I am curious; does this apply to all of world's political sphere? Or only the United States'? If this applies to only US politics, then it becomes that much harder to qualify this as a political detox. If this is a detox from _all_ politics, then it is fundamentally unfair, as no recent political event in any other country has been controversial enough to warrant a censoring from HN. You cannot (you _can_, but you shouldn't) be biased towards any one section of HN userbase to the detriment of _all_ of the users.
Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#952Earlier 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…
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…
> People that complain their opinions aren't getting fair treatment are very rarely worth listening to
I feel this opinion falls into that category
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#953Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really wish this top level comment could get some traction. People seem to think that because something is important to them, it should be important to the community but that's not how communities work. I for one feel that no amount of discussion of politics on HN is going to meaningfully change or move forward the debate and is unlikely to be instructive to people who have already made up their minds. What I love…
Removing one of the most intelligent and rational communities from the political debate (albeit temporarily, although I fear that a permanent ban might be considered) will only make the overall political debate even less rational, in addition to taking away a space where technologists can discuss these matters. I respectfully disagree that discussion of politics on HN cannot "meaningfully change or move forward the d…
If HN bans politics forever, nothing of value would have been lost to the "debate," because "debate" rarely goes on here. It's a leftist echo chamber.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#954Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I see is that everything is politics, because politics is the air we breathe as a society. It's asking the question of how we live in community. I think what dang is after getting of is tribalism, where people show group membership with displays of insults, meme-dropping, etc. Different things, but if any group can separate tribalism from politics, through thoughtful community-making, I'd say HN can.
Very useful distinction. One mark of tribalism is a set of knee-jerk responses and stock vocabulary. If people could at least check in their tribal phrases, we would have better conversations. For example: 'racists', 'crybullies', 'deplorables' and so forth. Although left-libertarian, I don't hold with all this 'no platforming' nonsense, for instance. Leave the words behind, and find less loaded terms in an attempt a…
Here's the thing though, what is a reasonable alternative to 'SJW' - those that employ deplorable, emotive tactics in progressive topics, with the implication of self-aggrandizement. Maybe we need a solid vocab with established definitions.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#955Many 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…
The problem is, you come off as sniffy and elitist when you say that "political discourse is antithetical to rational, intelligent discussion." It's just the coward's way out. And we all know why this is happening--because some people are too thin-skinned to accept the fact that not only did their cherished (but utterly ethically compromised) candidate lose, but their whole way of thinking is also in question. The whole thing that backed up the Clintons was a pile lies, just like Socialism is a PILE OF LIES. Furthermore, it hurt me that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many others added to that pile of lies in order to push for a political candidate. The left reason and everything the tech community used to stand for in the dust.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#956HN isn't a constructive forum for arguing politics anyway. I don't know that such a forum even exists.
If you want to influence people, take Confucius' advice and live a model public life that inspires (or shames) others into behaving ethically. Don't waste time dragging yourself down into arguments with base people, live a life that contrasts yourself with base people in the eyes of others. Let you successes, your intelligence and your quality of life, sell your politics. I make sure all my friends, especially my politically- and religiously-extreme ones, know how great my life is. Every time I post a picture of my smiling happy family and our successes, I am advertising my moderately-liberal politics and my Humanist philosophy. And when my conservative Christian friends do the same, they are successfully influencing me to have a more positive outlook of their politics and religion. Be a friendly, caring representative of your side of the aisle and you will constructively influence others.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#957You've used the word experiment to describe this ban, so I'm interested to know:
- What hypothesis is being tested?
- What are the metrics that will be used to conduct the test?
My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I've enjoyed and appreciated the political discussion on HN, which has stood out from other political discussion on the web. My experience has been that the HN community respects facts and evidence-based discourse and that's been refreshing in an environment swirling with fake news.
Further, as a community interested in startups that often seeks "disruption" we need to think more about the social impact and ramifications of technology on society and on those who are disrupted.
Edit: I agree with the idea of holding the HN community to a high standard of civil dialog for political discussion or any topic like tabs vs spaces or language vs language. A tech-infused alternative to this thread might be, "Ask HN: Chat bot for managing / extinguishing flame wars?"
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#958Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it's already the case on HN that political discussions are quickly flagged into oblivion, so I'm not sure how this current week will be any different. I was pretty let down that HN did not do more to protect political discussions during the US election cycle and I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place. Even if there is bad behavior though, is that something that we need to be prote…
> I really didn't see all that much vitriolic behavior in the first place. There is a setting in your options called "showdead". Is that on or off for you? If it's set to off HN will hide some comments that have been killed by userflags. Thus, you may well have not seen the worst examples. But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate: https://ne…
And the problem isn't politics. It is someone posting the crap that spews out of their mouth. I have seen just as many "Jesus H-Dawg Christ... do they actually believe that?" posts regarding the navel gazing that is "Oh, we are above everyone and people have trouble understanding us because we are technical human beings who must communicate precisely because technology" and all the smugness stereotypically associated with SV startup culture. Not to mention people doing their best to mimic political shouting near each other in the Google Trusted Contacts thread.
The problem isn't topics. The problem is posters. If it was even tangentially related to tech (a new start-up community in a ghetto?), someone could post a well thought out and reasoned statement arguing against ethnic diversity. I would be amazed if they did, but anything is possible. Just like people can post incredibly shortsighted and emotional crap about what text editor to use.
So rather than make a blanket (and half-assed, at that) statement on a topic being banned (will be interesting to see what gets removed and what/who YC are financing or partnering with in the near future...), remove the negative posts while leaving the good.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#959Many 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 definitely support having a detox. In the longer run, I think it is good to have some politics on the site. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum and has a huge amount of intersection with politics. In the past, it has been possible to have rational and nuanced conversations about political issues on HN. In the recent election cycle, that's been destroyed. It seems to have emboldened people to derail threads with po…
> That being said, I see a lot of people pointing to "incivility" as a problem in political threads. That is incredibly wrong. The problem in political threads is twofold: (a) people civilly arguing without actually acknowledging each other's points at all, (b) hateful rhetoric which destroys a sense of community.
I think you're right that both of those are problems, but they're not the only problem. Incivility is also a problem in political discussions here lately. Another problem lately is that discussions to which a political discussion is only tangentially relevant get derailed by political discussions that exhibit these problems.
> If you want evidence of how civility is not the problem, take a look at this thread where a long-time commenter (with >12k karma) civilly, calmly proposed the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13056816
I disagree with this for two reasons. Firstly, if people could civilly propose the mass deportation and/or murder of Jews, then that wouldn't show that people proposing either that or innocuous things incivilly is not a problem (only that incivility is not the only problem). But here specifically, I don't think that commenter spoke civilly, any more than "No offense, but " is polite (indeed, less so, as the commenter made even less pretense). The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.
Re: Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week
#960The idea that you can somehow separate "political" from "non-political" stories seems poorly-thought-out and censorious. Who will make these decisions? It seems clear that many posts that are nominally "about tech and only tech" are pushing some political viewpoint, whether it be the benefits of mass computerization, workaholic tips and tricks, or protection from civil rights violations using encryption. HN pretends…
> heavy slant towards a sort of techno-utopian quasi-libertarianism Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining a service in which HN users who make opposing claims about its "heavy slant" are introduced to each other.
Has there ever been an attempt to run a survey and settle the question? Of course, the risk of the results creating the kind of thread you're trying to avoid with the detox week is pretty high...