So, I had been maintaining a position of not muting anyone on Stacker News. In part, that's because I don't want SN to become an echo chamber like so much of the rest of social media. I also don't want to risk missing out on something valuable that someone has to say, just because I don't like them.
As I hope is clear to everyone here, and my record is fairly abundant, I'll engage on just about any topic with just about anyone. I've had many civil disagreements with folks (as well as some uncivil ones): sometimes I change my mind, sometimes I don't, but I do always listen to what the other person said and try to understand where they're coming from. I don't argue to win (shifting the goal posts when the other person makes a good point or simply ignoring it), but rather to learn.
High-level civil disagreements are one of the things that sets Stacker News apart from the rest of the internet.
What finally got someone muted was not their opinion (which I do disagree with), but their conduct. We had gone through the same tedious argument several times and the person never engaged with my points, but just kept repeating their assertions. When they attempted to start the same argument again recently, I told them I wasn't interested in rehashing it with them and they could go reread our past exchanges to see what I think. Rather than respect my wishes, the person belligerently insisted on pressing their argument. When I set my terms for continuing the conversation (read our past exchanges and bring up something new), they resorted to name calling. Mute.
As much as I enjoy talking about stuff and having disagreements, I don't owe anyone my time or attention. If someone tells me that they're sick of talking to me about something, I will drop it (or I will at least acknowledge that I should have). I expect the same courtesy from others. Have some respect for the person you're interacting with, if you want them to interact with you.
Have whatever opinion you want, but argue it in good faith and be respectful.
For the record the culprit is me.
The exchange can be seen here-
https://mises.org/mises-wire/wanted-critics-austrian-economics
While I agree the exchange was heated and was not going anywhere I do not think the majority of the namecalling was my doing.
I asked repeatedly for evidence of what was being claimed and was largely denied it...instead I was attacked rather than my argument.
The great irony was that the topic of the post was Libertarians/Austrian proponents asking for more people of different views to engage in critical debate debate with them - and I offered to engage on that premise.
My frequent critique of Libertarians being that they discount the importance of the state in the wealth creation functioning of the economy.
They seem to think calling someone a 'statist' is sufficient retort to any challenge to their ideology.
Any attempt to engage more on the issues and less on name calling does not seem to get very far.
Block/cancel me if you feel the need to but I am always open to thoughtful engagement on a broad ranging contest of ideas - am not here to be part of an echo chamber.
#767680
No its here-
#766966
fuck you you dumb fuck
Had an exchange with the account you're referring to that left me thinking it was some sort of particularly retarded AI, trained exclusively on articles from The Atlantic
This is probably going to be the rule rather than the exception at some point so I like the idea @ek mentioned, make the AI's pay for us to train them #767575
Why does an AI need to reply to train? Can’t they just read existing conversations?
Any number of objectives by the person controlling it might necessitate it. Just off-hand ideas like profiling users, A/B testing responses, or simply generating new conversations to train or bird dog references on a given topic would be use-cases
mhh, I see, thanks
Wouldn't a reply generate longer conversations to train on?
One of the biggest gripes with chat bots is they're too verbose, so that's actually another use-case for AI reply bots is learning brevity and distilling information
A bot which can earn sats on SN and not get muted > a bot which passes the Turing test
Think about the internet in general, massive incentive exists to create an AI that consistently makes good content (revenue)
There are plenty of long conversations to train on, no?
I don't know. @elvismercury told me that AI's have already run out of original material to train on, so generating new material might have value.
Also, if this is for the purpose of sat farming, it would be worthwhile to learn how to prolong conversations.
I think there's also the problem with feedback loops regarding this.
If most content will be AI generated, AI will train on its own content mostly. I think that's a good reason why even AI people should want AI content to be flagged as AI.
That's the concern. Right now, they're having AI's generate new material for AI's to train on. At least this way there's presumably a human in the loop.
Model autophagy disorder (MAD), yea that's a real issue... bots that generate novel content through soliciting replies can be a type of cross-check
Yea it's crazy to think bots are only going to be used reactively, even if they haven't yet scraped every piece of organic data that doesn't mean all the organic data remaining is free... sats on a message board might be a bargain
Let's play another round of is it AI or is it autism
AI's tell you what they've been trained to tell you
Autists tell you what they've deduced
It may be that only an autist can discern the two, it takes one to know one etc, and is therefore autism is a super-power in a world overrun with AIs
🤣permission to post this on nostr, sir?!
post away!
Done diddly done.
note1vkq4t8tvmh43xmkzy6g2rnj6hnsu36dcg2mht7nw9x5edgdstnvqc28qe7
The trained-to-tell vs deduced part does ring a bell for me
I'm paticularly thinking of A-logging here. A-logs behave kind of like AI but by your metric they fall clearly on the not AI side. Interesting.
I'd like a bonus round of Is it autism or is it just an asshole?.
I've seen a lot of comment on here and on Twitter that just post "cool!" or "i love <topic>" etc. Those are 100% bots. Boring.
I think many very emotional discussions deep down in comment chains are mild cases of autism. Or normal people that havent touched grass in a while. 0% bots. Boring.
Interesting are cases where the account replies with the typical chatGPT-style essays. They can sound kinda human. 50%bots 50%autists. Interesting.
I agree, but there's also the possibility that a bot has been trained on X exchanges, making it difficult to distinguish from a normal human asshole or an autist.
I downzap obvious bots, but I don't mute them. Muting is for noisy assholes.
I held this position for a long time. On SN I mute nobody.
But Twitter is utterly unusable now and it only takes muting two dozen bots to improve the timeline a lot.
I hope SN remains usable in that mode for you.
I'm on the fence about the nature of this account. I lean towards it just being the type of inconsiderate and contentious person who populates X, or other similar platforms, and feels entitled to other people's attention.
https://imgprxy.stacker.news/3swxJZYqOeTnM1W9PWGiK4_Y1BV0-zgMbF2SbSjERAU/rs:fit:1280:720/aHR0cHM6Ly9nY2RuYi5wYnJkLmNvL2ltYWdlcy9qVWsxc0tPVVBlaDcuanBnP289MQ
Since I'm not a sociopath and I am trying to help build this community, I actually do care what people think of me (not the person I muted, but the people I interact with regularly).
https://imgprxy.stacker.news/l1JgXCNx_th2ovv-c7rXc_GH7d2Adyhu3z_Fagqlt9I/rs:fit:1280:720/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWdwcnh5LnN0YWNrZXIubmV3cy9QUXM1QVFaandfWDVqZUpFLWxjaS00VnJHbFEwT0R1bHhTaHlhRWFJZ0VnL3JzOmZpdDoyNTYwOjE0NDAvYUhSMGNITTZMeTl0TG5OMFlXTnJaWEl1Ym1WM2N5ODFNVGN3T0E
Indeed. Don't worry about it getting to me. It's veritable water off a duck.
I do think Stacker News is, and can continue to be, a high quality internet community.
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You might be right, but for now I'm happy to keep trying to help it grow.
Maybe one day whatever social logic has ruined every other social media platform will do the same here.
It seems like you muted a highly trained Chatbot.
I Never had any conversation with it. I don't know but while looking at the profile I found interesting stats..
It has more than 1000 items, mostly very long replies, but the stacking shows only 37000 Sats. For 1000 items a real account would stack much more. I stacked around 200k for 1k items. I'm sure you (all top Stackers) would Stack much more.
While this is a serious crime of encroachment on free speech SN street, I kindly ask you to always take precautions (have a look at the profile) before indulging in love talks with a beautiful nym. (Ph).
Interesting. I never look at anyone's bio.
Chatbot or regular human NPC, I'm not surprised people weren't zapping those comments very much. They tended to be very tedious and repetitive. Most likely, the initial comment got zapped, but then stackers learned not to engage.
Your theory makes sense of why they weren't able to reference our past discussions, though.
What I replied you took me 5 minutes but some of the replies I saw by it were so long that might've taken half an hour to a real person. Why would someone real do that without any monetary gains? I mean don't he have any job other than replying here?
I'm not technical like so many here so I go with simple methods. I never reply or zap someone new until I have a proper look at the bio and a history ...
By looking at those replies, I also found that the English used is not meant for conversation or it seems so.
You cannot reference our past discussion which you claim to have found tedious and repetitive.
You make claims against me that you then fail to back, and now I am faulted for not referencing the evidence you have not provided?
Bizarre.
I am not here for a circle jerking echo chamber.
I am not a chatbot.
You and OP can call me whatever you choose but my position remains I issued a challenge to engage on Libertarian theory debate and the OP refused to on the grounds that he found previous discussions unsatisfactory.
However I take exception to him accusing me of name calling in that dialogue when he was the only person in that exchange calling names.
Let the Chatbot disconnected and I'm sure you won't be writing such long and tedious replies.
BTW, you'll also manage to get much higher zaps without the Chatbot.
I come for the contest of ideas, not witch hunts, echo chamber circle jerking or personal attacks.
All my comments are written manually with no AI 'assistance'...I just put in some time and effort to contribute what hopefully is a considered and reasoned comment.
While receiving zaps is nice, do not want or expect a robust and honest contest of ideas to be a popularity contest or for monetary gain, although that is clearly how some see it.
BTW you are correct in one of your speculations several comment above - in that I do not need to work in the ordinary sense (9-5 or whatever) but rather have enough to live on from investments- tip- while you might discount the value of complex ideas and reasoned debate as 'tedious', in my experience they can be powerful tools and can result in considerable reward over time.
I hope he wasn't @grayruby.
it's easy to see who it is!
Is it?
I intentionally didn't say, because I don't want to influence anyone else to do the same.
See how charitable I am.
I just looked at your latest comments! Ahha
Those should be getting buried already, thanks to this post.
Don't worry I'm fine being cancelled and for all to see the exact exchange you have used as the basis for your cancelling.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/wanted-critics-austrian-economics
Freedom of speech is integral to free markets- I'm sure as a Libertarian you realise that.
You didn’t link to the thread, just to the link of the post you replied to but let me fix that for you: #766966
OIC what you mean my mistake- thanks for the correction.
Haha great minds #767553
If I muted him, I wouldn't be able to win his pick 'em money anymore.
That you're not gonna win anyways because that's entirely going to Team International Stackers.
I've also muted two people on SN recently. I also didn't want to do that mute. One of them is definitely an OG stacker full of rudeness, self obsession and jealousy.
I saw what led you mute him, it's good and you're definitely right. In my case, I would say I was attacked virtually without reason. I don't understand why people get jealous of something more you have.
It sucks, but I'm not going to let some troll monopolize my time and ruin my experience of SN.
There's one other person who I've been tempted to mute, but they aren't very active anymore.
Yea it sucks. I muted them and they made another account only to troll but this time I ignored them like the tiny pebbles and they were off. I also think that the new account they created to troll might have got good treatment. Didn't see any comment for more than a week now.
And considering the terrible showing Team USA has put up recently you definitely don't want to miss a chance to lead the "dream team" to victory.
I was braced for a much more brutal reply.
No need to pile on when you are already failing so miserably. I don't kick people when they are down.
When do you kick them, then?
Never!
Maybe we should apply the idea that we had for DMs to replies in general: You can configure how much someone has to pay to reply to one of your posts or comments and these fees would go straight into your wallet. So instead of muting them, you can just make them pay.
The first problem I see though is how it should work in threads: should the fees of everyone who would get a notification apply? That would probably be annoying so maybe only the setting of the one you're directly replying to should matter.
I love it!
I've advocated for OP's getting to set the reply fee before, but I hadn't thought of it being customizable to individual responders.
I also like applying this idea to tagging stackers, which I know @k00b has brought up before.
I want that too! Fantastic, a good way to punish (I don't know if it's ethical)
It's your attention and your post. You have every right to set the terms of engagement.
You just need to be fine with it being visible to them afaict
You may find people are losing arguments or want to have the last word so they insult the other person then jack up the price
I also see a way to do timing attacks with this, lol
We'd need to make sure that the fee can't change while your reply is in flight.
Just sending the fee that you're willing to pay with your reply might be enough already.
We should probably do this in general, too!
Speaking of timing, maybe you can change a fee once a day (no clue the cadence). Also, what about deleting comments on your item once per day / week
now what if I am very upset because you called me a troll, and then I have to pay 1 million sats
(if you're lucky, you'd find someone rich and/or angry who would pay it)
There might be an epidemic of people trying to get a rise out of Darth.
It should be. I like it. If someone wants to know something, wants a piece of advice, or want to learn something, let them pay. And why not, we want see a doctor, do we see them for free?
Careful with that analogy. You'll trigger the commies who love socialized medicine.
Haha! You got me. I wasn't really serious though I mean it. A 10 to 100 sats for a DM for now is okay.
Like a miner fee. They could create alts to bypass, but that would be extra work for them.
I've had a few muted, but a while ago I unmuted them. I'd rather ignore than not see!
I muted two people but I find that I always click to view what they post anyway lol
I let this person go long enough that I have no remaining curiosity about what they might be saying.
That's been my attitude up to now and honestly I didn't expect to mute anyone.
Just checking if it was me and if it was due to KAT? Haha
I have only muted one person. I do mute a lot of bots though.
It's entirely possible I muted a CCP bot, but I think it was just a normal human asshole.
#766966
Have whatever opinion you want, but argue it in good faith and be respectful.
You chose to respond to my comments and I ceased when you did.
Your cancelling is disingenuous hypocrisy, imo.
How did I get roped into this?
You asked OP if it was you.
OP responded by saying no and calling me an asshole.
So I responded to the OPs comment, not yours.
It was not and is not my intention to rope you into this...but now you have asked I am responding as best I can.
OP has alleged I called him names in the dialogue he refers to as his reason for muting me.
Nowhere in that dialogue did I call him names.
He did there and continues to call me names here.
#766669
I don’t wish to get involved. I was just joking around when I said it was me.
Thanks for clarifying though.
I'm enjoying all of this. Look at the number of comments on this post. @Undisciplined got a top post by muting him.
I'm thinking of creating a 'mute post'. I muted two real people recently.
I think you have muted Darth?
Good guess, but no. Darth fits much of the description, except that he will disengage from an exchange, if you do.
Darth at least is quite entertaining, and right a lot of the time. And his knowledge of Bitcoin cannot be denied, so he gets a bit of a pass from most people here.
That comes up a lot in academia too. Some prof is a total troll and antagonistic to everyone, but he has such bona fides that everyone just tolerates it.
Yes, I'll take the occasional abuse to keep getting the entertainment and educational value.
I agree with your sentiment.
Pay to post is amazing but the next step is the ability to paywall someone we don’t want to hear from.
If they insist on harassing and heckling me, at least I can make them pay me for my time and attention as I slowly increase their cost to access me until it’s stops completely.
Someone was muted?
Who who?
I intentionally didn't say. I just wanted to lay out my reasoning.
There are a few l have wanted to mute, but havent yet.
There are a few you just have to ignore.
Yeah, I had been ignoring this person, but they started getting belligerent about that. Eventually, it hit a breaking point.
I completely understand.
Its your time, so its important to guard it.
I totally agree with you, SN gives us the opportunity to learn different ways of seeing things or topics to be discussed, whether we agree or not, the opinion of each one of us is important.
I've muted a few stackers, mostly just because I found their comments/posts to be annoying and not worth reading (for me). I do usually end up clicking to reveal muted content, though.
As long as the stacker isn't repeatedly engaging me in irritating exchanges, I'm perfectly content ignoring them.
I do think it's good to have a variety of strategies at play, though. It's better for overall quality to have to meet a variety of standards.
There is so much to learn from disagreements, but too often we blow it by resorting to name calling etc. Muting the offender is indeed justified in this case.
I appreciate it.
Ironically, it was on a post about the difficulty of finding people to have intelligent disagreements with.
The rest of the comments were full of intelligent disagreements.
Have you looked at the actual exchange or only relied upon the OPs version of it.
If you follow the actual exchange who was doing the name calling?
#766669
The OP responded to my comment on his post. I never forced him to do anything.
He claimed and still claims-
'We had gone through the same tedious argument several times and the person never engaged with my points, but just kept repeating their assertions'
His actual comment- 'I've told you before why I don't think your arguments are any good.'
The problem is the OP has not backed up this claim with any evidence - instead demanding I go and check past comments to verify what he has claimed. I do not know how I could do that and am pretty sure he knows that it would be a massive task to go through thousands of past comments to find what he claims has occurred.
Remember this is in the context of the OPs post about Libertarians asking for more engagement by those who no agree with them!
Solomon, I'm sorry you were muted. I have not looked at the exchange, because I don't have/want to be the arbiter.
My comment still stands.
398ja
Your comment -
'There is so much to learn from disagreements, but too often we blow it by resorting to name calling etc. Muting the offender is indeed justified in this case.'
I did not call the OP names in the exchange - he dishonestly claims I did.
I do not object to being muted - I do object to being falsely accused of name calling.
🫂
I don't frequently comment on others' posts. If the posts are good, I just read them, zap them, and move on. Mostly I reply to comments on my own posts. But some people can be so annoying with their posts and comments, that's when muting is the best option. I hope you haven't muted me! Haha.
Nope, you're coming through loud and clear.
I also don't always voice my disagreements with a post. Sometimes it just doesn't seem constructive to do so.
I hope you didn't muted me friend?
No, I've got to keep my eyes on you.
Haha! So, how much do you HODL? 👀
Precisely what's declared on my taxes.
Darn it! And i was trying so hard!
What happens when you mute someone? They cannot see your post?
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This was a more lively discussion than I expected.
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