Live data from Hacker News

Dust in the Light

stratechery.com

31–40 of 137 posts

Re: Dust in the Light

#31
post #28

"The crescent" is another way of saying "land SE of a big lake". An alternative plausible explanation is it's a half circle because the town center is on the southern end of the lake. Way too much being made of multiple sets of data points and pins on a map around a lake, without mentioning density, with a lake.

" While red-lining helped shape segregation in many cities, Minneapolis was pre-emptive about its discrimination; beginning in the 1910s Minneapolis real estate deeds started to include “Covenants” that explicitly excluded African Americans. A team from the University of Minnesota has been researching real estate deeds to uncover these covenants, and created this striking time-lapse of their spread:... " Racial coven…

I'm downvoting it because it is willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets.

There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.

Re: Dust in the Light

#32

As usual, overlong and is another apologia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia for large tech monopolies. These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"

yeah, i've read a few of these analyses, and while they're mildly interesting, they're not nearly as earth-shatteringly insightful and counter-intuitive as many seem to think they are. it's mostly bog-standard strategic analysis you learn during MBA school, but to ben's credit, well laid out, organized, and appropriately cited. this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a…

> it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets

Sure, seeing large marches are great at grabbing attention, but seeing actual video evidence of police brutality is _much_ more persuasive. Now almost everyone has high-def cameras, and the ability to stream live to everyone (so people will see it even if the police take/destroy your phone). I think that makes a big difference, though I'm not arguing that tech alone deserves credit for improving things. Having people in the streets still matters.

Re: Dust in the Light

#33

When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light. "Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

> how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

They aren’t necessarily to be blamed for that. This blog post isn’t really assigning blame to white homeowners.

Re: Dust in the Light

#34

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

> ML algorithms as too disturbing

Coming soon to Twitter: Automated trigger warnings

Re: Dust in the Light

#35

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

The precursors to this are in place since the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

Re: Dust in the Light

#36

> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better. I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at wo…

Yes and HN users are the first to want more government regulation over tech. The current administration is already trying to “shut down Twitter”. Edit Citation: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-f...

Government regulation in terms of how they selectively police their platforms, not in the sense of "don't disparage the government".

Re: Dust in the Light

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, i've read a few of these analyses, and while they're mildly interesting, they're not nearly as earth-shatteringly insightful and counter-intuitive as many seem to think they are. it's mostly bog-standard strategic analysis you learn during MBA school, but to ben's credit, well laid out, organized, and appropriately cited. this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a…

It seems more of a complement to the existing visuals and more story telling oriented approaches being provided via other forms of media and news. The income disparity graphs personally provided more understanding as to why the issue appears to happen in certain locations. If it makes it approachable to undergraduate MBA types who feel more comfortable in seeing spreadsheets and data science analysis and understandab…

for the most part they're not bad analyses, just giving folks without relevant background a measure of calibration on the information therein: decent, but worth reading critically rather than with wholesale acceptance.

Re: Dust in the Light

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it’s impossible to have adult conversations about anything other than tech on HN.

Yeah. I just deleted it. I shouldn’t have. But it was a bit snarky. Yet and still when I responded to another comment about HN’s hypocrisy about criticizing big tech’s monopolist ability to - not saying they have - censor information that is critical about the government, they still want the same government to “regulate tech”. Of course that got flagged. This is the same government that threatened to “shut down Twitt…

Users probably flagged your comment because it was unsubstantive, and a supercilious generalization of the community you're participating in ("HN users are the first..."). The HN community is divided because society at large is divided, but the bulk of the participants here don't match your description. You might be running afoul of the cognitive biases that shape most of these perceptions:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Dust in the Light

#39
post #2

[deleted]

Agreed, it’s impossible to have adult conversations about anything other than tech on HN.

By posting that, you make it more so, and actually it is far from true. We should do things to help develop the discourse here, not kick it. The container is fragile.

I believe that when the community gets this sort of inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment and, downstream from that, a "fuck you" sentiment, since if no one is communicating anyhow, what else does it make sense to say?

In reality, is there any other non-siloed community site of HN's size, where divisive topics routinely arise, that manages to do better at "adult conversations"? I don't know of one. I know it feels like HN is the worst [1], but actually, in relative terms, this place has managed to plant at least one or two toes outside the inner circle of hell. Our task is to move another toe in that direction.

I wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. Short version: it's because HN is less divisive that it feels more divisive, because this is the rare case of a large(ish) community that keeps itself in one piece instead of factoring into shards, silos, or social graphs. If that's true, then although we haven't realized it yet, the HN community is on the leading edge of the opportunity to learn to be different with one another, at least on the internet. This opportunity is precious and we need to become more conscious of it as a community, so we have a chance to do something with it other than collapse back into the moat.

[1] I do not mean to pick on you personally—it sucks to get singled out and I have zero intention of shaming. The truth is that most of us have this emotional perception of HN, including me. If you read the post I linked to above, there's a theory there of why that is.

Re: Dust in the Light

#40

When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light. "Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?

I found this opinion piece to be worth considering, and relevant to the context of your question:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-...

Post reply on HN