This article is completely correct of course. But there is zero hope that it'll be taken seriously at all.
Just the other day, here on HN someone seriously proposed the idea that hate speech doesn't lead to violence against minorities[1]. I pointed at the Rwanda genocide, and got voted down (a lot), because the OP claimed that 10% of deaths didn't prove my point. Then I pointed out that was at least 60,000 deaths, and that was downvoted too.
Enough people clearly want to ignore things which disagree with their world view that there is zero chance that this destabilising behaviour will stop.
I'm not arguing about putting "most important things first".
I think that intellectual curiosity is very important. But I think that people are using the HN rules to push agendas, they are good at it, and I don't think that is the same as "intellectual curiosity".
Take that Rwanda thing. It's pretty clear that the parent comment isn't just indulging in "intellectual curiosity". They are playing the whole "escalation of opposition" game: "oh, maybe hate speech doesn't lead to violence" -> "there aren't enough studies showing it does" -> "it's not really a problem" -> "you are a problem for opposing hate speech".
Even in this very thread we see this same behavior:
Justifying downvote: "you told people to look up a topic but did not provide any link as a recommended starting point" (which is fine) https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jlg23
But then: "I am actually very familiar with the topic and I am thus aware that one can find many, seemingly contradictory, sources" (Oh, look at that! Someone who rejects clear evidence which doesn't agree with their views) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947869
When you say "some of the ideas he thinks are bad are promoted and grow on HN" I don't know what ideas you're talking about. But if you mean ideological ideas, yes, they certainly crop up here, but I don't believe they're growing here.
I think the Damore essay is a good example of something which would be an upvoted comment here.
Or quotes like this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DOfLPY5VAAAw7cC.jpg:large (which was on the Naomi Wu story.)
> But then: "I am actually very familiar with the topic and I am thus aware that one can find many, seemingly contradictory, sources" (Oh, look at that! Someone who rejects clear evidence which doesn't agree with their views) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947869
Woha. I agree with your conclusion wrt Rwanda (or at least what I think your conclusions are - you never elaborated).
My point is: If you want to communicate, make it easy to be understood. Please provide a link "the wikipedia article[0] is a good introduction".
Telling people to ~"just do the research" only warrants one answer "I did, you are wrong. Your turn."
Nobody has to invest more time into a response to a comment than the original commenter if the original does not contain a single reference/verifiable fact.
