I wonder how all those people did it in the 90s and 00s and before the age of smartphones.

Reality is based in a context.

Or are we going to go to even more “get off my lawn” kind of places and talk about how ancient man survived quite fine without the internet?

This is something it's taken me a while to come to terms with. I used to want to fully engage with everybody and everything. It was anathema to me to just "broadcast something into the void" and ignore replies. But over time I came to realize that a. I don't scale to engaging with every single person who replies to something I say online, and b. I don't owe those people a response or any of my time/attention; especially the trolls and bots and other lamers that are so prevalent these days.

So now I'm more comfortable (albeit maybe not 100% comfortable) with treating things in more of a "fire and forget" fashion. I say what I want to say, and people can do with it what they will. I just can't be arsed to engage with the trolls and other randos. But... if somebody has a mature, reasonable, professional response then I am willing, on a selective basis, to dig in deeper and have a longer discussion.

I don't think HN is immune from the "redditization" of the internet, though it's certainly a better community than most.

'Redditation' of the world. If it were only taking place on the internet it wouldn't be all that concerning.

That is no doubt one of life's mysteries, ultimately, but people writing down their thoughts seems to be a common practice amongst humans. One theory is that it helps the brain process information, but who knows? No matter the exact mechanism, though, the incentive is the same as why anyone writes something they are thinking about down.

> Educate people

Forum-going is a solitary activity. There are no people other than you. Just you and your thoughts, along with some software to prompt you with some ideas to think about (which is the value-add over a traditional journal).

And that is the problem with the 'Redditization' of the world being discussed. That solitary activity, which is fine when done in solitude – whatever floats your boat, is leaking out into the real world where other people are there to feel it and that has consequences. An increasing number of people are failing to recognize that software and people are not the same thing, thereby treating people in the real world as if they are software. But people are not software, so you find these social issues emerging.

It's a funny take, a forum is just you vs software. If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back! Or maybe it's the other way around? These days, one never can be sure.

And how wonderful it is that you, dear software, provided another prompt after my last journal entry. I wasn't sure of what to write next, so this prompting has proven quite helpful.

> If I understand things correctly, me, the software is prompting you back!

Prompting is two way street, indeed. Input into the software from the person may produce a result from the software, and the output from the software back to the person may produce a result that is fed back into the software. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, this is the value that said software offers over a classic journal.

But, regardless, if that is how someone wants to spend their time in solitude, more power to them! But we do see a problem emerging where a growing number of people are not able to differentiate between people and software and are taking that solitary journaling with prompts out into the real world and are treating people as if they are software. But people aren't software, and this leads to social problems. Which isn't terribly surprising. If people treated other people as if they were dogs, you would find an emergence of social problems too. It turns out, for the best outcome of people, people need to be treated like people.

I reply to people all the time, especially on HN where the S/N ratio tends to be a bit higher.

That's why I don't speak my opinions to anyone other than people I'm close with.

Can you provide some examples?

1. Being colored 2. Doing recreational marijuana 3. Being a specific faith (like wearing Hijab for women) 4. Heck, just being a woman

Society seems to always have reasons to fire people or deny people a job that seem silly in retrospect, but enough people seem to think it's reasonable enough to do en masse.

Edit: I'm not saying any of those reasons, or being fired for holding "controversial" opinions are good, I'm just pointing out it's nothing new.

In what way are these opinions, controversial or otherwise?

Are you suggesting that people of colour, for example, were fired only if they were of the opinion that they were a person of colour? If they were visibly a person of colour, but adamant that they were caucasian, a promotion was in order instead? They just had to believe?

When has a society ever been accepting of different opinions, past a certain threshold? I can't think of any examples to be honest.

In the pre-internet past, it wasn't that much of a problem, because there wasn't much diversity, and highly differing opinions were isolated from each other because of geography. People only talked with other local people, who usually didn't travel much, and wider dissemination of ideas came from the press, which was controlled by a relatively small group of people and didn't just publish every person's opinion willy-nilly.

Now we're exposed to opinions from people all around the globe. We've never had to deal with this before.

On 4chan sure, on Reddit absolutely hecking no. On the main subs in French wrongthink comments get deleted super fast, and on one English-speaking about a hobby it's an immediate ban.

I don’t post anywhere but HN so my profiles are always bare. Starting something like 5 years ago I’d follow someone and within a day, flip a coin, on tails I was banned or blocked.

I eventually deleted the last of my social accounts. They turned into places where strangers were just there to torment each other or receive unconditional praise.

I'm just a few years from 40 and I can still vividly remember a time not too long ago where this was not at all how I thought.

Another game that is like this is our very own economic system, at least when it comes to aesthetics, money is yet another "upvote"/"like" game. The impact and similarities more clear and apparent.

One should hope. Disagreement is how you learn. It is why we talk to each other.

But that's not what we're talking about here. With 'Reddit' behaviour transcending beyond Internet forums, we're losing the disagreement. Now we see ostracization. There is no: "You are wrong because X." or "That is an interesting thought, but have you considered Y?" it has become "There is something wrong with you." and in the extreme "Say goodbye to your job/friends/family."

Don't you think it's worrisome that we can't agree on anything? And that includes things that are supposed to have objective answers. Why can't we find the truth? We now have instant global communication available almost 24/7, shouldn't it bring the period of unprecedented unity?

> The fact is, every person occupies unique physical space and thus has unique life experiences and a unique perspective of each “event”.

#000000 and #000001 are unique, but most would simply call both colors "black", and not lose any advantage whatsoever. The fact we can communicate using common words and obtain desired effects most of the time disproves that uniqueness created by differing perspectives makes truth an "illusion" or meaningless.

Now, I notice that I use "we all agree" and "vast majority," which is no way to explain an objective fact, but what we all agree on as a community or society _is_ reality. A society or community that has a different reality(s) than us is probably not a society or community that we would associate ourselves with.

This operates on several levels and dimensions; the common realities I share with my local Islamic community are different realities than I share with my tech community, or Toastmasters community, or even family.

Going back to the original point, yes, there are no realities that the entire global community can agree on, not even something as seemingly incontroversial as medicine (Christian Science for example https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/mi... ), but no individual is part of the global community. We choose our communities based on the realities that we accept to be true.

This is literally schizophrenia, when two such communities meet, a massacre inevitably occurs.

You're confusing rationally concluding something with feeling morally righteous for believing it. It's not irrational to disbelieve something that people only believe because they'll feel like a bad person or be punished for doubting. See religion, for example.

The only reason most people believe the holocaust happened is because they heard about it from general society. Same way they believe God created the world. Almost no layman has actually studied it. It's just a kind of common faith where being a believer is what's important rather than the content of the belief.

I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that the vast majority of believers aren't believing out of rationality but out of indoctrination.

Same is true of all sorts of beliefs in things that don't directly affect us. We believe them because everyone assures us they're true, not because we sat down and worked out the conclusion for ourselves.

Sure, truth is in some senses unknowable (in particular in the 'The Map is not the Territory' sense), but we can have increasingly accurate and useful enough models that improve our lives. It's also the case that most human matters need specific answers, potentially extremely specific to their situation (and hard or impossible to know things, like what's going on in their minds), as well as some ethical and aesthetic frameworks that allows one thing to be good while other thing is bad. It's not obvious at first that ethics could be based on truth and science (and hence have somewhat-universal rights and wrongs), but I've come to believe that's the case indeed. Ethics really derives from fundamental truths about existence, like the reality and nature of suffering (and the nature of the workings of our minds), the nature of existence (for example, work is ethical insofar as it supports us existing at all), and so on.

If you think about it, the notion that anything goes, is really absurd: surely there are things you wouldn't accept essentially no matter what. It's much more absurd than the counterpart that there are true things, even about the nature of existence, that we can approach. The human mind (and minds in general!) can be studied using similar methods to the study of nature (with some necessary generalizations), and I believe that's what the 21st century is going to be all about :)

Edit: That's not to say 'vibes' are not important as well! From Goethe[1]:

"Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands astonished, his impressions guide him: he learns sportfully, seriousness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us: what should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to it do not: with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that can be taught: the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong: who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no force : the instruction they can give is like baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar: their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the mind; for, where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master."

[1] Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) Book VII Chapter IX

I think you nailed it on the head here, though. At a young age, we often don't carry the self confidence or self awareness to stand by our thoughts or opinions (and really, for good reason -- it's a good time to learn!). We have no sense of self or conviction at that age, despite the very unfair way popular media portrays teens (e.g. as mature adults with fully formed sense of self).

But the net result of what GP was mentioning is this lack of self confidence + an overly hostile online conversation definitely makes the resultant introversion/misplaced self worth make a lot of sense.

I regularly throw my opinions in discussions online, and often (not most the time, but often), get "downvoted" into oblivion. Part of that is that I like to play devil's advocate or I engage folks who don't agree with me, but part of it is also being a 41 year old person who honestly doesn't give a shit if they have a "popular" opinion, just a well-reasoned one. I chock that up to being roughed up by the world for a bit.

It's funny but since the rise of the iPhone I feel like society has gone straight downhill, not that they have been the only player in the smartphone game, but they sure have profited well, are the biggest drain in the industry to the home developers that contribute to their ecosystem. They pay 0 tax and aren't contributing to the better of society through computing while convincing half the population they are protecting them, etc. It's a scam.

Like many large corporations, they aren't ANY better and will plead that it is due to 'competition' while being ahead of the food chain and able to lead in any way they choose.

You're welcome to project general failings of society onto the emergence of the iPhone (but not Android because Google maybe isn't nearly as evil I mean it's in their motto). And there's tons of hype and fanboyism associated with their products. But they are good products. After ditching Windows back in 2008, I've haven't yet had a compelling reason to switch OSes again in my career as a software engineer. Their higher-end devices are absurdly priced but my employer buys them for me, maybe that's why.

Apple has convinced a large amount of the population that they need to be locked into a walled garden to be 'safe' which is a) a lie, b) hugely anti-competitive and c) has made Apple more money than they know what to do with. They repeatedly have the most cash on hand of any company in the world. Apple pays 0 tax every year in the US due to loopholes and is a large drag on the economy for this reason, they are cash hoarders. Kids in school are brainwashed to think they need some shiny new apple phone to be part of the cool crowd. It's just a status symbol more than anything at this point even though it's an objectively worse system than the alternatives in many ways. IMO they are selling the smug attitude and talking points more than any new features. It's all marketing gimmicks every step of the way. Apple stores and their techs being called 'geniuses'? Everything down to the design of the store makes you feel like you are in some kind of tech dystopian nightmare, it's all image. The lock-in to the OS and App store should be enough for an antitrust case in the US IMO, but the US cares more about corporate money than protecting its people.

Additionally they have been found to slow down old devices purposefully, the right to repair is non-existent (good luck with this Apple!), not to consider the environmental impact on creating all these phones that are worthless if you want to run something different than apple iOS, and the fact that privacy is not valued nearly as much as Apple leads you to believe. There is still data harvesting going on at Apple, it's a revenue stream that is too tempting to large companies. They can access any of your iCloud data at any time unless you opt-in to ADP. There have been many times Apple was found to be lying, or not telling the whole truth about the privacy of users using their platform, like the location data issues in 2019, there have been privacy/tracking lawsuits in 2022, 2023, etc. There have been many security issues found with apple products that have never had a CVE, the proper security response, so as to obscure proof of the flaw, without proper disclosure. Security fixes are hidden many times and the end users not made aware of the issues. I have met many uninformed professionals in my space unaware of this due to drinking the apple Koolaid. Or they commonly don't care because family uses them, etc.

Now that the platform is as far-reaching, we are starting to see many exploits for Apple products, including ransomware, malware, etc so their remaining time that many people unrealistically regard them as the 'most secure platform' is limited. We are starting to see safari/webkit 1 click and 0click exploits very commonly. There are probably millions of other security holes to be found in their platform, just like any other. ML and great minds will help us find them over time.

I'm not saying that Android doesn't have any issues, etc. The difference is that one platform pretends to be better than the others and has been found to have been lying or not telling the whole truth in the past, many times. They are a shady company as well, and the whole market needs much more regulation. The EU seems to be leading the way on this.

1. Apple does not have monopoly position in phone market. People can still choose good alternative products. Current users have chosen the iPhone.

2. Since Apple does not intentionally make deals or hinder competition among other companies, no monopoly problem for that reason either.