zlacker

Ok, but please don't fulminate on Hacker News. It's incompatible with intellectual curiosity, which is what we're trying to optimize for.

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

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

>>dang+(OP)
Okay, sorry about that. I'll refrain in the future. However, I wonder, at what point should we override single variable optimization (in this case the single variable is intellectual curiosity) if there is truly something heinous to point out? It seems by not doing that, we overnormalize those who will use intellectual curiosity as an excuse to subjugate.

>>vouaob+n1
That's a good question, because people who feel strongly about politics or current affairs often want to use this site to battle for what they believe is right. When we ask them not to do that here, on the grounds that HN is not that sort of website, they sometimes respond that what they're fighting for is more important.

They're right, of course. Most of those questions are far more important than most of what appears on HN. The problem is that if we allowed it to, political battle would quickly consume everything it touches, much like the fire that flamewars are named after—so this is an existential issue for HN.

Ultimately the question is: does a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity deserve to exist, even though other things are more important? Is there room for such a place? I think the answer has to be yes. But if so, it needs to be protected for that purpose, because default internet dynamics all point the other way.

There are always many heinous things to point out, and such stories are far more emotionally intense than, say, a new type of superconductor having been discovered, or how work on formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem has been going lately. So I don't think we have much of a choice, if we want HN to survive as a sort of garden. Gardens and warfare can't coexist at the same place and time.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I'd add one bit to your last point though: I don't think "those who subjugate" are really doing that by appealing to intellectual curiosity—they have more powerful forces to do that with. I'd like to believe that in a community where intellectual curiosity is cultivated, subjugation is actually a little less likely. I can't prove that, though, and it may just be wishful thinking.

>>dang+Yh
Fair enough. Regarding your last paragraph though, I do think though that intellectual curiosity is a key tool of subjugation. Oligarchs and tech businessmen have discovered that technology is a key wealth concentration tool and the most effective way to utilize that is to give the technically-minded intelligent a world of wonders to explore and create so that the most wealthy can use those tools to concentrate the majority of the wealth. If we consider that psychologically, many of us (myself included) have used intellectual exploration as a source of beauty and comfort, this method is all the more effective.

>>vouaob+UY
Maybe. But the intellectual curiosity I'm talking about is not purely technical, and HN does host a lot of historical, social, and (yes) political* conversation.

What we want to avoid is having the site taken over by the latter and bursting into flames. That's actually the default outcome, so we have to spend a lot of energy avoiding it.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...