The culture war is killing us [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#101

Post by luckylion » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #39

jtbayly wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sustainable power comes from the bottom up, not the top down. I’m all for decreasing the size and scope of the federal government as well, but I hardly think that’s a non-polarizing opinion.

Interesting, I read that more as a call for more union power and worker ownership. Our biases are showing. :D

It can be both, can't it? If you reduce the power of the federal government, you increase local power. In some places, that'll mean more worker ownership, in others it'll mean more libertarian power etc. But by allowing both to exist separately, you're not forcing them to fight over the country.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#102

Post by niceairport » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #25

jollybean wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not being massacred, and the 'war' is mostly based on willing misunderstanding, misattribution and the popular extolling of anger preachers.

Allow me to explain the metaphor. When two sides shoot at each other that is called a war. When one side shoots the other that is called a massacre. Hence if another side starts shooting at you and isn't willing to negotiate, massacre or war are your two choices. In "cultural war", this would correspond to one side trying to keep moving their positions forward. The either side either puts up a fight or they don't.

You've explained further proving that the original statement was wrong. Nobody is shooting at anyone.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#103

Post by inglor_cz » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

GingerMidas wrote: post #8

A FPTP two party system almost necessitates culture war, since by definition if you're for one party you're against the other. At the end of the day you're forced to pick a side. The anchors are suggesting you ignore that eventuality.

Poland with a proportional system seems to be exactly as polarized as the US, and they do not even have enough ethnic diversity to serve as an ersatz explanation. The dividing lines run through families and neighborhoods of people who, to the outsider, look perfectly alike.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#104

Post by anticodon » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:28 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #46

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

> The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game.

Russia is bombarded incessantly by US propaganda from US troll factories.

Ever since I'm on Internet, I'm reading that Russians are drunkards, barbarians, that our past (even going 1000 years back) is all history of mutual killings, yadda yadda.

It's so disgusting that I guess it even somewhat stopped to work because people are tired of this shit.

But nevertheless: any time on any social network there's a post like: "Look, there's a new undeground station opened in city N", there would be thousands of comments like:

- Built on money stolen from us! We don't need no stinking underground, better give this money to starving retired people

- 100500 millions of rubles were stolen during construction by Putins' cronies

- I'm a construction engineer and I assure you it was built in the wrong place by worthless dumb Russian engineers and this will cause the city N to collapse in 10 years

- City N doesn't need new underground stations, it needs more cars, nobody uses underground, what a useless project!

- 10 opposition activists supporting Navalny were buried during construction of this station. Wake up sheeple! You can become the next victim of the regime!

- Putin destroyed education in Russia! Russian engineers can't design anything. The blueprints for the station were stolen from glorious US engineers. Elon Musk designed the station and Petrov and Boshirov stolen them from him! They also attempted to poison him with Novichok but failed again, the dose was too small!

....

Literally hundreds of such comments under every video on YouTube in Russian, every post in Facebook, Vk, Pikabu, just anywhere it is possible to write comments.

And I guess it's even open information that at least 10-15 well funded organizations in US exist to publish this sort of comments. At least I remember reading how some US president assign funds for several such organizations.

It started to happen when the first Internet link came to Russia and it intensifies with every year. We don't have resources to publish as much bullshit as US organizations and organizations sponsored by the US (e.g. in former USSR republics that has cheap labor, high levels of unemployment and almost 100% of the population are good Russian speakers).

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#105

Post by renewiltord » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:30 AM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #2

Shallow boring and simplified. Not worth your time.

You might have gotten downvoted, but you saved me the ten minutes, man. Thank you for your service.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#106

Post by ravel-bar-foo » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #78

nradov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

I wonder if the same thing happens within/between companies. Industrial espionage is a thing. When billions of dollars are at stake, why not "cultural activities" too?

Isn't this effectively what is happening when a major media outlet writes a piece about how $SocialMediaCompany has a racist/sexist "bro" culture or allows racist/sexist $SocialMediaCeleb on their platform? As much as I dislike social media, a lot of these attacks have been made with only minimal substantive claims, so it seems like the real goal is to delegitimize (sabotage) the upcoming/ competing businesses.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#107

Post by ravel-bar-foo » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

Fellshard wrote: post #85

titzer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As technologists, how can we work to rebuild regional and local political and economic sovereignty? I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, technologists are naturally focused on scaling solutions up to the entire world. We want to use technology to push hard real world problems behind a screen, behind keyboards, and behind servers. This creates a contradiction in our thinking that cannot be resolved.…

Unfortunately, the very idea of locality and federation of power is itself one of the dividing lines - clever, that, really. The people who believe all things must be fixed from the top down, and the people who believe things can only be fixed from the bottom up.

I'm not sure that line cleaves along political affiliation, but I'm willing to be convinced. I know both Democratic party insiders who have pivoted to local political activism following the presidential election, and Republican businessmen who are adamant that taking a stand in local politics is the way forward for their movement.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#108

Post by needle0 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

What disgusts me perhaps even more than seeing all those people in the US flinging hatred at each other is just how thoroughly they've armed themselves in all sorts of logic(?) to justify that flinging more and more intense hatred is the only correct course of action, that there simply is no other way, and that all alternative routes are not only worthless but just as evil as their enemies are.

It's a pretty depressing sight to see.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#109

Post by Traster » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:59 AM UTC

anonymoushn wrote: post #80

jollybean wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not being massacred, and the 'war' is mostly based on willing misunderstanding, misattribution and the popular extolling of anger preachers.

Either my children will be rejected from universities even if they have perfect SATs and grades on the basis of their race or they will not. There is not much to misunderstand here.

Think you're focused on the wrong issue there. The most likely reason your child is unlikely to get into a good university is because good universities have consistently chosen not to increase class sizes in line with the number of qualified students apply, as a result your child is way less likely due to pure statistics to get in. That's because the schools are social institutions not academic ones.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#110

Post by hattmall » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:01 AM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #78

nradov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

I wonder if the same thing happens within/between companies. Industrial espionage is a thing. When billions of dollars are at stake, why not "cultural activities" too?

It's a thing between teenage girls (and boys), it's not some new tactic. If you read about Ben Franklin, he was huge into the idea of secret societies of a small number of people. The primary reason was that they were immune to this type of dissent building and outside opinion influencing.

He structured secret societies like an MLM, where you only know you're direct downline, and your recruiters direct downline. Each secret society had 6 members, and each of the 6 members would create another one with 6 members, but never sharing the identities across the groups and instruct each of the six to replicate the structure and so on. Each group of 6 would meet, discuss topics, come to a group consensu, and pass this up and down. This is how the revolution and much more was fomented.