare in their will when their estate left out my homosexual brother completely. I hope I don't have to cite Popper's paradox of tolerance.

"Fred the farmboy" wants understanding and compassion? I'm all for that, I even want to put policy in place to help! But I have zero tolerance for intolerance, and will call it as I see it.

Oh, I meant no ill will to you personally, my comment was more so an observation about human nature in general.

My point is that there is a widespread phenomenon whereby individuals notice logical or other shortcomings in members of their various outgroups, and then write comments on forums about this behavior in a manner that implies (if not outright asserts as fact) that this sort of behavior is overwhelmingly limited only to members of the outgroup, and does not exist within their ingroup.

And if one is in a community with a user base that is ideologically homogeneous, this one-sided, inaccurate description of reality often becomes kind of a constant theme that reappears in thread after thread, in turn (so they say) reinforcing these beliefs in the minds of those who regularly read such comments.

Regarding "found it interesting", it can also be observed within such communities how certain ideas catch the attention of people, but abstractly ~identical ideas (but differing at the object level due to different values of variables) go unnoticed.

If one observes these discussions carefully over a long period of time, patterns of behavior become extremely apparent: basically, textbook confirmation bias, information bubbles (and the flawed descriptions of and predictions about reality that inevitably result), and so forth and so on. Of course, this shouldn't be too surprising.

But the interesting part is if one happens to wade into such a conversation, drawing people's attention to the manifestation of these abstract behaviors within the current thread. At this point, one would logically expect a reaction something like surprise and then realization (due to HN being largely composed of highly logical people with above average levels of integrity and honesty). However, this is not what actually occurs, the majority of the time (in my experience as an ideological outlier). What actually occurs usually more so resembles what one would see on "less high quality forums" than here (rhetoric, "mental gymnastics", insults, logical fallacies, etc etc etc). Of course, this is just human nature in action, but still - it's weird, I don't see why we can't do better (than other communities), and I really can't wrap my head around why we wouldn't want to do better than other communities. And yet, here we are (not you...I am speaking in general).

> To elaborate on why I am not willing to empathize further than I have, I have no wish to empathize with bigotry.

> But I have zero tolerance for intolerance, and will call it as I see it.

I completely agree with the sentiments of what you've written here. However, I wonder if you are as good at exercising these beliefs as you perceive (I'm making no accusation, I am merely discussing the idea - I too deserve the very same cross examination, and encourage anyone to do so).

Let's start with defining some terms:

bigotry - stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own

truth - the true or actual state of a matter; conformity with fact or reality

epistemology - the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion

perception - the act or faculty of perceiving, or apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind; cognition; understanding.

prejudice - preconceived judgment or opinion; an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge

So, a non-controversial example of bigotry would be racism, which typically involves some variation of racist individuals forming negative conclusions of POC (individually, or as a group) based on preconceived ideas, without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge. Racism is a pretty easy one to spot, everyone here has consumed plentiful educational material, and most likely engaged in several conversations on the matter.

Now let's examine another group that is often subject to bigotry, even here on HN: conspiracy theorists.

1. Do you happen to have a personal opinion on conspiracy theorists?

2. Do you have an opinion on the nature of typical discussions here on HN related to conspiracy theorists?

And before you answer, please note:

a) I went to the trouble of stating definitions for several terms above, but really only made use of [prejudice] thus far.

b) It has been my experience that such questions are typically responded to with rhetoric, evasiveness, character attacks (insinuations of bad faith, gish-galloping, etc). I would prefer that this conversation does not fall victim to that pattern, but rather, follows a more honest, curious, and productive path (which I believe is one of the more important things that is missing in the world).