This thread by its definition is controversial and lends itself to subjective option and heated discussion, more than others. At what point does opinion become 'ideology' as every single comment can be described as such, who decides the thin line between ideology and opinion and worse cross it to label and dismiss a 'comment' in this context as an 'inflammatory ideological rant'? This is extremely subjective and dangerous territory.

Abuse, snark and insult do not lend themselves to subjectivity and are easily flagged. But in this case I think the comment makes a genuine attempt to engage, reason and articulate a point of view, and is not dismissive or abusive but veers slightly to the personal as did the original commentator. But still deserves to be heard and not hidden. The warnings about abuse or bad language is not subjective and hold.

But it would be unfortunate to want to hide away articulated and reasoned responses one may not agree with as that inevitably leads to an echo chamber bereft of diversity, pushing away diverse opinions, and in effect making discussion pointless. In my case, rightly or wrongly, it discouraged me from reading the rest of the thread, as it appears anything diverse will be flagged and leave behind a sterile and uninteresting discussion.

Perhaps Hacker News is not the right forum for this discussion. How does one discuss violence against people and sometimes entire populations for political or other ends with a distant and dispassionate tone without coming off as passive and unfeeling, unlike a more technical subject in which passion may be misplaced and derail discussion.

The problem here isn't just one comment, though, but a history of making HN threads more toxic with incivility and inflammatory rhetoric. Doing that doesn't improve discussion; in the long run it destroys it. The whole of HN is organized to try to stave that off. If we have an existential concern, this is it.

I don't think bit-flipping arguments are valid here, i.e. arguments that acting to dampen one thing (incivility) will flip the system to its binary opposite (sterility). That's not how complex systems work. There's plenty of room for thoughtful discussion to flourish. On HN this happens when people take up the challenge of remaining civil and respectful, even when others are wrong or provocative. One can do that while still feeling strongly about a topic. Yes, it's hard, but not because of any contradiction in the spec.

Like, I'm not going to tell you how to run this ship because moderation can be a thankless job at the best of times.

The combination of ideology with indignation is most destructive of the discourse we want here. That doesn't mean your views aren't welcome. If you would err on the side of courtesy, it would probably solve the problem. Many HN users, including some of the most courteous commenters we have, have gone through a similar transformation. It mostly takes willingness, which comes more easily when you understand the problem the community faces.

The counterargument that matters of high moral importance deserve to be discussed with strong emotion has some truth to it, but only emotion that isn't contaminated with personal abusiveness qualifies. That takes self-discipline, especially in an online forum like HN, where we don't know each other personally, have only sparse signals to go on, and the bias when disagreeing is to fill in the picture uncharitably. To avoid that requires a conscious effort.

It's because I do not trash an arbitrary group of people. Instead, I condemn very specific emotional states resulting in very specific kinds of behavior -- ones which are specifically recognized as being uncivil and inherently intellectually dishonest. (And if you think otherwise, please provide quotes and justification. As I've noted elsewhere, you have this habit of assuming falsehoods about me and writing them in this thread, and never acknowledging them when called out.)

My understanding of your objection is this: Either you are embarrassed because you do these things, or you feel that I have concocted the above construction to purposely tar certain (unspecified) groups in a dishonest way. Please note that in your comments, you apparently jumped to conclusions about my political views. Can you provide quotes (relevant) which say what they are? (You'll be able to do this somewhat with sibling quotes, but this doesn't logically help you in terms of demonstrating you did not jump to such conclusions.) My objections are to particular psychological states and succumbing to the resulting cognitive distortions. You then proceeded to provide a demonstration of precisely these phenomena! Thank you!

I haven't thought my posts were toxic because they get good replies and they don't get downvote-hidden.

Strange, but some of your longest posts were very clearly downvote-greyed, particularly the most salient one referenced in this thread. This seems counter-factual.

Another falsehood of yours: You stated that I discount emotion. This is another clear example of your jumping to conclusions. Emotion cannot act as an "oracle" but nowhere do I state that it is worthless.

Let's break this down simply. I spoke out against (unspecified) misguided words and actions in the name of "activism" which are motivated by anger and outrage. I say that the same psychological mechanisms that are involved in out-grouping and hate are involved. You then produced a very long post trying to justify (unspecified) words and actions through the magnitude of crimes of oppressors, and apparently did this in a way many interpreted as a personal attack against me. (Then edited, apparently)

I would ask this -- what psychological state are you in, where you can have such a strong reaction to a opinion about unspecified words and actions? What psychological state are you in, where you keep on jumping to conclusions, writing falsehoods, then fail to acknowledge them?

Is it correct to say that you are attempting to defend and justify some prior words and actions of yours which were guided by outrage? Are you defending intellectual dishonesty, stereotyping, and emotional bullying done in the name of a cause? I sincerely hope you are, because in doing so, you have done much for my own cause. (Which is politically neutral and specifically against a particular group-psychological phenomenon.)

'danharaj responded by cherry picking a quote, calling it "fucking garbage", and then writing a short essay about why 'stdcredzero is a bad person.

Just because a comment doesn't contain the string "LOL UMAD" doesn't mean it's civil. There are very few occasions where a comment whose purpose is to single someone else on HN out as a bad person will survive, and I'm glad of that.

I'm glad I found this weird little thread, though, because I think those 'stdcredzero comments are great.

I disagree with the "ideological rant" part. Yes, Western military action in the Middle East is a classic flamewar topic, but for an article about violence that the perpetrators think is the moral thing to do, it's very much on-topic. Also, nobody else seems to be talking about the Overton window with regard to "extremes".

Ideally, everyone would steer clear of personal attacks regardless of the topic and regardless of provocation. (I see "it would seem that my writings have touched a nerve" as provocation.) But that's an awfully high bar to hold people to.

I vouched for the flagged comment because of its unique contribution to the discussion, even though I didn't like all the "you" parts.

Well, for one thing, are you asserting that it's not self-evident that he was incensed? It's pretty evident that he is. If the gentleman is indeed in a state of cognitive distortion driven by hate and groupthink, it could be useful to point it out to him. Getting him to at least the point where he acknowledges his hate, then has to justify having that hate is a step in the right direction.

Also, pointing such out for 3rd party readers may be beneficial for related reasons. He has at least admitted openly that he is in a state of anger and is in the process of justifying why he is right to be ruled by this mindstate.

It's the same as if you had said, "I see you're feeling emotional about this." It's technically true, but carries an implication that he's favoring emotion over rationality, when he could simply be rationally deciding that the status quo of how the West uses its military is something that one should be incensed about.

Some of those 3rd party readers may themselves be incensed. Some of those 3rd party readers may be so engaged in their anger-driven thought processes, they might benefit from an self-awareness of their being anger-driven. This is the sense in which I made my point regarding 3rd party readers.

It's the same as if you had said, "I see you're feeling emotional about this." It's technically true, but carries an implication that he's favoring emotion over rationality, when he could simply be rationally deciding that the status quo of how the West uses its military is something that one should be incensed about.

I thought it was clear that I'm not against his interpretation of military intervention as being either unjust or harmful. On that, we actually agree. Nor have I ever said he's wrong to feel outrage. (Note how he jumped to conclusions on both those counts! Part of the psychology!) Rather, I'm pointing out how he has used his outrage stemming from that as the justification for moral license based on moral relativism.

It's not the particular positions I'm speaking out for or against. I'm speaking out to raise awareness of certain psychological states which can arise in the practice of activism, and pointing out the problems they cause.

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

Outrage culture activists are children, morally speaking, who discovered a weapon, but have not learned how to use it responsibly.

Thinking others "have all the power" and themselves powerless, they ignore the harm they cause.

And one day they may awake to discover that they became the very thing they hated.

"You aren’t superior to the people who were cruel to you. You’re just a whole bunch of new cruel people."

Thank you very much for this excellent example! Please provide prior quotes that support your assertions with regard to my speech. If you cannot, then you are making things up in your comment, which is illogical and which does not run in accordance with a respect for facts. (And no, it's clearly not "kosher" to quote the above paragraph as evidence, as it directly references your text and was written after it. But please go ahead and provide more evidence for my position!)

Also, it is patently false to say I only label positions I disagree with as "hateful behavior." I would agree that there are certain standards in our society which should be changed, but I find some of the speech and actions taken in support of my positions to be intellectually void and repellent. Please provide quotes to the contrary, or be intellectually honest and admit you just wrote that with no factual justification.

Good cannot come of activism if hate is the driving force behind it. Expecting otherwise is like giving advice while being motivated by anger, then being surprised when some harm has resulted. Expecting good to come of activism that's guided and motivated by anger is like being a parent while working out your anger from childhood traumas, then being surprised when some harm comes of this.

> Also, it is patently false to say I only label positions I disagree with as "hateful behavior." I would agree that there are certain standards in our society which should be changed, but I find some of the speech and actions taken in support of my positions to be intellectually void and repellent

Well I don't think we should distinguish between the position and its means of implementation. Actually, that's exactly what I don't want to do. The means and the end, morally, aren't different. Every means is itself an end, composed with other ends in order to arrive at a final end. Moral judgment is valid at every stage. If the position is the tip of the spear, the means are the shaft.

So you are making a distinction that I am not. If you label something as "mental patterns of hate" and rejecting it on those grounds, you are, by definition making a moral judgment against it. Conversely I assume you have some set of values that constitute your moral framework and thus if you are judging something to be morally wrong, there exist some values that you would say are being violated. This, to me, is merely manipulation of definitions.

So the point I'm trying to convey is that the meaning of your morality beyond its internal model in your head depends on two things, which happen to be the same thing in different lights: How you interpret your observations into your moral framework, and how you reify your moral judgments into reality.

Again, it is the gap between the mental and the physical where good and evil fight.

What you consider hateful, I may not consider hateful, and conversely. What you consider illogical, I may consider logical, and conversely. And so on and so forth.

I have given you a concrete working example to demonstrate my moral logic. If you want me to engage yours in anything more specific than these generalities, I'd like you to produce a particular instance of this hateful pseudo-activism you condemned in the original post. Otherwise I'm not sure what more is to be said?

> Good cannot come of activism if hate is the driving force behind it. Expecting otherwise is like giving advice while being motivated by anger, then being surprised when some harm has resulted. Expecting good to come of activism that's guided and motivated by anger is like being a parent while working out your anger from childhood traumas, then being surprised when some harm comes of this.

I really don't want people unmotivated by anger to be activists. It means they don't actually perceive a personal injustice. If they don't perceive an injustice, what are they pushing for? There are too many activists who are along for the ride because they think they stand to gain from being an activist for the sake of being an activist. An angry activist is one who has a material goal in being an activist, who has some grievance or conflict that they demand be resolved. Anger is a valid emotion. Anger can be logical. Anger can flow from factual experience. Anger need not be hateful.

Excuse me, but have you read any history at all? The psychology of othering and its role in the justification of human evils is long and sordid.

What you consider hateful, I may not consider hateful

This is your word game of double standards. The hateful mindset in human brains is a tangible, measurable thing. There is no debate about this. Your cop-out is nothing more than a common-sense defying ideological re-labelling.

I have given you a concrete working example to demonstrate my moral logic.

I also note that you have not given me quotes to back your 3 unjustified assertions (attempt to put words in my mouth) which I called out. This kind of cognitive distortion resulting in a lack of intellectual dishonesty is something that I have observed in association with hateivism, and is simultaneously a symptom and pernicious effect.

I really don't want people unmotivated by anger to be activists.

Read carefully much? In a preceding comment, I make a point of saying it's ok for people to be motivated by anger in activism. The problem is when it becomes the guiding force.

I'll just put this here and leave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight

Have you noticed that you keep generating falsehoods because you keep jumping to conclusions or making assumptions about me? (I keep having to point these things out. None of which you have bothered to acknowledge, by the way. That is not intellectually honest.) On the contrary, I have often encountered de-facto hate. To the point where police got involved, caught the perpetrators, then had to ask me not to press charges to keep the event of their records.

You're just making grandiose statements about your comprehension of other human beings

There is a wealth of historical and philosophical writing about how group psychology and hate works. You might recognize some of the names, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. There are a number of relevant psychological studies as well. If you study those writings then re-read what you have written here on HN and were honest with yourself, you might well become embarrassed.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight

It's amazing how people who have succumbed to ideologies of hate and who are self-justifying this manage to point fingers in a way that implicates themselves -- and how unaware they are of this.

The reason for this is that I've become increasingly convinced that the health of a community, especially one that relies on a relatively poor medium (text comments), is very dependent on the civility of said community.

I'm a bit surprised to find myself believing this, as only a few years ago I would've argued that civility often gets in the way of the facts, that it obfuscates 'true' discussion and exchange of information, and 'enlightenment'.

I changed my view because I started noticing that even in 'rich' face-to-face interactions, once a certain 'detached' civility is abandoned, the more intense language almost inevitably leads at least one of the parties involved to become more emotionally invested in the conversation, and this in turn pulls a 'discussion/conversation' into the direction of an 'argument/fight'.

This is not always a problem in rich media. In the same way that a parent getting angry can sometimes be more effective than a parent logically dishing out an appropriate punishment, I've experienced plenty of situations where the visible emotions of someone I disagreed with were necessary to make me pause and reconsider my point of view (because I respected said person and/or clearly they didn't hold their beliefs lightly).

But the 'poorer' a medium, and the weaker the bonds of a community, the more important civility is. Because it's really easy to get exceptionally pissed off, misinterpret, project, or escalate things in reaction to a piece of text linked to a pseudonym.

There is no way to know if that statement is ever true.

So while I can't prove if it's true, in the same way that I can't prove a lot of things to be true, I don't think it's such an outrageous statement, both based on experience and based on logical reasoning.

I'm curious why you decided to comment on this though. Mind elaborating? Is it because anger is not generally a very good parenting technique? Because if so, I fully agree with that, and was not suggesting otherwise.

I'm not sure what the right answer (if there even is one) in this situation is, but one interesting thought I had while reading your most recent comment:

>The handful of times that my actions caused one or both of my parents to 'lose their shit' (and at times even apologize for that later) are etched in my mind, deservedly so, and they kept me from ever doing that particular thing again. In contrast, the vast majority of other things I was punished for required repeat offenses and repeated and increasing punishment before I cleaned up my act.

Was:

One way to resolve this with the original statement ("In the same way that a parent getting angry can sometimes be more effective than a parent logically dishing out an appropriate punishment") is to say that your parents losing their shit over your behavior was the logical punishment. :)

It was just one example, but I could name many others like it. From the discussions I've had with friends over issues where clearly my or their getting 'upset' effectively ended the discourse and made both of us 'dig in', to situations with colleagues where my or their increasingly forceful insistence only led to the opposite outcome. In most cases my experience has been, over and over again, that most of the time, once civility and a certain emotional distance is abandoned, the outcome suffers from it, often for both parties.

That said, I think you make a good point. There's a time and place for abandoning civility, and I do occasionally feel that also here on HN civility is used defensively for the wrong purposes. I'm inclined to think the dangers of abandoning this 'civility' are greater on HN and other internet forums than their benefits, in part because HN is one of the few places where I still feel there's worthwhile discussion going on, and I want it to remain that way. I've found myself reading, say, /r/programming threads where I was surprised by the high amount of memes, personal attacks and/or knee-jerk comments because I thought I was on HN. I've left a number of forums in my lifetime because they turned to shit because of toxic members. That's the main reason why I err on the side of civility.

But, again, all that said, I do agree with you, and you provided a valuable counterpoint that I haven't considered in a while. Sometimes losing your shit is the right thing, and just as much as I don't want to be a reactionary, knee-jerk, over-emotional commenter, I also don't want err toward the opposite end of the spectrum.

No, it's more about understanding. Personally, I would rather see the context and know something about the conflict than see [flagged] and see worthy rebuttals out of context.

That said, we don't do that here, and there is value to be had. Happy to comply. There are lots of places to have that kind of dialog. I enjoy them, as I enjoy it here.

One thing I have noticed is rules about civility do tend to elevate and favor people with highly toxic views. Rebutting them without violating the rules is difficult.

But, it is possible to do. There is value in that skill as well.

My objection centers on the violation and valid, compliant responses to a hidden comment. We lose something there I would rather not lose.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

if you want an awful toxic place, go to any other forum on the Internet with as many readers. There you can find knee-jerk, shallow, abusive arguments from people who, actually, don't even mean it and often have nothing to say. The reason you enjoy HN is because it has rules against this kind of discourse.

jsprogrammer's reply to you is a great example: it is a very civil comment that follows the discourse here, i.e. is written in the exact opposite way from what it argues for. It would not be improved if intsead it read, in full, "only third-rate management cocksuckers need to obfuscate everything in warm fuzzies."

Edit: typo.

For technical, business, and many policy type conversations, your comment has merit. Some. I do not agree much with third rate...

But, a lot of conversation is actually advocacy, and when it goes there, all modes are relevant: emotion, reason, character.

Requiring people to limit advocacy to the rational only is not realistic, nor inclusive enough to make sense.

I think there is a similar trend in such communities (cf. Yudkowsky's Politics is the Mind Killer) to pretend to be apolitical, but insisting that one is apolitical merely obfuscates ones political values. Civil tone and apolitical politics are a popular sentiment amongst the type who seek to align their values with rationality.

You can be perfectly logical and also completely emotional. There is no antagonism between the two. Logic is emotional. One wouldn't bother writing out a logical argument without feeling it has some worth, right? Value is fundamentally emotional. Emotions are logical: They are responses and interpretations of stimuli that are predictable and behave according to rules that vary from person-to-person but have a common basis in all human beings. They have meaning, they can be analyzed and synthesized, and they can be communicated to others just like logical propositions and proofs.

Failing to communicate emotionally can lead to strong emotions on two sides of a discussion. One can think of it as boosting a signal to try to get it through. If one or both sides are unreceptive to the other's emotions, then this leads to a death spiral for the conversation. I think it is this phenomenon, the failure to communicate emotionally, which is being conflated with the presence of emotion. The solution isn't to maintain politeness and throw out emotions altogether, it is to learn how to spot breakdowns in communication and bring them into the conversation so they can be resolved.

Breakdowns in logic happen all the time. If one values rational discourse highly, then these are considered important to resolve, not ignore. God knows I've stood in front of a blackboard trying to get a mathematician to explain something to me, with the explanation failing to get through to me. I once spent 2 hours trying to construct the tensor of two vector spaces because I was a wee undergrad and constructing such widgets was new to me, but I had a patient grad student to guide me along. The breakdowns in logical communication were immense, and certainly there was communication of frustration and reassurance. Ironically in such a dry, logical matter, the emotional communication was excellent and the logical communication-- not so much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion

After you've written all that, spend a few minutes eliminating some of it. you would be one of the best contributors after doing so. no, you don't actually need to swear but can if you want to. good luck.