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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

#941

Post by Chris2048 »

chillwaves wrote: post #841
bmelton wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talk is cheap and political discussion is especially cheap. How do you propose to lead constructive discussions around these matters I don't know about 'actionable items', but political conversation isn't any different than other conversations -- civility, the assumption of good faith, and an open mind are more common factors as to whether a discussion is good or bad versus topic. The problem with political discuss…

Don't you think your post rings of false equivalency? How do you discuss in "good faith" ideas like white nationalism?

You can discuss anything in good faith, but how many white nationalism discussions are there on HN?

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

#942

Post by crusso »

jowiar wrote: post #433
crusso wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

should be fired on the spot Someone should lose their job for coming up with the idea in an attempt to increase the signal to noise ratio of the site?

If the community as a whole defines signal to be "Which bits are going to flip" and noise to be "How are folks going to put dinner on the table when we flip that bit?", I don't want to be part of that. The "someone" I'm referring to here almost certainly, in reality, isn't one person. And the "entity" who did this certainly should lose their position -- it's a privilege we've granted them for far too long.

I don't want to be part of that

That's your choice. The importance of Dang and the other moderators to this forum astronomically dwarfs the importance of individuals like yourself or myself.

And no one here is solving how to put dinner on the table for anyone when ranting about Trump, Clinton, BLM, KKK, inequality, immigration, or any of dozens of other political hot topics. It's just childish your-team-vs-my-team railing against each other. You can find that sort of thing endlessly on other forums and I resoundingly applaud the HN team for taking a step to experiment with avoiding the waste of everyone's time for a week.

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

#943

Post by JdeBP »

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.

There's a severe danger that you would lose. For a commentary on emotionally charged and intellectually devoid arguments about a technical subject, I give you http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ (discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488235).

But that's not the whole of it, by a long chalk. There have been "the OS Wars", "the editor wars", "the archiver wars", and others. One particularly extreme example that I personally encountered was a group of people in comp.os.os2.advocacy . They did all of the petty and stupid Usenet tricks such as rudely and impatiently splitting paragraphs and sentences to reply to all of the individual words. Much of the level of "argument" was the sort of thing that I'd expect from six-year-olds in a playground: parroting, insults, and general childishness.

I didn't read the newsgroup for the better part of a decade. When I went back to look at it I was astounded to see that the group was still at it, in (as far as I could tell) the same threads with exactly the same content-free taunting and rubbish.

Going back to that newsgroup again today, and picking stuff at random, here's an example of this sort of discourse. From 2011!

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

Here's a comparison thread randomly selected from the 1990s.

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.os2.advocacy...

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

#944

Post by Chris2048 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #583
ibejoeb wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 "assumption and hyperbole" you mention is based upon things our president elect has said he will do. I think this is exactly the place to do it as the people who would be involved in its creation are likely here. Where else would be a better place?

He never said he'd "create a national Muslim registry", (assuming "muslim registry" means "a registry of all muslims); it was just implied that he did.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

"No, he would not rule out a database on all Muslims. But for now, he wants a database for refugees."

And most importantly - it wasn't him that brought up the idea, he was asked this "John F. Kennedy is not a homosexual"-style. The fact that he failed to clarify either way was then reported in ambiguous snippets giving the impression that he had brought this up.

Even an insinuation that someone has a connection with an undesirable group apparently makes it legitimate to repeatedly ask them about it. I think such a low-bar to interrogation is not enough; sometime even being repeatedly asked something can give the impression that it might be true (or more likely), "big lie"-style.

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

#945

Post by sah2ed »

sean_patel wrote: post #684
ben0x539 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you recognize that you can only opt out of being stressed about politics because you're not on the receiving end. :/

> because you're not on the receiving end. Nope. I actually am at the receiving end. 2 of my cousins are married to illegal aliens (both Mexican women) and 1 couple has a child born here (so citizen). Still I had a moment of clarity when I realized that 1) Trump was indeed Democratically elected, and 2) I don't gain anything by fretting over and stressing over after reading 1 bad news after another about his policies…

Thanks for the graphic.

For anyone else, the original article discussing the graphic: is here [0].

[0] http://www.jdroth.com/becoming-proactive/

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

#946

Post by Chris2048 »

rybosome wrote: post #619
ibejoeb wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

This is not hyperbole. http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/20/donal... > Donald J. Trump, who earlier in the week said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database, said on Thursday night that he “would certainly implement that — absolutely.” Mr. Trump was asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter and pressed on whether all Muslims in the country would be forced…

you put Trump quotes after descriptions of the questions he is answering, but why not quote the questions too?

NYTimes didn't provide those, right?

"While many headlines came out after this exchange saying Trump would "absolutely" require Muslims to register in a database, it’s not entirely clear that’s what he said."

"Through the end of the conversation, it’s possible Trump thought the exchange was about illegal immigration."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/...

Tell me what you think of Trumps reply wrt that last "Nazi Germany" question from NBC?

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

#947

Post by agumonkey »

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…

I don't know if it's good or bad, I don't like to ignore politics, even politics related to hacks/techs, but it could be cool to separate and direct these discussions toward dedicated platforms and focus on original technological ideas here.

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

#948

Post by Chris2048 »

makomk wrote: post #609
bargl wrote: 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".

> odious piece of political signalling masquerading as an argument

Are terms like "racist", "facist" etc fine in comparison? If I described them as above, I doubt it would be well recieved;

" The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.' The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. " http://examples.yourdictionary.com/loaded-language-examples....

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

#949

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

jpdus wrote: post #761
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…

This! HN is one of the few places where informed discussion is actually possible and even opposing views (as long as they are objective and well reasoned) are adding to the discussion (and often upvoted). Shutting that off just because of some unfounded downvotes or trolling in times where such discussions are extremely important is cowardly and a very sad move in my opinion. HN is better (and more important) than yo…

also it is hard to define the boundaries of 'political discussions'. A lot of events in the tech world have political implications - examples like data retention policies/what data is gathered at all.

In any event its an editorial decision: HN is a medium/tool of ycombinator and they decided that this is necessary in order to preserve its value.

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

#950

Post by Chris2048 »

jdp23 wrote: post #678
dang wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's delusional. The concepts can't be defined to begin with, nor can they be separated in any consistent way. And still we have to moderate this site. > the world is upside down, but think happy thoughts, folks! Here's a TED talk! It's sort of a peeve of mine that people project this onto us because I can't say how I really feel about it without breaking our own rules.

Perhaps grounding your moderation policies around concepts you know are undefined and inseparable isn't the best basis for moderating the site. As for how people see your actions: labeling it as "projecting" might make you feel better, but probably gets in the way of you understanding what they're saying. In today's environment, you can't simultaneously make the site an welcoming place for people who are anti-Muslim,…

> people who are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-trans (etc.) - and for people who are Muslim, immigrant, women, trans and non-binary people (etc)

Those are beliefs vs identity, a particularly tricky subject. The problem is when, I for example, don't see it that way; I see many of those "identities" to be beliefs also, beliefs about self.

As an example, to a Creationist, arguments about evolution are about identity - there are few boundaries to which subjects people involve their own self-worth/identity. A similar argument arises wrt trans people and the various proposed categories that have arisen - simply saying "this is who we are" is not enough, since exactly that is what is debated.

That said, I suspect you mean "you can't welcome both women, and people who hold anti-woman beliefs". But the labeling of any belief is itself a belief. Some of those idea you call "anti-women" can both be considered not anti-woman and be held by women e.g. not all feminist believe sexual content to be harmful to women, or the idea to be productive.

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