While HN submissions are generally held to a higher standard, the general comments/discussions are equally toxic. Apparently FB is such a cancer and everyone else is such a problem - but we’re actually part of the problem.
Personal restraint has vanished more and more in the last few years. Many here would argue it is a result of social media platforms.
I consider HN somewhere between 4chan and reddit. People here are actually smart (unlike reddit, which appears to attract angsty teenagers more than anything) and willing to engage in discussions outside of the status quo. It's not the chaotic jungle of 4chan, but if you're talking out of your ass people here are too clever to fall for it and you will be called out. On reddit if something sounds right to enough people who know nothing at all about said topic, it will get upvoted to the top where more people will absorb blatantly false information or self-fellating, pandering opinion.
I could be wrong but I think the purpose of being civil is so that people will actually want to talk to you.
> When I’m on Twitter, how rude should I be?
> I tend to admire thinkers who are civil and think less of those who are rude. Usually, I try to emulate those I admire and not those I don’t, but I actually think there’s an intellectual case to be made for rudeness and snark as long as it’s used in defense of worthy ideas instead of tribalism or self-aggrandizement (maybe a topic for a future Substack). One thing that used to bother me about academia was how someone would have a critique of a research project that completely discredited it, but nobody would actually follow the argument to its logical conclusion and say the research was therefore worthless and the author should go do something else. We as a society would be better off valuing being correct more and being civil less. Maybe you would ideally want both, but I suspect that there’s actually a tradeoff, as people who tend to be right about a lot are often jerks, and academics who are wrong about everything always seem to be complimenting each other for being stunning and brave (see #HighlightingWomen and #WomenAlsoKnowStuff). Economics is less crazy than other disciplines, and now there are female academics complaining that the field is too mean, which to me seems necessary to trim bad ideas. So I’m sort of a fan of incivility and rudeness, but also thinking carefully about how to make snark constructive (I’m aware this could all be motivated reasoning and I just enjoy insulting people). Another consideration is that people usually say that movements do better when they’re polite, so I may be harming the prospects of the views I advocate for. This always struck me as a belief rooted in social desirability bias, a kind of “nice guys finish first” philosophy. The woke are the most aggressive and least civil and tolerant political faction in the country, and they seem to have had the biggest political impact in the last few years. Trump supporters are the rudest people on the right, and they’re wining on their side. So why do we think civility is good for a movement? Like using Twitter though, this is one of those things where it’s easy to see the benefits while the costs are hidden.
I can agree that for them I think "jerk-ness" is really connected to dive and passion to be deeply informed and meaningfully correct. Everything else can feel like a distraction, or extra, or dancing around the point. And they can typically take being proven wrong gracefully because they respect correctness.
But I also find it (playfully) funny when they jump through logical contortions, ad-hoc speculation, just-so thinking when it comes to defending these things. If anyone had come to them with arguments structured so arbitrarily they would have ripped them to shreds for being unfounded and self-serving.
My take: Being a jerk is just as much a personal/emotional quirk. The challenges they have with managing the different odd logics of "emotion-y" things make valuing civility for others BUT ALSO to logically frame a convincing path for why they should be bothered to do anything different.
It's easy for him to be rude. He has a big twitter and substack platform/following, but being a dick will promptly get you banned from many communities if you have not paid your dues.
