Have you tried to engage in that kind of discussion? These people use troll tactics. The first rule for them is to attack any attempt to ask for civil discussion.

Yeah they just downvote you into oblivion so no one can even read what you wrote. Oh wait...

I'm guessing your comment got downvotes because:

1. this is obviously not going to stop the actual issue; calling people delusional over a strawman is pretty disingenuous.

2. Clearly there's mental illness and lack of gun control at play. There are candidates who try to address this in their platform. There are media outlets mentioning/discussing this. People want free healthcare, i.e. free access to mental health resources.

3. Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped, but you're welcome to stop by *chan and have a logical debate with them. These are people who think their race is being targeted and that their race & culture is being destroyed, so I'm excited to hear the results of your well-reasoned and perfectly-logical debates.

While you're having your debates, I'm sure people will be happy to have these extremists congregate on an easily-available website like 8chan (not applicable at the moment, obviously) and also hope they don't have to dodge bullets while they're celebrating garlic, trying to get groceries at walmart, or wherever the next shooter is gonna bring his toys next.

To me it's a lot like blaming the violence on video games, and I'm not even saying they aren't a cause, they just aren't the most important cause right now. This is not an unsolvable problem, we're just getting bogged down on the wrong things when we NEED to laser focus efforts on the biggest problems first. Rather than pat ourselves on the back for taking down what is basically just an open forum for communication we need to focus on bipartisan legislative measures to address mental healthcare deficiencies and at least make it a little harder for people to get a gun.

I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.

I strongly believe forcing them further underground will only result in more violence long term.

I agree entirely on addressing mental healthcare and gun control, but sadly neither of those is going to be possible for a while. This is an "easy" thing to do for now, like low hanging fruit, and it's hard to expect people not to go for it when it involves such tragedies.

It's easier to manipulate people into this than it is to get them out because making up facts is easier than correcting them. Look at how many people still believe the moon landing didn't happen. It's literally one of the easiest conspiracy theories to debunk. Debunking the flat Earth idea is also easy, but at least some of it requires a bit of math and logical thinking.

The racist ideas about crime in the US, rapes in Sweden/Europe, and immigration are harder to debunk. Not because I can link an article that debunks them, but because it's an entire cemented world view that keeps them from even looking at the article in the first place. My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum.

To your other post, yes, I do concede that it has gotten better in a lot of ways. But it's my opinion that arguments aren't what made things better.

"My perspective on this is that a person with this world view has to spend time with the people of the race that they're against. And that you can't really do on an image forum."

This is a very good point. It's interesting because it could happen on an image forum but it would probably be hard to make it meaningful in the way that you describe (and that is so important).

I can't help but thinking the internet might at least be part of the solution though. So much opportunity for diverse groups to meet and interact.

The internet is the solution and the problem. I'm not sure how it works, exactly. It's easy for me to come on HN and see myself as interacting with great people from all over the world, but it somehow doesn't come off that way on Reddit, YouTube, or something anonymous like an image board.

I did spend time on image boards, like 7chan and 420chan, but from what I remember, they still felt isolating more than they made me feel connected. It's a weird dichotomy. I feel that way about Reddit, too, so it isn't just the anonymous aspect of image boards that makes it harder for me to feel connected.

> I don't get why it's so easy for "bad" people on the site to manipulate people into subscribing to these hateful ideologies but it's impossible for "good" people to pull them back out.

Society: Take responsibility for yourself, either accept your lot in life or affect change through self-improvement and the democratic process.

Degenerates: It's not your fault, it's XXX.

I think you're missing my point but maybe you can clarify. Do you think it's possible for a site like 8chan to radicalize someone or do you just see it as a site for people who are inherently degenerate to congregate? If it's the latter than maybe you're right, but my argument was targeted at people who believe the former.

It probably makes you feel better about yourself to label someone else a despicable degenerate and simultaneously scrub your hands of the problem and any possible attempt you could make towards a solution but it's not doing anything to make the world a better place.

There are powerful tools that have been used throughout history to dramatically change the world and change the types of people you would label as degenerates. We just have more work to do.

My assumption is that this is primarily a site for engineers who are highly effective practical problem solvers and I think we would all benefit if more people treated this like a solvable problem.

One other thing I think is critical:

"Talking to these people over the course of hundreds of years hasn't helped"

I think you have to concede that over the past couple hundred years race relations have improved significantly.

It's not like there are flag events a triggered user can reach for when nothing else satiates that urge to suppress

I don't understand this comment but would like to.

> We should be reaching out to these people and at least trying to wrestle them back to sanity.

If you believe that's what we should be doing, why aren't you doing that? There are people right here in this thread you could be reaching out to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20617883

Reasoning with these people is like reasoning with flat earthers. You present all evidence and they will still flat out deny that Earth is a sphere. They are not driven by reasoning but their internal beliefs that they have already locked in as infallaible. They have already heard all the reasons you just laboriously articulated and put together. You are not giving them any new information. You are just wasting your time. Their goal of listening to you at all is to probe any possibility to convert you in to their little tribe and they happen to have all the time in the world, often being jobless.

If everyone's beliefs are unchangeable what is the danger of open forums for discussion? I think if you really want to combat this ideology it needs to be done with rational discussion instead of terminating the discussion. If we concede that many of these people were seduced by these ideologies on these sites and didn't initially hold these beliefs (which is one of the reasons these sites are considered so dangerous) don't we have to also concede that they could be swayed back.

These forums attracts unsuspecting vulnerable people and turns them into their cesspool member. Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered. That’s the issue.

"Once you are cesspool member your beliefs cannot be altered."

Why? This is the crux of the problem. I don't believe that anyone who could be so easily swayed in one direction can't be swayed back. What am I missing here?

How do you know I'm not? Why would you expect to be more successful on hacker news than one of those open forums?

the current direction of these solutions really feels like the technological equivalent of 'solving' the homelessness crisis via hostile architecture. putting spikes on every bench and doorstep doesn't make anyone less homeless but it makes them less visible so you can feel less bad about it. turning the internet into an increasingly obfuscated series of walled gardens doesn't improve the wellbeing of anyone particularly at risk and if anything, gives ingroups and personality cults all the more power to thrive. but maybe the new york times wont tell you about some neckbearded loser who says nigger too much and therefor you've solved the only problem you actually care about. more and more i'm lead to believe that the compassion and empathy of the sensible majority is largely performative and on a fundamentally emotional level they just want heads to roll irrelative of any actual justice.

I think you are spot on, I also think you should watch your language in that people will use it is an excuse to ignore the painful truth of the very important point you are making:

"more and more i'm lead to believe that the compassion and empathy of the sensible majority is largely performative and on a fundamentally emotional level they just want heads to roll irrelative of any actual justice"

This seems like good use of AI that can auto respond with smart anti-hate speech blurbs. I am sure, someone would counter this by AI for hate speech. Ultimately these forums would be just dominated by different AIs fighting out each other so we can all go back to doing something useful.