This is why Quora is so sanitized unlike Reddit: you actually get to see the (alleged) qualification of the OP. I'm not saying this would get to be an appeal to authority, but blatantly contradicting the expert while you're none of it wouldn't be so easy to get away with in the other forums
Everywhere. Just look for anything that goes against (even slightly) the leftist perspective, such as:
anything critical of trans people competing in sports - a lot of those policies are bigoted, but there are legitimate concerns
evidence that the economy is not as bad as people claim - e.g. cars aren't more expensive today than they used to be, bottom of the market cars are about the same price as they were 20 years ago, after accounting for inflation (they're actually a little cheaper in many cases, and have way more tech)
arguments criticizing Biden/Democrats
anything anti-socialist
And so on. The quality of the argument doesn't matter, what matters is that it doesn't fit the leftist agenda, so it gets downvoted like crazy.
Go ahead, try playing devil's advocate sometime (and don't say the equivalent of "I'm a leftist, but...") and cite your sources and see how well your post does vs comments that ignore facts and spout common leftist rhetoric, the lower effort post will get more votes and yours will probably go negative.
I think it's especially bad here because you have a higher concentration of passionate people, i.e. people who went against the mainstream and left Reddit. So you'll get far fewer "average joes" vs a more popular site like Reddit.
I've been mass downvoted here for pointing out a point in the article that nobody had even read. It's incredible the amount of dogpiling that can happen for something so innocuous. Could have been isolated to that thread but you are definitely right about the hive mentality.
Yes, effective communication strategies is a vital and required skill set for the most learned among us. It is the duty of the rational to communicate knowledge and understanding to the irrational. They certainly can't do it themselves.
This has happened to me multiple times, what’s worse is that I have over corrected myself a few times with being a bit too polite. Maybe I come off as sarcastic when I do that.
Yup, I try to post a ton of sources to compensate. That way hopefully they'll see the effort I put in and actually read past my rather direct way of communicating online.
It seems to work more often than not, but unfortunately lower effort posts are more frequently rewarded vs higher effort posts imo.
Reddit is great for watching communities being radicalized. Wehther they do it themselves or they get a psyops push is up to everyone's guess but I've watched it several times.
SRS: Started out as a community pointing out misoginy and racism, ended up as a very weird hate group. I didn't watch it that closely, only saw the result.
some tumbler centered sub i followed, I forgot the name: same story, started quite light hearted, making fun of stupid shit said by kids on tumbler, turned into a right wing hategroup. This one I witnessed.
They ran out of material quick, started posting lame shit but now they gave it their own, made up context in the comments.
After a while, people who pointed out obvious satire got downvoted.
OP might not have a PhD but this stuff happens a lot on reddit. A lot of people here on Lemmy have an IT background and would get a rude shock looking at some of the dominant opinions on the major technology-related subreddits, particularly those that are heavily astroturfed.
If you really want to have some fun, when an Intel CPU is out preforming an AMD one on the charts go and mention that in a thread related to CPU performance. I'm fairly sure you'll be talking to people paid with AMD money to astroturf the shit out of Reddit who will make up every excuse they can about the situation.
Intel CPU do outperform AMD in several workloads, but on the top end, AMD seems to have the efficiency advantage.
If AMD lost in some, they outperformed in many more metrics by large enough margins.
This trend was true in past 2 gens (price and efficiency advantage with an overall perf advantage in power limited scenarios). Nothing to astroturf about it.
The weird part would be if someone is comparing a zen2 with 14gen and still sticking with AMD for "some reason"
I have similar gen Intel and AMD, the Intel chip annihilates the AMD one for bursty workloads, AMD eats Intel at everything else though (power draw especially).
I have similar gen Intel and AMD, the Intel chip annihilates the AMD one for bursty workloads, AMD eats Intel at everything else though (power draw especially).
"Just" is the most dangerous adverb in the English language for engineers. I catch myself making sure I revisit anytime I say it to make sure nuance is better captured.
I hop into the selfhosted subreddit every once in awhile and as you would imagine it’s mostly hobbyists that have no clue what they’re doing, but they’re also not very receptive to advice from people who do. They have their own set of commandments at this point it’s pretty wild.
The most common thing you see is the idea that the holy grail of security being “not forwarding ports in your router”. Put your publicly accessible web service running on your unsegmented home LAN behind a cloudflare tunnel and you’re “secure”, problem solved, job done. If you point out the fact that this doesn’t solve any of the problems that go along with “port forwarding” or that CF tunnels MITMs all their data, you’ll get downvoted as a “CloudFlare hater”.
Similarly they tend to believe that there’s no reason to separate your publicly accessible server from the rest of the devices on your home LAN, especially because the home LAN is “safe”.
Pretty much, seriously, fuck reddit... it's the only service I've ever been banned with in my 33 years of life, and I keep seeing others who have an unfair ban either on the site or from the site.
What's the old saying? If you run into an asshole, fuck him, if you CONSTANTLY run into assholes, you might be the asshole...
The only site I've been suspended in was X (twitter) recently, and it was on a lurker account I mainly use to follow people and rarely ever post on, and it was after coming back to the app after a few weeks of absence lol.
Automated modding seems to fail on those sites, while giving users modding powers is always abused. I guess it's manageable if there's support, which X doesn't seem to have anymore.
Nah, this shit is real. I've seen it. Once the piling on starts it becomes hard to turn the ship around though I've seen it happen. People are morons and they follow the crowd. They see the downvote, and like chicken, they peck at it because others did the same.
is the phenomenon real? absolutely. is writing vague fake stories about how "This community is better than that other community. I went there, and I got downvoted even though I'm definitely right because I'm definitely an expert. Congratulations on being part of the smart community instead of the dumb one." also real? absolutely. The two things that make me think this is bullshit are:
"I'm definitely right because I'm an expert in that field. No I won't tell you what the field is."
174% of the time "I got banned for having the wrong opinion" translates to "I was a complete and utter shithead to everyone and now I'm trying to pretend the issue is what I said not how I said it."
To be fair, it was only in the last couple years that it became that bad. It's still better than Elon's white nationalist vehicle of a social media site.
Tbf, I think I got banned from a vegan sublemmy for having an opinion that wasn't even necessarily pro-meat, but not necessarily pro-vegan either. I forget what it even was lol
I said "typical Vogons" or something like that. I don't remember exactly what non-existent race I used. The whole point of my comment was to mock racism itself, and I got banned for racism.
I got banned because I said a transgender person that broke the law (raped and murdered someone) should face the same consequences regardless of what gender they identified as... I have nothing against transgender people but I bet you can guess what rule they said I broke. Honestly when it comes to transgender issues I think that's everyone's personal thing and I have no right to tell someone else what to do in that department.
Or even better if you're going to post a wrong reply, post it in a patronising, know-it-all tone so not only does it convince people you're right, it crushes the soul of your opponent.
I recently posted accusing a certain company of using dirty tricks to con people and control public perception. To my surprise someone from that company was in the thread and he replied saying, "You always say that" and then lambasted me for being a crazy person with a vendetta.
But actually I'd never posted about it before. His reply was a dirty trick to control public perception.
I think this plays a role, but it's absolutely dwarfed by what people want to be true. Or, maybe, they just equate any disagreement with the hive to being "dickish."
Let's not pretend we're in any better of a situation. Same exact thing could happen on any Lemmy server, especially since each server is a small fiefdom run by randos.
Like when people start commenting on the near-east conflict. Hardly anyone knows what the fuck is going on there yet we find many experts on the topic in the comments.
"please stop fighting and get along" is my fundamental take on most wars. It's not particularly useful, but it helps me split the average soldier from the average "leader" that sent them to die.
No kidding. I got downvoted a dozen times because I mentioned that diet and practices help with sun burns and sunscreen isn't the win all against the sun. I didn't post sources right away, but when I did the hive has made up it's mind.
I'll recuse myself from giving you an up vote or down vote but I'll make a suggestion. Maybe provide the proof when you make the comment, especially on a topic that might be controversial or have health risks.
Why did I need to provide sources on the comment above? Are people really curious on how diet can help your skin defend against the sun? Then let's have a discussion I'll post my sources. But my comment then was just in conversation, adding that diet helps, and if people wanted to know more I'll show. I'm not going to start off every comment with a research paper worth of citations.
But above I'm arguing that there's a hive mind mentality, and my source is my downvotes. I'm just hoping lemmy doesn't cater to the more "popular" comments because that's how an echo chamber turns into an information swamp. Just because something is more popular does not make it necessarily correct. I'm not responsible for people to think outside of themselves.
And before people rail against the lack of a blue link for them to hit because of something that has nothing to do with the conversation we're having here now, here. Click below. It's not controversial to believe what you put in your body has an effect on how your skin is built, and that can help with sun burns.
I am, on the other hand absolutely not saying that some vitamins have the same protection that a sunscreen does. Which it seems what the downvotes are for. Since I can't see why people would be upset to know how diet can affect your skin's ability to defend against radiations.
You make a valid point about sources when making a random throwaway comment.
Thanks for the link, I see what you mean about what we eat affecting our skin and it makes perfect sense. You're right that it's not your responsibility for other people to think outside of themselves but you could be a catalyst for it, which is something I strive for.
I like to give people the tools for them to think about any given topic and in real life I'll often even say that I don't want a reply to a question I posit them. I find people might be more truthful to themselves if they don't feel the need to justify themselves to me.
I think your comment was probably misconstrued as you saying that sunscreen is useless and it's all about diet when you obviously didn't say nor mean that. I admit on first read I misread it that way as well and was curious about your stance.
Thanks for having a conversation with me bud, hope you have a lovely day.
People need to start eating healthier in general, but they feel like they're having their boundaries stepped all over when people tell them that. That's one of the reasons you got downvoted probably.
Sucks to be told that you can't eat crap, as well as knowing that americas medical system tries solving symptoms, not the root problem. But that's the individuals responsibility. Americas medicine isn't going to take care of you.
Since I can’t see why people would be upset to know how diet can affect your skin’s ability to defend against radiations.
A lot of your downvotes probably come from people misinterpreting your message as some woo woo bunk about replacing sunscreen with a proper diet and you won't get sunburned, which clearly isn't what you're saying. However, its very easy for small, flippant comments to come across with wildly different connotations from the reader. Not really sure how to get around that, outside of way too much context.
Yeah, outside of way too much context. Reddit created a mentality where you have to comment a certain way, and only certain comments get seen. It's self fulfilling in teaching how to talk. "reddiquite" lol
Settle down. I'm talking about people getting upset on a comment without acknowledging authenticity. The downvote and how a comment is buried or promoted is probably the worst thing reddit has manufactured. It's what the post is about. And what the comment I replied to is that it's happening here at lemmy
All that matters is whether you’re speaking for or against the prevailing assumptions of the site/the subreddit. Most people on the internet are not experts on the topic but somehow already have their minds made up.
Also, Lemmy is not better than Reddit in this regard. Dominant opinion > everything else.
You're right, and it takes humility to admit that you're wrong and someone else is right. Personally, I will try to argue for my belief based on the reasons I'm holding it in the first place; but if I can see that I'm wrong and everything I'm googling is matching what the other person says, then I'd rather have beliefs that match reality than be right.
My favorite is how ignorant people are so certain about some issue that top scientists are unsure about.
If you point out that we don't know whether there's any life in the galaxy except on Earth, folks will say there has to be because look how many other planets there are, or even say you're arrogantly self centered for entertaining the idea that there isn't.
I suspect life is everywhere. I base this on the fact that our DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet. Intelligent, and more importantly multicellular, life is the variable that can't be determined quite yet. The step from single cellular life to multicellular life has happened a few times on Earth, but all of those times have been in the last billion years. I personally believe that is because we are just about as young as intelligent life could possibly be, since the universe was actively hostile to life prior to about 7.5 billion years ago.
I also like the idea that for a few hundred million years (around half a billion years after the big bang) the entire universe was the correct temperature for life to have developed literally everywhere and anywhere.
DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet
That doesn't mean DNA existed before the earth. It is possible that at low complexities different factors dominated the exponential increase assumed to reach that figure
"I base this on the fact that our DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet."
That isn't a fact, it's extrapolation based on a simple exponential fit to rough estimates of present-day genome complexity.
Even if we knew complexity always grew exponentially, which we don't, small changes in an exponential fit will greatly affect an extrapolation.
And we don't know what the genome complexity was of the first prokaryotes, not to mention any number of forms of life that might have gone extinct between then and now.
For example, there was a group a of multi-cellular life that flourished long before the current group, but they lived for millions of years. We'll probably never know anything about their genetic complexity.
The odds of existing within a region close enough to find each other is rather small. The odds of existing during the same time period in history are infinitely approaching zero. Humans have existed for a very short amount of time, and we're currently more likely to wipe ourselves out than we are to leave the solar system in a spacecraft.
That doesn't mean life couldn't possibly exist, just that it's extremely unlikely that we will ever cross paths.
Amen, same with the machine learning haters nowadays, pretending they know exactly how the llms work that not even the scientists working on them understand. And they can extrapolate how useless and bad this technology is
machine learning haters nowadays, pretending they know exactly how the llms work that not even the scientists working on them understand.
I think part of this particular problem stems from experts in the field making pretty wild claims while not still not completely understanding the tech.
Now a lot of this is prompted by market and media interest, but companies like Open AI taking advantage of this interest by making obtuse claims for funding purposes isn't exactly helping.
I used to use Cunningham's Law to find out expert nuances before a presentation to C-suite execs.
These days I tell people online about the things I'm an expert in and was brought in at ridiculous consulting fees to talk about and get dumb disagreement, especially when it goes against hivemind.
Social media got much worse over the past decade. I've gotten the sense there's a bit of a generational aspect at play as well, in terms of the emboldening to spout BS from ignorance as long as being paid attention to and a thin skin in being debated with.
It's your tone, bro. You can't just keep blaming everyone else for not getting your message across. Doesn't mean you aren't knowledgeable, just that you have poor communication skills
No, it's more confirmation bias and the fact I actively avoid appeals to authority.
I know full well if I pointed out my background in certain situations, I'd get a massive amount of agreement even if what I'm saying is against common narratives.
But the difference I'm commenting on is less about how people perceive what I write about and more the shift in how common it is for people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about to have the confidence and wherewithal to debate a topic entirely out of their element with little more than an appeal to gut feelings.
