[pickingdinner]

These platforms are not designed for intellectual discourse, even when they're advertised to be, and even when they try to be.

You can't just be right. You also need to be careful. Some would say mindful, but that's not it. You need to be careful not to trigger anyone or trip any ideological wires. Not fun and for what, so you don't bother anymore.

And this is not to discredit the moderators or anything else here or on any other moderation dependent platform. Without them the average quality of comments would be worse, but there also is no denying that their primary role is censorship.

[acover]

> In Comments

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

The guidelines want you to be kind, which is orthogonal to right.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[Karrot_Kream]

The guidelines are there to remind you where the site's incentives and culture don't. IME all upvote oriented sites turn into forums for "winning debate club" rather than enlightening discussion. The big difference between the sites is who the judges (upvoting user base) are. The guidelines and moderation here retard the trend but a trend it is nonetheless.

[oceanplexian]

Being unkind actually means you're approaching a discussion with the intent of hurting another person, it's not a property of being factually correct or incorrect. Lots of assholes out there are "technically correct", and there are lots of people out there who are wrong, but still decent human beings.

However, you often can't retroactively determine someone's intent over the Internet. Therefore, you have to start somewhere. If you're a cynic, I guess you assume everyone is out to offend or hurt others. But as an optimist, I tend to assume good faith unless proven otherwise.

[thomasfromcdnjs]

I like reading Marginal Revolution because it doesn't have this rule whilst also being a rather intellectually curious place.

(not suggesting HN ever takes this route)

[yzydserd]

How is being kind orthogonal to being right?

[sillysaurusx]

There are hundreds of ways to say something right, but you can phrase it meanly or kindly without changing how right you are. The definition of orthogonal is that one axis doesn’t influence the other.

I’d say it’s mostly orthogonal. It’s easier to be mean and right than kind, which is probably why there are so many more comments that are. A very rare some of the time, being right also requires a dose of meanness, which is a lot less fun for everyone involved.

[yzydserd]

> The definition of orthogonal is that one axis doesn’t influence the other.

Ok that’s interesting, a new definition on me. I see orthogonal as attributes at right angles, a measure of perpendicularity. I don’t see it as an indicator of attribute independence.

So if kind and right are orthogonal, this means you can (mostly) be one or the other but not (usually) both.

But a quick google shows your usage is common/normal. Hmm, lovely English. TIL something. Thanks for explaining.

[dllthomas]

Imagine X and Y axes, perpendicular as usual. If you become 3 units more X, that doesn't change how Y you are. Contrariwise, if we nudge our axes out of orthogonality, now moving along the X axes changes where I am on the Y. Obviously the use here is metaphorical, but that's the sense meant.

Edited to add: consider "independence" and orthogonality in vector spaces, if you want to get mathematically precise about it.

[pickingdinner]

Downvoted without a counter argument. Which just proves my point. There is nothing more unintellectual than a plain downvote. I even had some guardrails in that comment too. But I am sure the downvote was warranted to the person who did it.

But also upvotes are similar. No one necessarily "likes" the truth. Nothing about correctness really warrants whatever an upvote means to that person. A "correct" vote maybe, but those are unavailable on these platforms. Not designed for intellectual discourse.

Just to be fair, Twitter is worse. How can you have intellectual discourse with character limits and contextless-ness as a feature? You get something, and something valuable to many, surely, but it isn't intellectual discourse.

Youtube comments are another great case study. Reddit also.

[rezonant]

I often find that checking comment karma too frequently can come with an emotional rollercoaster. You post a take you think folks will find interesting or resonate with, and then the next time you look at it it's gone from 1 to 0.

But it's important to remember that it's a balance that you can't see. If your comment has a 1, that could have been 10 downvotes and 10 upvotes in the time since you posted the comment. And if you wait awhile, more often than not it will go back up. I've had comments hit a -2 and then end up being a 5, or even more. It's all organic.

It's best not to overreact because you happened to look when the balance was a little more negative than positive, and it's useful to consider the possibility that there are 9 upvotes and 10 downvotes to make your comment sit at a zero.

I empathize with what you are saying in the parent post about being cautious not to create a firestorm of people who are offended by your post. But this is really only an issue early on when your karma is low, and that's when it feels the most negative. Sometimes I post things that folks don't like, getting a -1 or a -2 or even -3- but ultimately the impact of that comment to your karma is capped. I don't think it's possible to, say, get a -57 (your current karma) and zero out your account.

EDIT: Oh, according to HN Undocumented, it actually does reduce your user karma even if the comment itself can't go past -4 [https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented?tab=re...]. But it is important to remember that by that point the comment is dead and only users with showdead turned on can even see it anymore. And of course flamewar protection can disable the downvote button (at least the convenient one) when it is triggered, and as a story itself ages downvoting and even upvoting gets automatically turned off.

After you've been posting for a long time and your karma grows into the thousands, having a post be unpopular is basically a non-issue. Obviously you should still adhere to the guidelines and not get yourself removed due to misbehavior, but you just don't have to worry about it much.

Still, this community works best when we take HN's guidelines to heart. Everyone wants to be treated with kindness and the benefit of the doubt, and trying to build that into your own posts helps maintain that community.

[pickingdinner]

I have had previous accounts. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=unabst

So now my parent comment is +5 and the comment you responded to is 0. Of course, though shall not mention downvotes is one of the cardinal rules of this club, so warranted again I am sure. Guilty as charged.

I appreciate the empathy. If more people would just lay out their counterarguments and objections, that would be discourse. But so long as downvotes are used the way they are, any discomforting or nonconforming facts will continue to simply be downvoted, which is no environment for challenging existing ideas. An environment for whatever these environments are.

And as long as any system relies on dictatorship and censorship, as all of these systems do, there will never be true intellectual discourse.

Yes, there needs to be a way to encourage responsible behavior. But that is not done through censorship. Not even through democracy really... as modern politics shows.

Then what would? Not a topic of discourse here. Sadly.

[fractallyte]

Downvotes as punishment for writing reasoned comments and arguments which are true to one's own sensibilities, are an indication that a point of view is "special".

One can start to feel a certain pride in that. (Of course, that shouldn't become the purpose of commenting.)

[MissTake]

The internet being what it is, it’s a guarantee that you’ll always find someone who can dislike anything someone else posts, sometimes for no other reason than to be contrary.

Especially when the comment is either 100% factual, e.g. “1+1 does not equal ‘an Iguana’” or where someone clearly states a personal opinion “I’m not partial to eating Iguanas, myself”.

[rezonant]

Yes I have done this upon occasion. You just know your going to get downvoted, so you really turn the rationale up to 10 but you know it's still not enough.

[pickingdinner]

I did get to the point where I could tailor a comment for upvotes and guard them from downvotes, at least to some degree... But that's not free speech or free thinking. And all that effort to an audience that is also under the same constraints only makes for a safe but somewhat walking-on-eggshells conversation, at least when it comes to controversial ideas like... space vs tabs and apple vs microsoft. lol

HN is great for what it is. Gathering 2 cents from everyone. I've only had a great time adding my positive 2 cents, and I continue to enjoy learning from everyone else's.