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Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

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Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#141

Post by gweinberg »

dhimes wrote: post #117
capulate89 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what's wrong with that argument? Democracy and voting aren't unquestionable goods. Just look at what became of most of the non-democratic countries that the US decided to "liberate" via forcing them to adopt democracy over the years.

With apologies to Pascal[1] You assume your vote doesn't matter. Then If you are correct and you vote, nothing happens. If you are correct and you don't vote, nothing happens. If you are wrong but you vote, you help make change. If you are wrong and you don't vote, you enable bad things to come about. Game theory says to vote. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

Even if you buy into the premises, the logic only works if voting is costless. But there are arguments that voting is not merely useless, it is counterproductive.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#142

Post by sDlEzAtyoNAz »

Vraxx wrote: post #126
dhimes wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With apologies to Pascal[1] You assume your vote doesn't matter. Then If you are correct and you vote, nothing happens. If you are correct and you don't vote, nothing happens. If you are wrong but you vote, you help make change. If you are wrong and you don't vote, you enable bad things to come about. Game theory says to vote. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

Not to mention with all of the recent events in the US related to voter suppression, my question to people who espouse the opinion of "my vote doesn't matter", my question is this. Then why are those in power actively seeking to undermine this ability that is "useless". If it truly was useless I doubt they'd be scared enough to act against it.

One of those things deals with your own personal vote, which is not likely to change the outcome of the election, while the other deals with large numbers of votes, which could easily change the outcome of the election. No person trying to suppress votes cares if a single individual is barred from voting. They care that many people are barred from voting.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#144

Post by sDlEzAtyoNAz »

Vraxx wrote: post #131
csallen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better framework for decision-making is the trusty cost-benefit analysis. For starters, it always reminds you that decisions have costs: > If you are correct and you vote, nothing happens. Not true. If you vote, something does happen — you take time out of your day to vote. You're also likely to spend a lot of time researching candidates and issues, following along with the results, telling everyone else that you…

which if you want to go down that route I think it's important to note that many of the policies meant to protect against the specter of voter fraud in the US drastically increase the cost of voting on a segment of population that the propagating party (Republicans in this case) does not consider to be a part of their base. Sure, this could be accidental, but with the number of times it has happened in separate place…

>the more likely it that your vote is important given the political capital and effort expended to make sure it is hard for that person to vote

It would make no sense for voter suppression to be aimed at an individual. It would only make sense for it to be aimed at large groups of people. No one is going to spend political capital and effort to stop you from voting personally. They may spend political capital and effort to stop some large group you are a part of from voting.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#145

Post by [deleted] »

josefresco wrote: post #77
soneca wrote: post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#146

Post by sctb »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #18

I doubt his kind of "dangerous" thinking will be allowed to be spread for much longer in our corporate dystopian internet. It's just a matter of time before speech daring to criticize the corporations will be considered a security threat or whatever and immediately deleted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18648555.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#147

Post by Vraxx »

sDlEzAtyoNAz wrote: post #142
Vraxx wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention with all of the recent events in the US related to voter suppression, my question to people who espouse the opinion of "my vote doesn't matter", my question is this. Then why are those in power actively seeking to undermine this ability that is "useless". If it truly was useless I doubt they'd be scared enough to act against it.

One of those things deals with your own personal vote, which is not likely to change the outcome of the election, while the other deals with large numbers of votes, which could easily change the outcome of the election. No person trying to suppress votes cares if a single individual is barred from voting. They care that many people are barred from voting.

well what better way to make sure a large number of people don't vote than to let them convince themselves that voting doesn't matter.

My point is that the net effect is the same for both things, one you don't vote because your vote was suppressed and the other is you not voting because you don't think it will matter. Obviously if it's worth paying money to try to make sure than many people can't vote then it's even better if some people don't vote for some personal reason because they don't even have to pay for that or potentially get caught doing shady shit. Disenfranchising yourself serves the same coalition that seeks to dismantle the system in return for more personal power.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#148

Post by Vraxx »

sDlEzAtyoNAz wrote: post #144
Vraxx wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which if you want to go down that route I think it's important to note that many of the policies meant to protect against the specter of voter fraud in the US drastically increase the cost of voting on a segment of population that the propagating party (Republicans in this case) does not consider to be a part of their base. Sure, this could be accidental, but with the number of times it has happened in separate place…

>the more likely it that your vote is important given the political capital and effort expended to make sure it is hard for that person to vote It would make no sense for voter suppression to be aimed at an individual. It would only make sense for it to be aimed at large groups of people. No one is going to spend political capital and effort to stop you from voting personally. They may spend political capital and eff…

and if you are a member of that group, and they paid X dollars to target that group with an attempt at disenfranchising them then we arrive at an estimated cost of $(X/population of group) to target you (among the others in the group as well). The emphasis on individual vs group only serves to distract, groups don't target individuals with disenfranchisement because it's just easier to target entire groups. They still don't want you to vote, they just use a single piece of your identity to decide that you fall into the group of people they don't want to vote. If someone is willing to pay to make sure you (among other people) don't vote, then clearly your vote is worth both the concern and the price of the group targeting you (among other people).

Vote, and preferably against the group of people that uses voter suppression as a tactic for winning an election in a democracy.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#149

Post by user2426679 »

josefresco wrote: post #77
soneca wrote: post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” - popularly attributed to Orwell

(As you may already know), Swartz was heavily influenced by Chomsky, and Aaron definitely had that pessimistic view of the "news machine." But imo, it seems justified in hindsight considering the backlash that he personally experienced after (arguably, single-handedly) stopping SOPA in it's tracks. His legal persecution was practically guaranteed after that; he was going to be found guilty of something, eventually. Unfortunately, the Secret Service got him by the legal balls for using MIT's facilities to bulk download JSTOR docs.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#150

Post by [deleted] »

josefresco wrote: post #77
soneca wrote: post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

[deleted]
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