Comment by bsanr2

6 years ago

Contrary to popular belief, HN's demographic is not immune to knee-jerk hostility triggered by the notion of a concept merely existing, wherever one might come down when discussing it.

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bsanr2

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bsanr2  6 years ago

I feel I should provide an example:

White fragility.

  • zozbot234  6 years ago

    "White fragility" is a kafkatrap: you can't object to "white fragility" as a concept without that being taken as a demonstration of "white fragility". There are sensible reasons to object to the "notion of (such) a concept merely existing" if you care about the standards of intellectual argument - as most people familiar with SSC would.

    • bsanr2  6 years ago

      My point was not necessarily that white fragility exists, but that the mere suggestion of it existing provokes hostility. Thanks for proving said point.

      11 replies →

taneq  6 years ago

Also there’s a minority who treat the downvote button as a disagree button.

  • zimpenfish  6 years ago

    Which is explicitly blessed by pg himself.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

    "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement."

    • Kye  6 years ago

      Scale can reveal problems. Overall, discussion on HN seems to be higher in quality than when I made my first account in 2012, but there are a lot more people. The number of people who upvote good comments seems to have gone down though. It makes sense: there are a lot more good comments (in quantity and probably in proportion), so it's easy to get tired of reaching for the upvote button on all of them. Meanwhile, people who make snap downvotes for ideological reasons still reliably downvote. A nerve-touching comment can easily hit the -4 cap without an equal number of upvotes to balance it out.

      If I'm right about my theory of the reduced propensity to upvote with a higher quantity of good comments, there could be a tipping point where quality of discussion does go down as good but controversial comments sink to the bottom. HN isn't there yet, but it's something to watch out for.