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Comment by s-shellfish | Hacker News Reader

> I could have said something about harming children and would have been less reviled.

Yes, but that's literally because people see their technologies as being more human than most humans. It's something that goes down to an individuals core and is intrinsically defining of how they understand and express.

Not saying it makes sense to average Joe. Just a different breed of person.

For example, the soundness property of a language. Think about why that might be what creates the echo chamber, rather than thinking about how the echo chamber reacts when whatever contributes to verifying soundness is modified. The reaction might be a side effect, rather than an outright planned action.

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When I encounter echo chambers here is what I see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

It is the opposite of wanting to learn, explore, or be challenged. It is all about harmony and using people as numbers to wrap yourself in a warm comfort blanket of emotional protection and qualification. It is the very idea that an opinion is truth when it can be made popular or false if it can be demonized by a congregation, particularly when every conversation is a contest with emotional validation as the prize.

When emotional harmony becomes more important than the subject matter of discussion I am done.

I agree, but this is the root of my dilemma from which my own understanding has grown.

If I agree with you right here and now, have we not technically formed our own 'echo chamber'?

Echo chambers from the outside look like inside out fishbowls because they are. But every set of agreeable statements, whether shared between individuals or distributed through time, same system - pieces are just labeled differently.

However, I do understand the emotional feeling that occurs when conforming is heavily pressured, from nearly every side. That's disharmonous emotionally to the people it is disharmonous to. The ones who get silenced.

I understand both sides. Can't say I know more than that. Can't say I have an opinion on the matter because it goes beyond the facts.

Another way to look at the problem: are math and logic an echo chamber?

> If I agree with you right here and now, have we not technically formed our own 'echo chamber'?

Good point, but no.

Agreement is not necessarily an indication of conformance. You have to also consider to what degree that agreement, or disagreement, must be exercised. I agree and disagree with many political opinions, but I don't join groups who share my political opinions. My personal opinions often remain personal. Even if I did join a group of politically like-minded persons I would not go on regular protests to merely advertise my opinion. I certainly wouldn't take it to a higher level by going to a counter-protest or berating those I disagree with.

Typically the more important and advertised a social agreement becomes the less it is about the subject matter agreed upon and the more it is about exercising forced social norms of a group. In math and logic agreement is attained by a proof and not by some social pressure to force a predetermined outcome.

> In math and logic agreement is attained by a proof.

Of course I agree with this. Just makes me think of bad ways of understanding math and logic. Having to carry it around inside myself as though I am it, because nothing else besides myself, others like myself, and actual computers can test the understanding. Proofs can be written with the utmost rigor. There's still room for error. No proof is perfect.

I'm not sure if that's more so, an artistic interpretation of mathematics and logic, or, just the other side to it. Even if my memory was eidetic and I knew all there was to know about all existing mathematics and logic, I'm still not sure I'd be certain I know what I know. What's the difference between seeing a connection between two pieces of data, and identifying an inferential rule? Direction, intentional direction. Backwards chaining.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining

> and not by some social pressure to force a predetermined outcome

This is what I always find, I dunno, bizarre. It really seems like, overriding thinking in favor of something, some way of forcing an outcome.

> Having to carry it around inside myself as though I am it, because nothing else besides myself, others like myself, and actual computers can test the understanding.

I think that is an overly simplistic view. Perhaps the way to think about this is not an isolated fragment in the form of an abstraction but rather a product you can hold your in hands. You can test your understanding of that product in various ways and use it perform various tasks beyond which it was designed to achieve. These processes require problem solving and creativity which are forms of originality. Originality is a very lonely place, but its great when it solves a problem and reveals a reward. What is the greater virtue: solving for loneliness or solving for the problem?

This is better explained in the introduction to Nicomachean Ethics. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...

Essentially a tool is of use for its own sake, an intermediate use, or existing solely for the use of something else. That which is of use for its own sake has the highest utility value while that which is only existent to benefit something else has the lowest utility value.

It seems, though, your thoughts are more concerning potential unity around theoretical concepts. For that I recommend reading upon Intellectual Virtue as an achievable ethic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics#Book_VI:_In...

Stoicism is the closest I can get away from appealing to emotional harmony blindly (choose the happy way now but potentially make a grave error by doing so).

Thinking about things that aren't presented with a face... one face or many.

Unity with concepts. Read Nichomachean ethics in college, but funnily enough now that I look at it, the professors may have found much more literal value in it than did the students.

Humor, the Greeks, educational systems. Life, sigh.

The directions things go in.

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