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The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders

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Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You talk about the majority position. But what about these minorities? Do they feel the same way? Many countries don't have the obsession over multiculturalism that America seems to have. Their priority isn't to have a diverse population, but rather is to raise the quality of life for as many people as possible as quickly as possible, hence the focus on the majority of the population. A homogeneous culture has many…

Why is this being downvoted?

because it's a defense of an authoritarian regime?

Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's someone else's job to lead. i suppose it's my western point of view that makes me view this sentiment as blisteringly immature, if that is indeed what most chinese actually think. the stewardship of your country is always your job as a human being... even if you deny the responsibility, your country will act on your behalf, which means that you must control your leadership. if nobody else is fit to lead, it's y…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13203027 This summaries my points on the relationship between people and the government.

Quite frankly, seems like are chugging the kool-aid.

If the government is so trustworthy and so eager to please why do they need to take political prisoners at all?

Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#143
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're getting off topic. Private citizens making factual information available is literally the opposite of propaganda. It's no surprise that Russia tried to influence US politics. We need to do a better job of educating our citizens on critical thinking, including recognizing propaganda and fake news.

> Private citizens making factual information available is literally the opposite of propaganda. This may be true if correctly done, but chances are good that if a state actor tried to Correct the Record, they would add their own political spin or only give information that helps the nation giving the information, and it would be widely seen as propaganda and looked at with disdain by most of the population. Not all…

> Russia released the DNC emails

Which were massively abused to spread FUD.

Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe everyone deserve access to factual information and history, and it deeply saddens me when people abuse their power to suppress information, rewrite history, brainwash people, etc. China is not the only offender, but I'd say that they are the most dangerous one, and they even abuse their power to force other nations to submit themselves to their tyranny. Everyone is unique, have different ideas, beliefs and…

Thank you for taking the time to respond. The problem is that "factual information" can have a narrative that changes how events are interpreted [1]. An additional question: suppose you could limit the power of the alt-right, neo-nazies, and other racist agitators by limiting the flow of information. Would also be against that? 1. http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/22535/both-china-and-west-...

Agreed, but I believe you'll also agree that factual information with a narrative is better than fictitious information (and I'm struggling to think of an example where fictitious/censored information wouldn't have a narrative as well).

In an ideal world, then I'd say that the goal should be to educate the current and future generations to develop critical thinking capabilities, so that they'll hopefully laugh/cry/shake their head (or if they have more patience/heart than me, try to educate) when they read the kind of information you'd more often than not find on the_donald.

I honestly don't support the idea of censorship, and I believe everyone should have the right to privacy (I'm very saddened today to discover that Apple/NSA/Chinese government/etc is likely secretly recording my iPhone screen as I type this message). A part of me would even want to go as far as to say that if people wanted to spread hateful messages/illegal activity, then the solution shouldn't be to censor them, but rather to rely on the people to downvote and educate. Imagine a Reddit where mods were incapable of deleting/censoring any content. What do you think would happen? I personally have no idea, but I believe that there's a real chance these alt-right and racist aggregators wouldn't be able to succeed in creating a "safe haven" where they'd continue to have their hateful views reinforced. I recently read an interesting article about a neo-nazi that was forced to interact with a black police officer, resulting in a friendship that ended his hateful views. I strongly believe that if they couldn't censor rational voices (which I'd like to believe outnumber them by at least 10 to 1) then there's a high chance that their views could be corrected.

It would definitely be very difficult to achieve this when governments like Russia's appear willing to commit hundreds of millions of dollars (I'm assuming) in supporting hateful views. But I do (probably naively) believe that if people were highly educated then it should be possible to build a platform that could withstand these state attacks (e.g. value an upvote by a high karma user higher than a low karma user). Do you think the HN crowd would be negatively influenced (persuaded) by hateful flow of information? If the answer is no, doesn't that mean that high intelligence can withstand hateful/fake information and that there'd therefore be no need to censor it?

Censorship is dangerous because it can easily be abused. You may want to argue that with the right censorship tools then we could've prevented Trump from becoming the president. But what happens when a manic like him ends up in a position of control over said censorship tools? I'm guessing he'd do everything possible to become a dictator, to rewrite history, to spread his hateful views, to worsen the education and attempt to brainwash the students, etc. The way I see it, the only sustainable solution would be achieving a highly intelligent population.

Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, if he wants to do one thing, do you pretend that he has to do everything?

I don't. I'm merely asking for consistency.

Consistency would be nice. I'll even give you a stronger word for it: integrity.

But you didn't ask for consistency. You asked for one specific thing. Why that one thing rather than something else? Why not something more general?

It sounds like you don't just want him to be consistent. It sounds like you want him to grind the axe that you want him to grind, or else like you want to discredit him while he's grinding the axe that he wants to grind. And it sounds like you want to hide that behind asking for consistency, which is a really dishonest and cheap rhetorical trick.

Now, it's possible that I'm misreading what you're trying to do. But you sure come across that way, at least to me.

Re: The jailing of Hong Kong’s young pro-democracy leaders 

#146
post #140

The people of Hong Kong are hardly winning supporters within China. Much is made of the disdain that Hong Kong people have for Chinese mainlanders, but less is mentioned that it is equally true in reverse. There is a commonly held belief (which I haven't researched and thus don't know if true or not) that they didn't make nearly as much of a ruckus when they were under British colonial rule, when they were de facto s…

Oh look, top post about a story where China is taking pro-democracy political prisoners is defending China. Why am I not surprised.

If you think this post was "defending" China, then you have a very thin skin for dissent. I was instead trying to discuss the challenges these activists may face and why attempts by the west to "help" may backfire.

> Why am I not surprised.

Because HN does a good job allowing active debate on a complex subject?

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