We see a lot of nuance in Hacker News discussions, thanks to how the community has shaped up and to the tireless efforts of our moderators. And I want that level of discussion elsewhere, too. (Hacker News isn't the right place for every discussion, given its focus on tech.)
In particular, the recent takedown of Slate Star Codex has me thinking about nuance and truth, and how little space there is for it in online discussions today.
Without getting into any specific politics here, which platforms do you go to for nuanced, rational discussions? And, more broadly, how can we (as technologists) foster that sort of collegiate culture online, given the global scope of the Internet, the permanence of anything we post, and the inherent anonymity of the Internet stack.
I have a strong desire right now to 1) be a part of and reinforce existing communities with this ethos and 2) advocate for technology and culture that could make this the norm.
I think you are right that HN is not the right venue. A lot of what has kept it functional for over a decade is the focus on tech. It's not followed to the letter, but an attempt to make HN into SSC would probably destroy it. It's valuable enough as it is, so let's not take the chance.
The bright part is that (so far as I can tell) if one could attract the core community, SSC should be fairly portable. Scott's top posts were sometimes really good, but I don't think they were essential. I'm tempted that the right approach may be just to create a new space, advertise it, and try to attract enough of the core community to jump start it.
I picture it to be like capturing a swarm of bees: put a large cardboard box under the tree limb that they are hanging from, give it a sharp shake, seal up the box, take it to a new location, and install in a new hive. If you managed to capture a viable queen in the transfer, you are done! If not, you need to get the swarm to accept a new queen, with a process that involves exposure to the new queen's pheremones (and sometimes marshmallows --- I'm a little fuzzy on the details).
If one was to take that approach (metaphorically) where would you begin? And technologically, is there some better tool for the job than a Wordpress blog?
The fact is that nuanced discussion doesn't scale. It requires a small core of dedicated users that can't get drowned out by dross (e.g. rabid Twitter users that collectively gish gallop). Broadcasting the existence of any of these communities is an almost guaranteed path to destroying the essence of what makes them successful communities in the first place.
Data Secrets Lox is set up as a replacement for the SSC open threads, and is run on actual forum software, which means there are topic-specific threads for easier navigation. As membership increases, I expect we'll add subforums, also.
I'm one of the founders. Happy to answer any questions.
Outside HN, I talk to people I know personally who I know enjoy nuanced discussions. And that's it.
> And, more broadly, how can we (as technologists) foster that sort of collegiate culture online, given the global scope of the Internet, the permanence of anything we post, and the inherent anonymity of the Internet stack.
I am leaning heavily towards old-school blogging right now (without comments - people wanna comment, they can go write a response post on their own blog), including links to other blogs of interest. Maybe webrings, although I'm not very familiar with the social dynamics there and what the pros/cons are when compared to a more casual linking between blogs. Mastodon is also on my radar but I just don't know anyone personally who's into that.
> be a part of and reinforce existing communities with this ethos
I think this just needs to be done with people you already know. Ask 'em "Hey, wanna start a club?" and then go do so. Trying to make it bigger than that is a threat to getting it started in the first place.
> advocate for technology and culture that could make this the norm.
Not gonna happen, I think. My perception is that people who appreciate nuanced discussion are the minority in the global population. But that doesn't mean we have to roll over and accept Twitter. We can still make our own digital clubs.
One thing I've been thinking about lately is a discussion forum that is highly curated, featuring only comments from a whitelisted group of approved posters. Essentially a hybrid between journalism and the best of online commenting.
Its subject matter is somewhat different to the rationalist theme of SSC, but there is some crossover.
RW explores what they term the “crisis of meaning” in the modern world, the decay of institutions and social cohesion, and the challenges individuals face through trauma, mental illness and alienation.
Their forums on Discord and Google Groups host ongoing discussions about ways of overcoming these issues and finding a path to a better world.
It has a less materialistic and more spiritual ethos than SSC, so it won’t be every SSC exile’s cup of tea, but some may find it appealing.
They’ve done some excellent interviews with a broad range of folks including Gabor Mate, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall, Eric Weinstein, Brett Weinstein, Heather Heying, Douglas Rushkoff, Stanislav Grof, Diana Fleischmann, Ken Wilbur, Iain McGilchrist, John Vervaeke and Charles Einsenstein.
It's almost like, ironically, the best way forward would be to create a moderated community that slowly gets a user base of a diverse set of people, and then slowly pull back the moderation over time. Allowing something like subreddits with communities to self-select their own moderation levels is also great, imo. Reddit was perfect until the platform itself stopped being neutral.
It’s quite interesting, albeit more of an argument mapping site than a forum. I found participation a bit harder, as they have a “no duplicate arguments” rule, which probably makes sense for their setup.
A couple of diagrams that I found quite interesting:
https://www.kialo.com/general-ai-should-have-fundamental-rig... https://www.kialo.com/artificial-intelligence-ai-should-an-a... https://www.kialo.com/is-gender-a-social-construct-1570
The slogan "nothing about us without us" has been used a lot for this recently, but it has a much older history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_About_Us_Without_Us
Another completely different thing is trying to build communities around those values. And even then, one thing is the real world, educating children to be rational, intellectually honest, critical... another thing is creating small physical communities with that kind of people, and yet another is creating "large scale", open, highly visible spaces that still have consistently high quality contributions. This last case seems unlikely to me. You either require large scale moderation, with all the potential problems that that involves (logistically, morally, and for the scope of the discussions [I still think it tends to be better than no moderation. Small communities are naturally moderated by the fact that no one interested enough in a topic will get to find the community]), or you need everyone to be intellectuals with similar priorities and a strict discipline to shut up unless you are in the best conditions to contribute (have something useful to contribute and they are in an emotionally stable state when they can best fight against their own biases and whatever). Both seem pretty impossible.
Other approaches are possible, though, and have been used in many cases in similar and different contexts. Basically, entry doors to large communities that interact in smaller subgroups. Take forums and threads, reddit, google itself where you can search whatever you want but end up in a random blog, etc. The main issue is structuring information and interests in an accessible way / discoverability, standardizing the interaction methods... but there will still be a lot of noise. You could try with other ideas like allowing authors or discussion starters to filter by themselves the answers, and have both filtered and unfiltered discussions, so readers can access to "highly curated" discussions on the topics they enjoy, while also being able to switch to the mess that real interaction inevitably can become (and with it, the broader perspective, which can only ever be fuzzy and noisy).
Also the moderation model for slashdot is golden. I strongly suggested anyone interested in online forum design to take a look at the source code. The idea of rating comments based on a few categories, allowing readers to assign different weight to each categories, and forcing voters (moderators) to abstain from commenting when voting, works really well and solve problems that are impossible here or on reddit/facebook/etc.
You can also set up another RSS reader and just import a couple of those "Awesome blog" lists on Github. That way you have a collection of random shit you can browse through and sometimes you get an interesting title.
Get on an ActivityPub server (Mastodon, Pleroma, MissKey) or set one up yourself. You can find a couple of threads on here and Lobste.rs where people post their Fediverse accounts and you can follow some of those and then branch out and find other people.
[1]: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-so...
real life, at least for many topics
There are lists of Reddit and YouTube alternatives that are worth visiting. But they’ll only have a chance if we all try them out, evangelize them to friends, and post content (rather than just consuming it). The big issues are lack of content or early swarming from one political group (which then deters the “other side” from joining). Parler, a Twitter alternative, has this issue. I’m nevertheless trying it out just to give it a shot. But we might need a tool to manage the process of achieving quorum on what platform interested people move to. If we fragment across all of available choices, they’ll all wither and die.
Here are some starter sources of Reddit and YouTube alternatives: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/hi97fz/.... Also see https://www.reddit.com/r/YoutubeAlternatives/, which is newer and less developed.
Kialo is an interesting platform for debate - https://www.kialo.com/. But it is a complex interface and certainly doesn’t have the reach and accessibility of the biggest (and worst) platforms like Twitter. Apart from Kialo I think developing one’s own nuanced perspective is easiest to achieve by reading many different news sources and having respectful real life conversations. But only a few in my social circle are up for such discussions - I suppose it is better than none.
PS I feel your pain on the loss of Slate Star Codex. I had many bookmarked articles that I now can’t read :(
What is really being objected to here? Being noticed by a wider audience? Does the SSC community not believe that it can stand up to wider scrutiny?