Comment by adekok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adekok | Hacker News Reader

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It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals. Both groups have implicit assumptions about how the world works. They have implicit value judgements, in preferring one thing versus another.

Conversation almost never describes these implicit assumptions. As a result, each side ends up thinking that the other side is stupid, obtuse, biased, etc.

Getting to the underlying biases is hard.

As evidence, see any number of newspaper headlines, including this one:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-t...

Ignoring the Trump bit, the headline says "kills 30 civilians, including 10 women and children"

Now, try to prove that the male / female victims were treated equally. And, that there is no implicit bias in male / female relationships.

I'm not saying that such bias is good, bad, or ugly. I'm saying it exists. And it underlies a lot of conversations, without anyone realizing it.

Which goes a long way to explaining why things end up as you pointed out.

I think in a lot of cases it's more that:

1: We know the assumptions.

2: We know the differences are often intractable (I will never relent on full LGBTQ equality, for example)

3: We can't just split off and do our own thing because we need each other for civilization to function, so we have to deal with them.

Some of us can avoid dealing with it by moving to the city/suburbs/exurbs where there's more unity, but that just postpones dealing with the problems we ran from. Eventually, elections happen, and you realize putting 50-5000 miles between you and that person who finally motivated you to leave didn't actually resolve your conflicts.

That headline, and your comment on it, is a thought provoking example. I can easily imagine people with all sorts of opinions overlaying their own biases/preferences on what you said, and then responding reflexively. It's quite frustrating to watch people 'talk past' each other in this way.

> It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals.

This is a terrible analogy. We're talking about one group's lived experiences, not a political issue where there are equally valid opposing viewpoints.

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