The comments I linked to above were downvoted and dead. I unkilled them so that readers who clicked on the link (and don't have 'showdead' turned on in their profile) could read what they were linking to.
> Let me ask you, should my comment be flagged and downvoted?
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903933, of course it should! It breaks more than one of the site guidelines, e.g. the ones that ask you please not to use HN for ideological battle and please not to go on about downvotes.
I'm sorry, but the phenomenon I'm talking about could hardly be clearer: the hivemind, to use your term, has both right-leaning and left-leaning devotees, some of whom are extremely passionate; the deep irony of the situation is how much they resemble each other. Both show up a lot on HN—their presence in the comments is likely far greater than their numbers in the community, because passion makes one more likely to comment on the internet. Both deny that their side is as common or as influential as it really is, and both make out that the other side is the dominant one and that therefore HN is under its control or in its pocket.
All that is just empirical observation. Whether the psychological mechanism I'm proposing to explain it is true or not, I don't know, but the empirical observation is the important part. No one can look at these things objectively and not see the similarity, indeed the isomorphism, between them.
> Let me ask you, should my comment be flagged and downvoted?
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903933, of course it should! It breaks more than one of the site guidelines, e.g. the ones that ask you please not to use HN for ideological battle and please not to go on about downvotes.
I'm sorry, but the phenomenon I'm talking about could hardly be clearer: the hivemind, to use your term, has both right-leaning and left-leaning devotees, some of whom are extremely passionate; the deep irony of the situation is how much they resemble each other. Both show up a lot on HN—their presence in the comments is likely far greater than their numbers in the community, because passion makes one more likely to comment on the internet. Both deny that their side is as common or as influential as it really is, and both make out that the other side is the dominant one and that therefore HN is under its control or in its pocket.
All that is just empirical observation. Whether the psychological mechanism I'm proposing to explain it is true or not, I don't know, but the empirical observation is the important part. No one can look at these things objectively and not see the similarity, indeed the isomorphism, between them.