alt Hacker NewsIf even on Hacker News a topic like this can't be objectively discussed, what hope do we really have? What is the solution? Even in a place like this, the comments are full of extremist ideology, bickering, people arguing from feelings, people just repeating echo chambers mantras, and a significant portion of the comments are probably from inauthentic/propaganda accounts. We're incapable of just using a place like this to objectively, dispassionately, discus the facts/data and properly debate the various analyses of those facts.
I really feel like we need some sort of new revolution in terms of online communication, how it's done. How people share information and communicate. I just don't see how the current systems can continue existing without leading to societal disaster.
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Turns out people have quite strong feelings about career -ruining and planet-burning tech advances.
I think it's good that there are topics that elicit emotional responses. It does make the discussion a bit difficult, gotta admit that.
We need some gatekeeping. We need automated fact checking. We need moderation based on someone's domain expertise and not how well their argument appeals to readers. User moderation is fundamentally broken and maybe only worked for a while due to the participants tending towards a particular background. Also, in the age of AI it's questionable if community forums can even continue to exist.
A lot of those aren't really online problems. People will always be discussing from feelings, bickering, so on. Go to any town hall meeting or debate club and you can see the same. Take a look at politicians and their discussions too, yeah?
If you need dispassionate reasonable debate to get things done you'll be waiting a long time.
if you've ever read Plato's dialogues or are familiar with the court politics of the eunuchs during, well, any Chinese dynasty, you might be convinced that even those that sit squarely in the seat of power and have the best access to food, education, and disposable time in their era are all still just a bunch of ideologues prone to bickering, constantly arguing from feelings and having little echo chambers, and so on
has there ever existed any forum of perfect discourse in all of human history? HN is still so much better than on any other site I've been on outside of MetaFilter. I get pissed everytime I read any reddit commentary because it's just a series of tropes - here at least, the tropes are well written and people come with citations
>even on hacker news.
come on now, HN is just a step above reddit. some of these discussions are pretty solid.
When you label people who disagree with you ideological extremists, you're part of the problem. They're properly labeled "people who believe things that I don't believe" and they deserve a counterargument rather than a curt dismissal or demand for silencing. If you have the courage of your own beliefs, it should be trivial to offer one.
It doesn't even matter if it's AI slop. If AI slop asks a question you can't answer, it's good AI slop.
> even on Hacker News a topic like this can't be objectively discussed
This site has as much of an ideological slant as any other site, this isn't a unique oasis in a sea of partisan echo chambers.