I had always seen HN as a place where people curious about technology, culture and society share article links and comment about them. The moderation is what makes it work. I really do not see why censorship (or detox if you prefer) on political matters should be necessary.
if HN really needs this, it might even mean that its audience needs to be educated. And if that is the case it might mean the level you get in here is deemed to decline.
Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
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Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#252Yay, I fully endorse this policy and hope that it gets extended forever.
Would you always try to car discussions in a baseball forum?
They are both valid topics. But there is a reason why forums specialize on particular topics.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. I see this great move as a way of the community lifting its head out of a sandy quagmire to glance at the shining beacon, the vision on the hill, the where we want to be, unsullied by political nausea. Sure, in a week we can get back into the grim reality, the tech-noir crapsack future, but perhaps…
At least allow us to opt out of the artificial safe space. Technology and politics go hand in hand, unless we'd like to head back into the dark ages. EDIT: I'm not hear to offend or persuade with politics talk. I'm here to provide or obtain new perspectives and understanding. If I want an echo chamber that reinforces my perspectives and beliefs, I can head back to Facebook.
Technology and politics go hand in hand
This just reads like a cop-out to me, in the same way that large media orgs have been parroting the "it's impossible to be truly unbiased" line as if it were an excuse to throw up their hands and stop trying altogether.
Not that I'm saying you're being disingenuous here, mind, it just reads like defeatism. "All tech is politics so it's pointless to try delineating them". This mentality gets worse and worse as you go down the main thread...
Not all, or even most tech talk is political related. I'm just looking down the front page right now.. a new Golang web framework, Elixir and Ruby IPC, OpenAI, new SSDs..
Those topics aren't even tangentially political in nature.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#254That will give us all more time to discuss religion (the other topic my parents always said was verboten between casual acquaintances). More seriously, I'm not going to rock the boat (and won't miss the discussions about politics) but I always figured those stories would disappear from the front page when the community at large didn't want to discuss them. It's a dangerous slope since you can also make the argument t…
Tricky thing about politics is that - as dang explained - triggers specific reactions in all of us, in a self-amplifying way. So while I often do comment on political topics, I also like this experiment very much. Politics will never disappear from HN completely, but what I desire is for the occasional political discussion on HN to be of high quality - both civil and insightful. So I 100% support this experiment.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#255I live in Northwest Washington, D.C. I am a technologist, a government contractor, and an HN member for many years under various accounts since 2008.
I respectfully disagree.
Yesterday someone motivated by the "Pizzagate" story, spread and enabled by the social media systems we designed, fired multiple shots from a semi-automatic weapon into a crowded restaurant near my home.
My partner and I passed the crime scene shortly thereafter on our way back to our apartment.
The new National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, endorsed the totally false rumors that led to this shooting. He will soon be empowered by the full force of the nation's intelligence agencies.
I want you to very carefully consider the implications of what he could do with access to that power, and the potential result of blocking discussion of such issues, particularly at this moment in time.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#256I find this experiment a bit strange/disturbing, avoiding political subjects is a way of putting the head in the sand. HN is a community of hackers and entrepreneurs and politics affects these subjects one way or another wether we want to avoid it or not, and are an important component of entrepreneurial and technical subjects. It might be fine if HN was a scientific community, but it is not the case, and even then p…
I find it disturbing too. Right now one of the top stories on HN is about Amazon Go and the top comment is about whether the destruction of jobs it could cause is socially acceptable. I don't know whether that is politics or not but I can't imagine discussing Amazon Go as a technology without having that discussion. In fact when you look at HN very little is about particular technologies. Most of our discussion is ar…
I've been attending a lot of AI/Data Science conferences lately, and it's incredible to me how this is not a major part of any conversation about AI and automation.
A talk I recently attended by a data scientist from Amazon had him gloating about how many jobs he could eliminate.
Ironically, the only speaker who brought it up as a major social problem we'll have to tackle is someone from Uber. His solution was less than satisfactory, but at least he recognized the issue.
I don't want to pretend we live in a world of algorithms without consequence.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#257might as well declare 'emotion detox week' and bury everything not written by robots. this decision is actively contributing to erosion of the free world, as if not talking about politics makes them go away. hint: it's not and technology and hackers are changing the world so much politics necessarily enters the debate and it just can't be worked around. ps. is uber breaking labor laws around the world politics or not…
"Uber breaks labour laws" maybe okay.
"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Clinton" not okay
"Uber breaks labour laws, and that's why we need Trump" not okay.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#258To tell you the truth, I put myself into a politics news vacuum the day after the elections and the results were announced. I no longer frequent the politics sites (left and right) that I used to visit being a politics addict. I now no longer want to listen to any politics for the next 4 or 8 years (whichever the term may end up being). I have stuck my fingers in my ears and am spouting "la la la la...." loudly whene…
Upvoted for the word "addict". Do you feel that political posters, regardless of viewpoint, are merely chasing the endorphin high that comes from the argument?
I am more of a lurker than a poster. I just read comments on the sites.
I really believe that people on either side of the political spectrum should at the very least listen to the view points espoused by the other side so that they can get out of their own echo chambers.
Its a real eye opener to know that there are more than one opinion/point of view on a topic.
Here I go again....finger in ear..."la la la la..."
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#259I have had the feeling that HN has been surreptiously invaded by a troll army, specifically tasked with corrupting the ongoing discovery of consensus.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#260What happens if something incredibly important happens during this week in politics, is it simply not up for discussion at all? For example, what happens if a world leader is assassinated or a conflict breaks out?