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Comment by mrleiter | Hacker News Reader

It's generally not worth talking to extremists, either to the left or the right. These people have enormous violent potential.

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This reminds me of a question I think about from time to time, starting with some of the epic threads I used to witness on the USENET political groups:

Are people online actually open to talking?

I get they write messages, and a lot of messages. But it strikes me no one ever actually changes their mind. They just yell at each other till they move on to another hill to yell from.

It's all so tiring, it's like when I used to watch some friends do prep for school debates. They're just practicing arguing, the topic itself is secondary to the argument.

I'm probably too cynical, but I also know every time I try to have a real discussion online, it ends badly.

No I feel the same way. When online discussion turns into debate, nothing is achieved. People use canned, cliched arguments and it's just a back and forth trying to have the last word until someone gives up.

Except on HN, where I can learn something and change my view. Or convince somebody else of something and nudge their view.

Well, 25% of the time.

HN has a lot of discussion that doesn't turn into partisan debate. When it does, it's the same as anywhere else.

If people online weren't open to having their views changed then Q and PizzaGate and the other ridiculous easily-disproven conspiracies wouldn't exist. People are willing to set aside facts, common sense and their own beliefs in favor of these hive-mind ideas.

The problem comes once they have changed - getting them to change back, or to change again seems almost impossible.

I suppose the tricky part is telling the difference between people who don’t change their mind because they’re correct and people who don’t change their mind because they’re not open to doing so.

It is safer to ban those less likely to commit violence.

This. At this point, only centrist liberal opinions should be tolerated on social media, with corporations removing everything else.

The best way to stop violent extremists.

Also it’s too dangerous to let social media users generate centrist liberal opinions themselves, so we should write those opinions for them and let them select from a dropdown list.

I hope this is sarcasm, but I'm really not sure.

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