I think you're right that both of those are problems, but they're not the only problem. Incivility is also a problem in political discussions here lately. Another problem lately is that discussions to which a political discussion is only tangentially relevant get derailed by political discussions that exhibit these problems.
> If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816
I disagree with this for two reasons. Firstly, if people could civilly propose the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews, then that wouldn't show that people proposing either that or innocuous things incivilly is not a problem (only that incivility is not the only problem). But here specifically, I don't think that commenter spoke civilly, any more than "No offense, but <some insulting or offensive thing>" is polite (indeed, less so, as the commenter made even less pretense). The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.
This statement should probably become a part of civility rules in most communities.
Rapoport's Rules:
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
- You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
- You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
- You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
- Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
[0]: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...
That actually could be a good way to moderate political threads by requiring an even higher standard of conduct. So you must not merely be civil, but actively apply Rapoport's Rules.
I can imagine pushback along the lines of enforcing speech rules, which I'm somewhat sympathetic to. That said, I think keeping them in mind is worth it.
That's why I suggest this higher standard for only political threads. It's a lot better than banning them entirely.
Nonetheless, both of them make object-level claims about exactly the same sorts of stuff: which way the markets will go, public policy, etc.
We need a clear, courteous way to talk about situations in which more than one person is trying to predict or prescribe the same object-level thing, but each person in the conversation is bringing completely different paradigms, assumptions, and prior knowledge to the table.
Or to cut to the example that made dang put in the moratorium, an everyday person and a white nationalist are living in extremely different worldviews with extremely different paradigms. This would also be the case where I want content to count for civility: if one side of the conversation is trying to make a courteous, civil, well-written case that the other side should cease to exist, then the line of incivility is crossed, period. There's just not going to be any way for a non-white-nationalist to restate the white-nationalist (ie: neo-Nazi) worldview eloquently, give credit to neo-Nazis where credit is due, and then deconstruct that worldview.
Maybe, in an ideal society, we would expect every citizen to be able to eloquently refute every bad idea. However, in our existing society, our heuristic is to require that citizens only put in the effort to politely discuss or debate content that does not incite or entail violence. When it comes to violence, our heuristic as a society is to protect people first, and ask for justification only much later if at all. We assume that somewhere a philosophy professor, a priest, or a public official can retrieve the arguments against mass violence.
And nowadays, I'm worrying that with the living memory of such violence dying, people are starting to slip into forgetting that there are very good reasons we don't ask for counterarguments against violence.