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Comment by unholiness | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, in practice this type of disclaimer is shockingly effective in a comment forum. The point is to short-circuit the reactions of the average comment-reader, who is skimming, who has already mostly made up their mind, who is inclined to see comments which further reinforce their view as insightful, and comments which contradict their view as misguided or not worth reading.

Obviously, if everyone read everything, and read it with the same temperament, it should be useless. How could something you can attach to any argument be persuasive? But people skim and skim with bias.

It's really significant effect on places like reddit, where "this will get downvoted but mediocre insight" will get far more upvotes than "mediocre insight". It can be used and abused.

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Well, if what you're saying is that a reader who is already biassed towards agreeing with the post will be motivated to upvote a post that complains about "cancel culture" because "culture wars," so use this one weird trick to get more upvotes even though it isn't going to persuade anyone who has yet to make uup their mind, you may be right.

(hard winkie, you definitely did not say anything about cancel culture or culture wars.)

But while you may be right about upvotes, I still feel correct about the fact that the tactic undermines the quality of the communication with respect to meaningful discussion amongst people seeking understanding. Furthermore, my fear is that such tactics increase polarization and knee-jerk reactions in comments, further devaluing good-faith debate.

If I'm roughly correct, the "disclaimer" feels like click-bait titles and other tactics that amount to "defecting" in game theory: They produce a very narrow advantage (worthless upvotes) for the poster, at the expense of the value of discussion to the forum overall.

The existence of tactics that undermine the quality of social discourse is a very hard problem, as we all know.

> feels like click-bait

That seems like a good way to put it to me. In particular, when it's at the top of the comment, it comes off as a prompt to the reader that they should buckle up for something spicy.

Who said anything about cancel culture or culture wars? The original post was just posting out a bias that many people have (anti-crypto). Everyone has biases and a lot of people are somewhat aware of their bias. By pointing out the bias, it helps people keep their bias in mind.

Your original comment said it was not effective and serves against you. Now you're saying it produces a narrow "shallow" advantage. I think it effective as it forces the reader to confront their biases.

I've seen this used in nonsensical anti-FB rants. You acknowledge that many people think facebook bad and you're not disputing that. And then you can go on to say "yes, people in fact still use facebook. in fact billions use it every day". It's been very effective in my experience.

Presuming we agree with the post I was replying to, this "shallow advantage" is only relevant if the outcome we want is upvotes and shallow engagement. Sometimes, that's exactly right, for example if we're promoting a new crypto coin, maybe it is beneficial to begin a post with "Crypto-Luddites will hate this, but WhyseeCoin..."

However, what I am also saying above is that there's another motivation for a post in a forum like HN, which is good-faith debate amongst people with open minds. I stand by my assertion that such openings detract from the post when we're seeking good-faith exploration of ideas.

I believe these two stances can coëxist happily.

I'll confess to having a flat policy of downvoting any comment I see that says "I'll get downvoted for this", regardless of whether I agree with the rest of it...

Another reason to avoid "I'll get downvoted for this" is the possibility that moderators will consider it a violation of HN's guidelines. In general, whinging about upvotes and downvotes is discouraged:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I sometimes downvote comments about voting to help enforce moderation. What I think is interesting about the topic of commenting on voting on comments is that the vast majority of my downvotes are fat finger mistakes while scrolling.

Agreed. I'm also generally skeptical of unwarranted advice, because more often than not it just turns into an exercise to brag about one's achievements (or lackthereof) instead of saying anything useful.

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