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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

#511

Post by mightybyte »

mattnewton wrote: post #208
golemotron wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can't agree enough. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but preemptively censoring things that might turn into uncivilized discussions seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater - we need to be able to talk about difficult things.

We need to be able to talk about them, but it doesn't need to be here. There's value in places where you know you can come to discuss certain categories of things and avoid others. That is what's going on here.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#512

Post by Kaedon »

pdx wrote: post #459
idlewords wrote: post #380

This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry. We need to be talking about the political implication…

Back when I was a kid, there was a saying. "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it". Of course, now many on the left rejoice in the censoring of all sorts of speech. I find the prevalence and acceptance of these 'crybully' tactics to be much more frightening then the terrible atrocity of actually enforcing existing immigration laws which you appear to fear so much.

I'm guessing the negative votes have to do with painting a group of people in a casually pejorative way. The left, as a whole, does not rejoice in censoring all sorts of speech. The left is filled with many people with a variety of opinions and many of them value civil liberties as you presumably do.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#513

Post by ianstallings »

ritchiea wrote: post #445
chrissnell wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully support this detox week. As someone whose political views don't align with the average HN reader, I often feel marginalized by unfair downvoting in political discussion, even though I have made my points in an informed and respectful way. It often feels like there is one prevailing slant on this site and those of the majority are free to push their views while the rest of us must either read it and ignore it…

Hacker News is an unfair place for people to speak up about about the lack of racial and gender diversity in tech. I have been downvoted for comments where I felt like I was making uncontroversial critiques of the status quo. I have seen HN users say that black neighborhoods need more policing than other neighborhoods. It's not an easy place to be non-white or non-male. I believe banning politics is a bad idea even f…

How is that unfair? It's actually quite fair. We all have opinions and we can upvote, downvote, and comment equally.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#514

Post by Jemaclus »

tarikjn wrote: post #62

I 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…

Agree. I would argue that the "don't discuss politics or religion" with family and friends is partly what got us into this mess in the first place. The United States has become a nation where you can't have reasonable political discourse, because we've been taught not to talk about it. We put our heads in the sand and repeat our same beliefs over and over without any external challenge or validation. When we try to have a discussion, we're so ill-prepared and we're so entrenched in our positions that we're unable to talk rationally or civilly about the topics.

I would argue that the opposite is necessary, as a general rule of discourse: we should calmly and confidently talk about politics with anyone and everyone. We should be able to have discussions about things like taxes, the military, and technology, without resorting to screaming and shouting names.

One could make the argument that Hacker News is not a political forum, but I think explicitly discouraging political discourse is not healthy in the long run.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#515

Post by reflexive »

cloverich wrote: post #501
reflexive wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion. In fact, what is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion is: emotionally charged, poorly-considered, and dishonest discussion. The topic doesn't matter: health fads, operating systems, or taxes. I agree, many people have terrible style in their approach to political discussion - but see also, e.g. Hobbes and Rousseau for more thoughtful…

> The topic doesn't matter Technically true. But practically speaking, I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others. If that's true, then this moderation should boost the general quality of HN comments and topics, which is why most of us come here in the first place. As a comparison, I was initially annoyed that simple jokes / witty remarks t…

I'd wager political topics lead to emotionally charged, intellectually devoid arguments (much) more commonly than others.

This may be partly because so many thoughtless people feel qualified to enter a political discussion (e.g., about basic income, or immigration), whereas they couldn't even pretend to understand real-time operating systems or functional programming enough to have an opinion.

Part of the beauty of HN is getting opinions about things that matter in the real world, from people who really think about things.

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#517

Post by [deleted] »

idlewords wrote: post #380

This is a terrible decision. The tech industry has built powerful tools of social control, and runs vast databases of private data on pretty much everyone in the country. We have a golden period of forty-some days before a new administration comes to power that has shown every intent of using that information to deport people and create a national Muslim registry. We need to be talking about the political implication…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

#518

Post by daptaq »

ythn wrote: post #390
nneonneo wrote: post #174

Many of the top-level comments here are against this move. I, on the other hand, would like to express my strong support for this move. Hacker News has never been an anything-goes site. Tight moderation, considerate rules, and low tolerance for bullshit have made this a great site to talk about interesting technical topics and ideas. Remember that we all abide by the rules of the site, and that this isn't a magic fre…

Thank you. I have a million places I can go for political discussion. Why does HN have to be one of them?

One could argue, that when you live in a democracy, politics are a necessary duty for every citizen. For a democracy to flourish, no place, no topic, no time should be unfit for discussion, because if you forbid politics, you just manifest the status quo, which doesn't have to be a-political!
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