Comment by viccis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by viccis | Hacker News Reader

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Oh, I understand. It's the nature of the voting system of comment feedback. Reddit behaves the same way. Arguments become competitions to see who can inject enough vitriol while still maintaining a placid genteel demeanor. The one who "wins" (convinces the peanut gallery to upvote them) is the one who can avoid looking like they got mad.

It's why people can advocate for ethnic cleansing here, and that's fine as long as they word it correctly, but if someone calls them an asshole about it, they're flagged.

Really common in rationalist circles from my experience as well because they believe that true statements aren't always normative, and that, since their arguments are true because they're rational, their statements aren't necessarily normative. Begging the question, of course, but I see that in situations like Scott Alexander's defense of "human biodiversity" theories (the whole HBD moniker is itself an example of everything I'm talking about condensed into two words).

> Oh, I understand. It's the nature of the voting system of comment feedback. Reddit behaves the same way. Arguments become competitions to see who can inject enough vitriol while still maintaining a placid genteel demeanor. The one who "wins" (convinces the peanut gallery to upvote them) is the one who can avoid looking like they got mad.

Depends on which subreddit and which flavor of groupthink. The behavior you say is upvoted is one I often see downvoted to oblivion on Reddit.

> but if someone calls them an asshole about it, they're flagged.

That's because name calling is against HN guidelines.

Just an aside since it's not clear: I think the asshole is the one using labels like "decel" (or even "MAGA" unless the person self describes). It's irrelevant if I agree with the rest of the comment.

It's OK to call people out for name calling while still agreeing with the rest. It's problematic to require one acknowledge the quality of the rest of the comment when calling them out on their name calling.

Put in a less twisted manner: If it's OK to address his comment sans the "decel", it should also be OK to address his use of "decel" without discussing the rest of the comment.

>Depends on which subreddit and which flavor of groupthink. The behavior you say is upvoted is one I often see downvoted to oblivion on Reddit.

Really doubt that but feel free to give an example.

>If it's OK to address his comment sans the "decel", it should also be OK to address his use of "decel" without discussing the rest of the comment

I think the only acceptable response is to answer his argument if you can read it. If you can't handle a heated commenter and insist on making his anger the discussion, then you'd have been better off not answering it. So just recognize this and ignore.

> I think the only acceptable response is to answer his argument if you can read it.

When indulging in a discussion with others, one has to realize that the universe of what people consider acceptable responses isn't limited to yours.

Yes, it's clear that's what you think. It's also the whole point of discussion here. Merely repeating it isn't supporting your perspective.

> If you can't handle a heated commenter and insist on making his anger the discussion, then you'd have been better off not answering it. So just recognize this and ignore.

He is the one who brought the anger into the discussion, and thus it became part of the discussion. Not addressing it is a symptom of not handling it.

Do understand: Until about a decade ago, I thought like you. It caused me all kinds of headaches in the real world, and so I decided to study what an effective conversation. I took a multi-day course, as well as read several books on it.

All, without exception, point out that failure to address the emotional content is a bad idea and one of the reasons conversations become ineffective.

>All, without exception, point out that failure to address the emotional content is a bad idea and one of the reasons conversations become ineffective.

I am not sure how you could walk away from this comment thread and still think that's the case. Minus this digression which does argue about central concepts, the discussion about the original point is pretty close to the bottom of Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement.

I guess maybe a better question would be why you think pivoting a conversation about how open weight models are changing the industry into a conversation about whether a commenter was rude is a positive outcome? I would understand either ignoring him or answering his content, but I'm trying to understand how getting into back and forth about tone (back in my day we call that a flame war) is a good use of one's time.

>Do understand: Until about a decade ago, I thought like you. It caused me all kinds of headaches in the real world

I've found it to be quite the opposite! Not rankling at someone's emotionally charged language in real life has been incredibly useful, both for interactions with friends and strangers, but also with family. The people I know who are miserable about visiting family at Thanksgiving feel that way because they are unable to stop themselves from getting into conflicts because their relatives made some emotionally charged statement. There are also plenty of situations where people come in hot and angry, and you can turn it around by simply letting their tone slide and trying to help them. Happened all the time when I tutored compsci students. They'd come in angry and surly because they'd been beating their head against a problem or concept, and a little patience and forbearance went a long way towards improving their attitude.

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