Comment by virtuous_signal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by virtuous_signal | Hacker News Reader

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virtuous_signal

This struck me as too tidy, so in the spirit of debate let me offer a little pushback:

>We are seeing such things dissolve because we have other options these days.

1) Do we have other options? I think we do, but I don't think the saturation is nearly as high as churchgoing or temple-attending was throughout history.

>In the past, people often grudgingly tolerated it because they had no place to go, not because being part of some larger community was some wonderfully fulfilling experience most of the time.

2) Religions grew and spread in every civilization for millenia. Ancestor worship in East Asia. Hinduism in South Asia. Animism among natives everywhere. Christianity in the West. What if religion and religious community grew and took the forms they did, because they met humanity's social and emotional needs?

So I would restate the original comment as asking (i) what problems arise when something everyone depended on so long disappears in a relatively short time, and (ii) how can we handle those problems. Importantly, stating these questions isn't suggesting that everyone needs to return to religion (which wouldn't even be possible without un-discovering science).

It's a comment on a forum, not a PhD thesis.

There are other ways to attend gatherings of people now. You and I are attending one of them right this minute: a forum on the internet.

For my purposes, talking with people on HN is generally superior to most meatspace options.

I have a compromised immune system. No one is going to cough on me on HN.

I'm a woman. This is an overwhelmingly male space. No one here can physically assault me the way they could in meatspace.

I can talk to people all over the world who have taken an intense and serious interest in a variety of subjects, so I can get rich discussion on a variety of topics. This won't happen in most meatspace environments.

In meatspace, it ends up being a great deal more important for people to have a long list of thibgs in common. Smokers tend to congregate together because strict non smokers don't even like being around them. Sexual orientation ends up being a thornier issue, especially in a small community where you are trying to choose a future mate from a small dating pool.

Religion presumably spread because it worked well for that time, or at least was the least worst solution. We have other options now for connecting with people. Those options are incredibly important to how the world works currently and people have flocked to them.

It's how you can argue the point with me at all.

>I'm a woman. This is an overwhelmingly male space. No one here can physically assault me the way they could in meatspace.

And yet women managed to exist in outside society and participate in all kinds of actions in the 60s and 70s for example (including protests, acid tests, trips to India, and all kinds of stuff), under much worse conditions (re: average societal sexism, etc), without all today's drama.

It's like how in general violent crime is at an all time low, but people are more scared and panicked about it than in past 20th century decades (when it was 2x-3x as much).

The many articles I've seen in recent years related to the #MeToo movement and similar suggest to me that women are pretty routinely sexually assaulted for simply attending a rather wide variety of events, including simply having a job. (Keep in mind that doesn't mean raped -- it includes more minor offenses, like being felt up.)

I was sexually assaulted as a child. I don't think I have been as an adult. I like keeping it that way.

There are things I attend in meat space. I'm not a shut in. I just enjoy the fact that talking with people online about things that interest me simplifies certain elements for me.

I might feel differently if I could find better intellectual engagement in meat space than online. If the entire internet were vapid memes, I might be all "Book club here I come!" (or whatever)

But I get more of what I really want here with less potential downside. It's a win-win in my book.

I've come to feel pretty much like that about HN.

People are generally courteous, and discussions are often interesting and thought provoking.

After leaving academia, I really missed the "intellectual engagement in meat space". Especially after going rural, and working remotely.

Gentleman farmer types never had it so good. It's the best of both worlds, magnified.

Historically, you only found high levels of intellectual engagement in big cities, at big universities. But thinking deeply requires peace and quiet and control over your schedule. Intellectuals have a long history of trying to get away from it all so they could read, meditate, etc.

Now, you don't have to choose. You can have both, at will.

I certainly understand the attraction of a simplification of engagement and for decades I thought that was the true potential of the Internet (via usenet, IRC, later web forums, social networks, etc etc). I'm no longer convinced.

The reason I'm no longer convinced is that such simplification carries with it a component of convenience that makes it awfully easy to isolate ourselves from those who may differ from our thinking and outlook and it seems to be human nature, backed by an awful lot of history, that we prefer to avoid such inconveniences in favor of reinforcing our preferences.

The problem with avoiding the inconvenience of being exposed to different thinking is two-fold: isolation bubbles that allow us to come to beliefs absent any real opposition which leads to intellectually weak conclusions and an exposure to the overwhelming commonality that most people have with each other absent a few contentious beliefs/ideas. The lack of recognition of such commonality allows "othering" based on minor differences in a way that simply did not exist in most Western societies of the last few hundred years.

It may indeed be what we wanted but I'm unconvinced it resulted in what we need.

I certainly understand the attraction of a simplification of engagement

Because of the context of what you are replying to, this comes awfully close to implying that women should politely endure routine sexual assault for some reason.

I assume that wasn't your intent. But I didn't engage with your comment earlier because I have no idea how to take your point seriously and respect your point of view without inadvertently implying myself "Why, you're right! Women shouldn't be so ridiculously picky about their personal welfare with regards to sexual matters!"

A greater point might be not to put too much stock in what "many articles" say. I'm sure "many articles" talking about homelessness would result in a lot more skepticism about the subject from you.

If you just listened to the media on any subject these days, it would be hard to leave the house, yeah. But that's less because life is so dangerous and more because the media loves to use primal fears to engage people to keep watching.

If that had been my intent, I would have said so.

Your statements "I might feel differently if I could find better intellectual engagement in meat space than online. If the entire internet were vapid memes, I might be all "Book club here I come!" (or whatever)" presumably do not imply that if the internet were more vapid you would politely endure routine sexual assault for better intellectual engagement either.

My reply was specifically about the problems of the internet as a replacement for meatspace intellectual engagement.

presumably do not imply that if the internet were more vapid you would politely endure routine sexual assault for better intellectual engagement either.

I didn't quite know how to say what I wanted to say, but that is, in fact, not too different from what I was implying. Not that I would politely endure routine sexual assault, but I would be much more willing to take my chances if I had no means to get my intellectual needs met without being exposed to such dangers.

I don't think I should have to be exposed to such dangers to get my intellectual needs met, but some comments here seem to suggest that me wanting to both get my intellectual needs met and not be subjected to sexual harassment is some kind of crazy high ridiculous standard.

Yes, we're in agreement that it's not acceptable to trade sexual assault for intellectual engagement... and I'm not sure there's a large advocacy group in favor of such a perverse system to begin with.

My original point, which I still stand behind, is that the internet has not proven itself capable of actually fully meeting people's intellectual needs but instead often provides the illusion of doing so. It is not unlike the difference between doing work (meeting an actual need) vs being busy (the feeling of achievement without actually achieving).

It's also easier to find those we disagree with if you are curious. It's also harder for the incurious to suppress such curiosity. If you have never found and explored deep wells of previously alien thought online, then I doubt you would have been so interested in meatspace either.

The fact that effort is required to find those we disagree with (on the internet) demonstrates the weakness of the internet to meatspace. Merely showing up for work will expose you to those who hold viewpoints with which you disagree and unlike an anonymous internet belief-holder it is much harder to dismiss or entirely define a person purely due to that belief when you are around them for several hours a day. We may disagree with each other deeply about politics but share a love of pho and eat lunch together among a myriad of other commonly shared experiences. It makes it much harder to think of people as caricatures.

> And yet women managed to exist in outside society and participate in all kinds of actions in the 60s and 70s for example (including protests, acid tests, trips to India, and all kinds of stuff), under much worse conditions (re: average societal sexism, etc), without all today's drama.

But that doesn't mean that it wasn't there or that there wasn't a problem - just that they were less able to talk about it without more severe consequences to themselves, and we've hardly moved past that now. Dismissing it all as just "drama" sounds like implicitly wishing that the situation would go back to suffering in silence.

You... might want to talk to women who lived through that time. Who got to suffer through major assholery during the 60's, where really, a woman's role was to shut the fuck up and provide sex. Who could be excluded from jobs just because they were women until 1968. Who until 1972 just magically couldn't become CEO of a large company. Who until 1974 couldn't get a credit without a man co-signing. Who until 1978 could be fired for being pregnant.

It's almost like some of us still remember, and that's why we bring drama when some people would like to sweep all that under the rug - and ideally wind the clock back while being at it.

> And yet women managed to exist in outside society and participate in all kinds of actions in the 60s and 70s for example (including protests, acid tests, trips to India, and all kinds of stuff), under much worse conditions (re: average societal sexism, etc), without all today's drama.

They were much more effectively silenced or persuaded to put up with it, yes. That's how you avoid drama: find the person with less power in the situation and threaten them into shutting up.

Just recently there was a thread on Asimov pointing out that his harassment of women at SF cons was an open joke. The BBC's re-broadcasting of the popular music programme "Top Of The Pops" has been affected by their decision not to show episodes presented by known sex offenders - this took out a huge chunk of the 70s episodes presented by Jimmy Savile and others.

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