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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

#781
post #609
post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with much of what you said, but the use of the word 'crybully' is why I'd have downvoted you. Also the comment on the -3 points being against the guidelines. If you clean out some of the more inflammatory words, you make a decent point. I agree that censorship should be avoided, and I see a push on the left for censorship. EDIT: I initially said I agree with the tone but that was poor editing on my part.

"Crybully" is a particularly odious piece of political signalling masquerading as an argument, at least in my opinion. The person using it is of course also claiming to be victimized as a way of shutting up their political opponents, except that it doesn't count because everyone knows that only the "regressive left" are "crybullies".

> The person using it is of course also claiming to be victimized as a way of shutting up their political opponents

I don't think so: the difference is that the crybully wants to silence his opponent, while the one using the term wants his opponent to stop silencing him. I.e., one wants to suppress liberty and one wants to preserve it.

I have no problem with your right to say that I'm wrong, or odious, or that my speech is completely offensive and inimical (although of course I disagree): where I draw the line is if you attempt to silence me altogether.

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

#782
post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> 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 I don't think this is the problem. The problem is the echo chambers people surround themselves with (and tech companies explicitly try to cultivate) and a slowly dying news media desperate for views, and whipping up outrage in order to get them.

And how do you dissolve -- or mitigate the effects of -- an echo chamber? By discussing contradicting views with those around you. The media has no control over that.

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

#783

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,…

The so-called "assumption and hyperbole" have historical precedence though. You may want to review the history of 1930s Germany.

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

#784
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 h…

If this is a topic you're interested in, I think you'll find Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" particularly useful. I've read it through twice and it's helped me better understand the nature of the issue.

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

#785

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…

This moratorium will only last a week. I think our discourse will survive. Though political discussion is essential, I think you'd agree it has downsides when there's too much of it or when everyone considers it high-stakes. The way I see it, the mods are asking us all to hold our political tongues and see what the comments feel like. They're very clear that it's an experiment. Maybe when politics resume seven days f…

But politics is high-stakes. How could it be otherwise? It is deciding what we, as a people, want to be.

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

#786
post #300
post #255

I 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…

I empathize with your view, but I very much disagree with you. 1) It's an experiment, there should never be any disagreement with an experiment unless the experiment itself can cause harm to someone/something. The results of this experiment should be evaluated closely, and if they make new guidelines for HN I'm fully onboard. But it's an experiment. 2) The person who shot the gun did not read HN, I may be wrong but I…

It's the evaluation of the experiment that I am most worried about. How do you evaluate a decrease in people being exposed to diversity of opinion? How do you evaluate how many articles are willfully suppressed but might have been lead to good discussion?

I am afraid that potential benefits of this policy are easier to measure (I.e. less flame wars) and the bad parts are not (less deep and critical discussion), we will lead to the conclusion that it is better to keep such a policy in place without a good sense of what we are losing in the process.

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

#787

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…

Perhaps the upvote/downvote could be removed from political stories and in its place, an "abuse" flag could be substituted?

There already is an abuse flag on every comment. I think there's a karma threshold of 30 before it shows up.

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

#788

It's a half measure and it won't help much. Hackernews is like reddit before subreddits. It's too big now, too many people, too disparate of subjects, too much noise and not enough signal. Over the past couple years, definitely in the past 2, hackernews has gone from say a reddit SV subreddit, to a generalized, worldnews/politics/general news generic reddit. That's not what this is. And when hackernews becomes what r…

Who counts? I don't think by "SV/technology/hacker culture" you literally mean Silicon Valley only.

How about a devops person, working with all the latest tech? Does it matter if they reside in Virginia and work for the CIA?

How about a GPGPU and FPGA programmer in Kansas? Does it matter if the code they write is for cruise missiles and they attend Westboro Baptist?

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

#789

I know an engineer from Iran. He's a great guy, not particularly religious at all. Pretty much a totally normal guy. I asked him about politics in Iran. He said when he was going to school for engineering in Iran where he grew up, his friends all made a pact to completely ignore and stay out of politics. He said it with a smile on his face and absolutely no regret.

That's also a good answer for someone who was highly involved in politics - and might explain the smile.

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

#790
post #298
post #228

I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. TL;DR; If HN is your only news source, you have bigger issues than this experiment, go subscribe to another source of political news. Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News." The purpose of this site is to get your fix of tech news that you can't get other places. It isn't burying your head in the sand to ONLY have "Hacker" n…

> I'm seeing a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I completely disagree. (...) Hacker news is a news aggregation medium for "Hacker News." I'm not sure yet whether I think this is a good or bad idea, though this I'll say: HN is not just a news aggregation medium. If in the beginning it were, it is no longer. It is now much more defined by the people on here. Like reddit, the story pages give the majority of screen…

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