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847 points kick | 1 comments | 20 Nov 19 15:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source

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spectramax ◴[20 Nov 19 16:27 UTC] No.21585284[source]▶

Liberal societies, such as the Bay Area (where I live), it’s impossible to criticize anyone without having the doubt of “offending” someone. When it comes to China, I can’t go out in the lunch room and openly criticize CCP because you know, I could “offend” a Chinese National.

This needs to stop. I see this behavior on HN, which is frustrating, counterproductive, anti-free speech and extremely left-winged.

Another problem is to try being a moderate in these liberal pockets of America. The moment you pick out a couple of things that I agree about what Trump is doing, I get intense opposition, lose friendships, get judged, etc.

The Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, the 3 trillion dollar neighbor of America is a suffocating place for anyone who has dissenting opinion about some liberal concepts.

Silicon Valley people think that moderates and right-wing folks hate gays, lgbt community and loves guns, hates China which is far from the truth. Then they feel to justify themselves by overcompensating, supporting China and smearing the truth. Ironically, they make fun of right-wing echo chambers.

If your political ideology looks away from objective truth, you need to question it. No matter how “conservative” or “liberal”.

This is from my personal experience, your MMV.

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echelon ◴[20 Nov 19 16:53 UTC] No.21585610[source]▶

>>21585284 #

You're being downvoted for expressing a contrarian viewpoint.

This kind of censorship isn't even targeting hate speech, and it drives me crazy. Why downvote them?

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1. geofft ◴[21 Nov 19 15:43 UTC] No.21595219[source]▶

>>21585610 #

The secret about contrarian viewpoints is that they tend to be less supported by obvious evidence, which means there's a confounding factor of being downvoted for expressing a poorly-reasoned viewpoint.

For extreme examples: "I don't vaccinate my kids because I don't want them to have autism" is both contrarian and sort of actively disproved by evidence, so downvoting on the latter grounds is entirely reasonable. If you want to run a worthwhile discussion site, the discussions have to be meaningful to discuss. "The open-source movement is a mistake and the world would be better served by changing the Open Source Definition" is a contrarian, unpopular opinion, but there isn't clear evidence either way as to its merit (among other things, it's more of a straight-up opinion than a report of facts), so it's worth discussing, and shouldn't be downvoted just for being contrarian.

The comment above mostly made testable claims about Silicon Valley's culture. "I feel like the SJWs have gone too far" is an opinion. "People cannot criticize the Chinese government in lunchrooms" is a claim that can be proven or disproven.

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