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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

#971

Post by alphapapa »

reflexive wrote: post #649
sixothree wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should be addressing just that, the larger issue here, in addition to political comments. I come to Hacker News not only for the submissions but more so for the discussion. I find as of late discussions populated with meaningless content. It seems people feel a need to communicate what they are thinking regardless of the comments usefulness. I fall prey to this too. If my comments are short I do try to make…

Maybe we should be addressing just that, the larger issue here, in addition to political comments. Yep. I feel like my first mistake on this site was to argue with every comment I disagreed with. Unless the comment leads to an instructive discussion, it's OK to just downvote it.

This is one of the biggest problems on HN. All it takes is for five people to disagree with a comment and it gets disappeared, as if no one said anything. It's the epitome of an echo chamber. It's the virtual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears--except it's worse, because it essentially plugs the ears of everyone who visits afterwards. How patronizing to those people, preventing them from even hearing ideas that you disagree with.

For a site that is ostensibly focused on intellectual curiosity, this is antithetical to that goal. A robust, informed discussion requires exposure to a variety of perspectives, especially ones that seem challenging or uncomfortable.

If you do not agree with a comment--so what? Either refute it or move on. Just because you are unable or unwilling to refute it does not mean that someone else will not come along after you and do so. Downvoting should be reserved for comments which are truly useless, not comments that you merely disagree with.

And, yes, I am aware that downvoting for disagreement has been promoted and accepted by some on HN, but it's wrong--at least, it is if your actual goal is to have robust, informed discussion of intellectually interesting topics.

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

#972

Post by dang »

lmm wrote: post #921
yosefk wrote: post #872

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone tempted to comment on politics, I'd love for the detox to continue indefinitely, with an instant lifetime ban for the first offence. HN doesn't add much to politics (it looks just like that kind of discussion would look anywhere else) but politics does detract from HN (firstly because you get less of what HN has that is less prevalent elsewhere, and secondly because politics is great at distracting attenti…

HN has no ban on porn that I'm aware of; erotica has been upvoted and no doubt will be again.

HN is for what's intellectually interesting—not the other kinds of interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#973

Post by fdgdasfadsf »

dang wrote: post #894
fdgdasfadsf wrote: post #667

I get what you are doing - HN has been in eternal September mode for a while now. I'm not sure it will work but I hope it does I don't want to have to find a new message board. My question is what counts as political? HN has been an important place for me to get news about censorship, surveillance and copyright issues that are just not covered by my country's press (UK). I would be sad to lose this news source.

This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics aren't going to disappear from HN.

Thank you for addressing my concerns. I hope that you don't end up having to ban all political discussion permanently.

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

#974

Post by 3131s »

DanBC wrote: post #939
3131s wrote: post #808

Earlier 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…

> 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.

This is a new account of mine but I have accounts going back many years. I usually flip [showdead] to 'yes' as soon as I get reminded by seeing a [flagged] comment.

> But this week someone (with more than 10k karma and an account that's over 3000 days old) called for Jews to relocate

I don't like that comment either at all, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad to know that someone who is solidly part of our community thinks that way and that someone who's probably very smart otherwise can simultaneously hold an opinion like that.

If we just ban that person or even worse disallow a wide swath of conversation topics, what good does it do? hga will still believe that (and he mostly expressed himself civilly, I guess). Are you worried that his ideas will spread? This may be where our mindset differs, but I believe the best and only course of action is for people like you and me respond civilly and with reason, and to prove why hga is misguided.

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

#975

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ekiru wrote: post #959
morgante wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

>The civility of discourse isn't independent of the content of that discourse.

This statement should probably become a part of civility rules in most communities.

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

#976

Post by rybosome »

Chris2048 wrote: post #946
rybosome wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imm…

Interesting, there was more ambiguity than I was initially aware of. From the article you've linked, it does sound plausible that Trump thought he was talking about illegal immigration (for at least the initial question, not sure about the follow up questions). However, as the article notes, further attempts to clarify his position later do not show him unequivocally distancing himself from it.

I think it's fair to say that we can't be totally certain what the intention of his administrations are; though this is trivially true in all cases, I never seriously questioned the possibility of such a thing with previous administrations. As I mentioned in another comment, failing to distance himself from such a comment when given the opportunity later does alarm me.

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

I read it as ducking the question. What do you make of it?

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

#977

Post by lmm »

dang wrote: post #972
lmm wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has no ban on porn that I'm aware of; erotica has been upvoted and no doubt will be again.

HN is for what's intellectually interesting—not the other kinds of interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I see no contradiction between being pornographic and being intellectually interesting.

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

#978

Post by helpfulanon »

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…

Interestingly I had my moment of clarity when I realized my Circle of Control can be far larger than what I had believed it to be.

Most humans believe in your viewpoint, but the truth is power is gained from groups. We are all simply a node in a larger network. Accepting and embracing that is the key to growing the Circle of Control. Becoming part of the right network alters the Circle of Control of the individual.

Don't get mad, get organized.

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

#979

Post by hypertexthero »

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…

Unfortunately, if you're not turned onto politics, politics will turn on you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dvbM6Pias

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

#980

Post by dang »

fdgdasfadsf wrote: post #973
dang wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just for a week, so you're unlikely to lose much, and those topics aren't going to disappear from HN.

Thank you for addressing my concerns. I hope that you don't end up having to ban all political discussion permanently.

We're not going to.
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