Comment by thegrimmest

Of course not. You're free to suggest what you like. I'm not going to say something here and put thegrimmest into a list because I disagree with you and think you should pay extra for your flights.

/But/, and there's always a but, I do think the trend towards shutting people down who you don't agree with is terrible. Pragmatic debate seems impossible online, and let's face it, that's how we're all communicating now. When there is the risk of social backlash affecting your livelihood, you'll keep your ideas and opinions to yourself, even if they could be useful to society.

I mean, anyone who thinks the ideals of today are without flaw, just wait til the year 2100 when they'll be seen as backwards.

It seems like what you're describing as positive is only a small part of what the article is complaining about. How did you get from e.g. 'If you have "bad friends" on social media you might pay more for your loan' to the return of politeness to society?

I agree that it would be nice to see people imposing their views on others less - "Live and let live" is a basic requirement of a Liberal society. But the dystopian future evoked by this microsite is sort of the opposite of that - an enforced uniformity, where instead of tolerating difference we attack it until people learn to hide it more effectively.

I do agree that it may foster politeness, but there are other undesirable effects of this cooling, such as political suppression. Sure, in a democracy like America, we love to tell everyone what we believe, and often it isn't polite, but in a place like China, it's beyond impolite to speak ill of the government, even when the criticism is just. I hate to invoke a slippery slope argument, but if we become timid around the subject of expressing our opinions, we may be easier to suppress. I would also like to add that there is an inherent value to speech. For example, a person who reveals government biases through photo or video is more valuable than a person who posts baseless conspiracies, hopefully we can have a proper value system socially enforced, rather than just have it all pushed down together

Ever heard “I don‘t mind if people are gay, I just don’t want to hear about it?”

Remember “Don’t ask don’t tell?”

The truth is that what is generally accepted today will be guaranteed to not be the same exact things that are generally accepted tomorrow.

Society moves from being more liberal back to more conservative through culture. Punishing people for straying outside lines when they are not causing specific harm to others eliminates the very method by which societies evolve.

What you are describing has lead to the stagnation and ultimately death of many cultures and societies.

> and refraining from imposing their thoughts and opinions

This isn't what social cooling results in though. Thoughts and opinions are imposed, it's just that their imposition is monopolized and becomes implicit. Dirty laundry will still be aired in the town square, but it'll be the King's and everyone will be forced to smell it.

I think the issue is that it is getting harder to have a private conversation or indulge in a private interest. It's quite difficult to have a conversation with a friend that's physically far away without using the services of one or more multinational corporations that may or may not be able to monitor what you say and sell that information to someone else. Of course it's possible, but how hard is it to analyze all the options and coordinate a method?

And what if you want to buy stuff for a hobby that you only talk about with a few close friends? Don't use Amazon, or a credit card anywhere, don't use Google to look up products or Google Maps to get to a store, don't use plaintext email or Facebook chat or Whatsapp or whatever else to talk about it with your friends, etc.

It takes a lot of mental effort to know whether or not an action will be "public", which can cause the cooling effect this page talks about. The trend is not people doing stuff in private instead of publicly, it's people not doing stuff at all because there is no "private".

It's not live and let live, it's live within the lines or be penalized. This isn't immediately terrible if you actually like living within those lines, but that's a big if. And what about when you or the lines change and they no longer align so well?

There's a big difference between politeness and total conformity to established (by the powerful) norms. Disagreeing (politely) with government policy on a public forum could easily prevent you from obtaining certain positions or status in the future if this is an accurate trend.

Not to mention that the freedom to go outside of convention without arbitrarily large punishment is worth preserving in of itself.

> Is it wrong to suggest that this (if accurate) is a positive trend? I would like to live in a society where people spend more time considering what they say publicly, keeping to themselves, and refraining from imposing their thoughts and opinions. Live and let live.

Is this what's happening? What I see is more and more people falling into a few different tribes, each attempting to out ostracize the other. Game theory suggests this will end with two main tribes with peak hatred for each other.

Is it wrong to suggest that this (if accurate) is a positive trend?

If it's a completely inaccurate trend, I suppose your suggestion then completely misses the hoop, so to speak. If anything, it seems like a lack of privacy has heated things up through the micro-marketing of a hundred types of off-kilter reasons to be angry to a hundred different slightly skewed personality types.

> I would like to live in a society where people spend more time considering what they say publicly, keeping to themselves, and refraining from imposing their thoughts and opinions.

I see you've never been to the internet.

>If you want to have a private conversaion, social media doesn't seem to be a good vehicle for it. Much like airing your dirty laundry in the town square has been considered bad etiquette, airing personal greivances on the internet seems to be in poor taste.

An excellent point. Although not a new or particularly profound one.

When the large corporation I worked for back in the mid-1990s connected their email system to the larger internet, all employees were sent a memo discussing the advantages and issues with this.

It was recommended (paraphrasing) that employees shouldn't "put anything in an email that they wouldn't want to see on the cover of their local newspaper." That was back when local newspapers were a thing, but the principle still applies.

In fact, it applies even more strongly to the current social media environment. And it's still good advice.

That said, the rise of online communication and social media have reduced the personal and private interactions that people have.

Many on HN (and everywhere else too) won't answer phone calls at all, instead relying on SMS/Slack/WhatsApp, etc.

And formerly private conversations about one's personal life now take place on online platforms like Facebook, which ruthlessly exploits every bit of information they can get to "optimize the ad delivery experience."

One of the worst offenders is GMail, of course. They read all of your emails as a matter of course. Again in an effort to "better target advertising."

Which is why I'm surprised that anyone with even a passing interest in privacy would use either of those platforms. I certainly don't.

When I have a voice conversation (whether that be on a phone call or in person), as long as I'm cognizant of who is in hearing distance of my voice, I can be relatively (unless I'm being specifically targeted for close surveillance) sure that my conversation is private.

But any text-based communication that utilizes a centralized resource to route such communications is incredibly vulnerable to exposure and can't be trusted to provide a private communications channel.

Yes, this is oversimplified. No, I don't discuss encrypted voice/text mechanisms like Signal, PGP, SMIME, etc. here.

I didn't do so because most folks are unaware/unwilling/unable to use such secure communications mechanisms anyway, so their utility is severely limited.

The idea has only accidental correlation with social media. You are pretty much wrong focusing your thinking on social media only.