Please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN. You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

Why is every reply getting flagged? Can I have some answers - Why is a response that refers to the SPLC getting flagged? SPLC is a very well respected organization. Who is flagging this and how are my comments outrageous or flamebait? Who is even tracking and following up on this thread? Why so much investment here!

I don't know why users have been flagging your replies, but it's probably because you're posting so many off-topic procedural complaints, which is not very interesting.

I don't know what more to tell you about your GP comment. It's not as if this is a borderline call - it was an inflammatory one-liner. Starting a celebrity flamewar is tedious, especially when it's one that has been repeated countless times already.

Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? This is a place for intellectual curiosity, not political battle. The more the rest of the world is consumed by the latter, the more we need to focus on the former here, or else HN will simply not survive. The whole idea of this place has been to stave that outcome off for as long as we can: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... That means we need to moderate comments like the ones you've been posting in this thread, so please don't post them.

Also: we've had to ask you multiple times in general to stop breaking the site guidelines, and unfortunately your commenting history shows many other cases of you doing this, with comments that are unsubstantive and/or unkind - for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044862 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23094678. Comments like that are bannable offenses on HN. If you keep breaking the rules we are going to have to ban you.

Please fix this by posting substantively and kindly from now on. Alternatively, it's always fine not to post.

All of them are risk takers and public intellectuals. They are independently wealthy, none of them need the exposure or income from peddling certain ideas or catering to a certain audience.

I can't even tell which you one you mean, let alone for what reason.

Instead of assuming that "surely every sane person" must share your point of view, can you point to specific accusations and sources that validate them? You might just convince someone you have actually a point, if your arguments hold up.

I assume you're talking about Thiel and maybe China, but still don't actually know.

Have you ever actually listened to any of Thiel's talks and the reasons why he takes particular stances? If you did you'd realize that his stances on things like China are related to geopolitics and economics, not race.

Does that invalidate their opinions about other matters?

Now apply this logic to people who believe that there is an invisible man in the sky watching all your actions.

That's a majority of the worlds' scientists, teachers, politicians, and just about every profession.

This is an absurd argument. At the very least, science can absolutely provide conclusive evidence that the world is not flat and that vaccines cannot cause autism. This isn’t a “belief.” This can be shown with clear conclusive evidence. Religious beliefs cannot be tested due to how they are structured (“just gotta have faith”).

So even assuming you are arguing in good faith, an anti-vaxxer and/or a flat-earther are people who can be shown irrefutable evidence that goes against their beliefs and they will simply close their eyes, plug their ears, and scream and shout until you go away. The opinions of those people are ones I don’t care about or think worthwhile because they have already made up their minds and are working backwards to look for evidence that supports their beliefs, and invalidating all others.

I did not mean religious beliefs in general, just particular 'man in the sky' beliefs, which are as absurd as flat earth. But somehow a bunch people who have such beliefs are smart and productive.

> if someone was a ___ or a ___ I would be really uninterested in their opinions on pretty much anything because they're obviously ___

Dismissing one’s ideas based on group membership is a terrible strategy for truth-seeking. It’s a root of all kinds of problems we see with team-based politics where both sides have turned their brain off and largely accept the entire slate of talking points their side serves up.

It also borders on the definition of bigotry.

I had a flat-earthier as a roommate for about half a year. We had some detailed discussions about his beliefs, which was interesting since my time at the South Pole gives me personal experience that directly contradicts most of his beliefs. The guy clear had a very poor understanding of math (especially geometry) and physics (especially optics) but was a generally nice guy with a good head on his shoulders.

I would trust very ñittle he had to say about things outside of his direct experience, since his BS detector was apparently broken, but I would tend to trust his knowledge of things he had dealt with directly.

While I don't judge people for their ideological bent, I do judge them for uncritically accepting BS because it fits their ideological bent. This leads me to dismiss many of the knowledge and opinions of people who find themselves trapped in the ideological games played by our media.

Yes! This is so much more precise and productive, and stands in stark contrast to a blunt stereotyping heuristic. You're engaging in discussion, analysis, and identification of cognitive biases and memetic complex traps. Then applying all of that appropriately, understanding where you can and cannot trust a person's ideas, without categorically dismissing the balance of that person's ideas indefinitely.

I'm going to say that flat-earthing is a sort of dividing line for me. If somebody insists on flat-earth with a straight face, I'm going to ask them some questions. It's unclear that any flat-earther would be able to come up with answers that are reasonable, and I think it's reasonable to impute that the person's ability to be reasonable about other things is probably impeded.

They weren’t talking about group membership, but about misunderstanding some basic things about how the world works.

Public intellectuals? Perhaps the public within a small geographical area. Maybe even just a couple of zip codes.