> There's a lot of hatred all over the internet. There doesn't have to be.
Ultimately I think it's probably a good thing that people can express these hateful ideas online, instead of being forced to bottle them up where they can't be addressed. You don't win the battle against bad ideas by shouting people down, muzzling them, or driving them away. You win it by engaging them and consistently showing them they are wrong over time.
I think that might be an intuitive reaction but I don't agree because those type of hateful ideas aren't engaged with. Those people just enter echo chambers with other like minded people and their opinions bounce back and force, picking up velocity until they can't be altered in those people's minds.
If you think echo chambers are the problem, driving people away from the mainstream discussion is quite possibly the worst thing you could do. You don't deal with a racist by shouting "RACIST!" and ignoring them (which is what we do now, which plainly doesn't work), you show them how and why they're wrong, repeatedly and often.
Racists and sexists are human beings with human thoughts and human feelings just like every other human. People need to start looking beyond their own personal "ick" factor if this is to ever be dealt with.
There's a saying I like: you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Racism isn't a reasonable position, showing someone how and why they're wrong isn't going to do anything. Showing someone that spouting that junk isn't socially acceptable anywhere is how you'll end those attitudes.
People are social creatures long before they're rational ones--use social tools, not logical ones.
> Showing someone that spouting that junk isn't socially acceptable anywhere is how you'll end those attitudes.
I disagree. Attacking people for their views (for example, calling them a racist or down voting them to hell) is how you reinforce existing negative attitudes, not end them.
If you'll indulge me, I'd like to present some anecdata. I remember entering into a comment thread on HN using a throwaway in which hacker culture was being attacked as being inherently misogynistic. The statements being espoused seemed extremely overblown based on my experience. It also seemed ridiculous to throw an entire culture under the bus because specific elements of it may be bad. When I voiced these opinions I was immediately attacked by someone who didn't even know me, who implied that I was a misogynist by not agreeing with their position. This shifted the discussion away from being about ideas to being about my personal character, so my internal reaction was something along the lines of "well fuck you and your stupid ideas then" and I left the thread. Any chance for productive dialogue was immediately over, and I left with a highly negative view of feminism and a bias against feminists which I didn't have when I entered the thread.
Fast forward a few months and I was hanging out with a good friend of mine who is a female developer. Sexism in the workplace somehow came up in conversation, and I again stated that the opinions being voiced by some of these women seemed like bullshit (using stronger terms than my first statement). She calmly said she could see how I would think so given my experience, but that it was indeed as bad as it sounded. We continued the conversation, and I came away with my mind changed. This would never have happened had she not engaged me in dialogue, and I would likely still harbor a subtle or overt bias against feminists to this day.
What do you mean by reasonable? Logical? Acceptable? Natural? Normal? Understandable?
I'd argue a lot of the low level racism and sexism we see on Reddit is entirely natural.
It's natural for a woman who has been sexually abused to be a little bit sexist towards men.
It's natural for a man who has his kids taken away from him by his ex-wife to be a bit bitter towards women.
It's totally understandable that a Chinese kid who has been heavily bullied for years by black kids at his school will have reservations about black people in general. Etc etc etc.
Wouldn't the racist want to self alter their behavior if they kept being excluded from a group?
Sure I'd love a world where I could really help change someone's mind but it is often easier and safer to just ignore those people as putting effort into trying to "help" them doesn't really offer me anything besides more abuse.
When they can immediately turn around and be welcomed into the arms of a group that doesn't call them names and agrees with them, what do you think the outcome of that is going to be?
What's more, you can't do anything about the fact that this can happen without making some very ugly sacrifices.
In my head it is the difference between coming to a thread and seeing some hypothetical hidden racist/sexist/ist comment that has been downvoted to hell and ignored or seeing the conversation being dominated with people having a discourse trying to change the ignorant opinion.
I'm all for trying to help people understand the reaction to their comments but it also sidetracks every conversation and there seems to be an endless supply of people making ignorant comments.
I have no problem with racists having to bottle of racist shit. In fact, I think it'd be best if they all bottled it up so deeply that no one ever knew how they felt at all.
Ultimately I think it's probably a good thing that people can express these hateful ideas online, instead of being forced to bottle them up where they can't be addressed. You don't win the battle against bad ideas by shouting people down, muzzling them, or driving them away. You win it by engaging them and consistently showing them they are wrong over time.