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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

#541

Post by tripzilch »

chrissnell wrote: post #205
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…

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…

As someone whose views don't align with a good chunk of HN readers (or don't align, period), I've grown to love reading about differing ideas through the eyes of others computing/tech enthusiasts. There's common ground to start from and most importantly, even if it turns out to be a viewpoint that deeply goes against my values I can still respect this fellow human because of their tech expertise.

I have to admit, it really irked me at first when I came here. How can all these people that like the same things as me, have ideas that are so ... "wrong?!" (just kidding, honest :) ) But then I learned to listen and realize that these opinions will be here whether I engage them or not.

Of course, I see subthreads that aren't very "objective in the way I want them to be". But I don't share your experience with downvotes. I try to refrain from trying to convince the person I'm directly replying to if their view is directly opposed to mine, that never works any way. I just state my own personal position and how it reflects. Sure I get the occasional downvote but that's almost always when I've let myself be confrontational about it. Also, there's a big difference between providing a link to some facts that a person might not know, and a very opinionated link (that may also have facts and numbers) that is arguing your point.

So yeah, while I support the experiment (it'll be interesting to see), I really hope they don't extend this to forever, but just occasionally after particularly turbulent US elections.

Finally:

> fair treatment to minority opinions

Come on what does that even mean? I don't know what your opinions are. You don't know what mine are (you can read my comment history but good luck). I have no idea what "fair treatment to minority opinions" should even mean. My opinions are minority opinions too (I'll change them if you don't believe me), but I know this; People that complain their opinions aren't getting fair treatment are very rarely worth listening to, regardless of position. I prefer a better signal-to-butthurt ratio.

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

#542

Post by ritchiea »

ianstallings wrote: post #513
ritchiea wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The parent to my comment complains about HN being unfair to his political viewpoint and has a history of posting somewhat sympathetically about Trump. He seemed to assume that sympathizing with Trump or conservatives is the only way one could disagree with mainstream HN political views. "Unfair" is his term, I was making a point.

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

#543

Post by ben_jones »

I read HN multiple times a day and I feel like I'd have to go out of my way to find a post that was political, or even a comment that was political. Yes people will go off about anything NIMBYism, housing markets, javascript saturation etc, but what are the numbers? How much politics is really going on here?

Admittedly I'm probably at the point where I don't even see it when it's right in front of me, but it would be interesting to here from the mods of people who frequent /new.

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

#544

Post by binarysolo »

I get it, the spate of political discussion on HN is stressful as politics is people and the recent change in political climate means a musical chair of winners and losers of the process.

But I disagree about the approach -- what is politics anyways? Most polarizing these days: probably gender, race, and socioeconomic status, and the various parties cater to those human categories. We all inherently have these things that form the basis of our thoughts and how we see the world -- so I honestly don't think it's easy to separate.

If the cost of thoughtful conversations on politics is dealing with flame, then many of us are glad to pay the cost of doing business -- and I hope you'd find a majority of people here would behave similarly.

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

#545

Post by ibejoeb »

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…

>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.

This is why I support a moratorium on politics here. This kind of assumption and hyperbole is really off-putting. I'm happy to debate these topics, but not here.

Now, that said, it's going to be a little murky. For example, I want to examine Ed Ou's detention at the US border. What if something breaks about Snowden or Assange? How about net neutrality?

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

#546

Post by ConfuciusSay02 »

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…

As long as it's only a week, I support it.

But your distinction is a good one regarding partisan politics, vs politics in general.

The tech community is already perceived as being out of touch, it's not going to help if we keep our head in the sand.

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

#547

Post by 7952 »

chrissnell wrote: post #205
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…

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…

A trouble I have with HN is the casual assumption that a subject actually has an objective truth that can be debated. Often we just don't agree on the basics of what is actually important in a philosophical sense. So every fact is just a proxy for a particular world view. It is better to question the underlying assumptions than the facts themselves. We don't need to do this with technology or buisness because we already share the same sort of world view.

You see this kind of problem on debates about climate change. Once people learn about environment and ecology they tend to assume that humans have an unavoidable impact on the planet. Climate change "deniers" simply have a different intuition. All the science in the world is not going to change that. Which is why it is political, and not objective.

Really the entire point of politics is to debate things that lack definitive truth. Of course that is probably true of anything that is discussed on a forum to a lesser or greater extent. Otherwise the answer would already be on Wikipedia.

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

#548

Post by ConfuciusSay02 »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #278
mattnewton wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rub is, a lot of difficult conversations lead to what are effectively political answers. Take the amazon go which is on the front page right now. We need to be able to have a conversation about job displacing technologies, and hacker news has been a good venue for smart, civilized discussion on the topic. I'm all for flagging uncivilized discussions, but eliminating discussions outright because they might make pe…

Is political discourse in HN comment threads ever actually "effective", though? What actually results from having those discussions here that couldn't be accomplished just as easily in a forum where it's explicitly on-topic, e.g. /r/politics or similar? It's not as though policymakers or voters are looking to the HN comments section for guidance.

Anything tech related on /r/politics gets deleted. So, yes, in this comparison it is more effective.

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

#549

Post by Jeaye »

I come here to talk and learn about tech and science, not banter about politics. I'm all for a politic-free HN.

Find just about any article on the hacker mindset and politics, aside from the desire for freedom, won't be anywhere near the top of the list. Nothing about Republicans, Democrats, race, etc.

Some examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28subculture%29 http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://suntzu23.blogspot.com/2006/11/five-principles-of-hack... https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html

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

#550

Post by jc_811 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #508
jc_811 wrote: post #470

A submission on climate change was flagged and removed due to these political guidelines. Is this really considered political? Wouldn't it be more justified to call it 'scientific'? How is anyone supposed to realistically draw the line between what is political and what is not? Couldn't any topic in the world be related back to politics one way or another? This seems like a blatant plot to censor 'unwanted' topics an…

If it's the one I recall, it was about "how to talk to climate change deniers" or something like that. I flagged it (dang says to overflag rather than underflag in this regard anyhow). I'd have a hard time categorizing it as "not political". It's a charged political topic, the details of that conversation had nothing to do with technology, and almost entirely were about "how to argue with the people you disagree with…

I do see what you're saying however, climate change is not a political topic in itself. It is a scientific topic that has to do with the world getting warmer.

The article was not "how to argue with people you disagree with" but how to connect with an audience who does not believe in a scientific consensus due to misinformation. In fact the point of the article had nothing to do with arguing (or political parties), but rather empathetically connecting with an opposing viewpoint.

This is exactly what I meant from my parent comment. Because a topic has been hijacked by political parties we can't bring it up? Climate change = science topic. It is a well documented phenomenon that 97% of the world's climate scientists agree on [1].

Being on either side of the political spectrum is irrelevant here, as at its core this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with science.

[1] http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

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