Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The dictatorship of the articulate

florentcrivello.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 409 posts

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#331

Post by [deleted] »

drewbeck wrote: post #324
kansface wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's hard for me to see that as a bad thing I'd buy this argument so long as you actually sit down to do the math at hand. Did you add up the man years we now spend waiting on safety? How does that compare to the lives we saved waiting, or the money we spent doing so? I'm personally guessing a very large amount of the required waiting exists chiefly for bureaucratic needs, not human. How much of that extra 6T$…

In your mind how many man years of savings do you think is worth one human life? Let's say we can save half the time on a big project but periodically one random person is killed. Worth it? I'm being glib here and/but/also we need to be talking about this directly. There's a spectrum of possible responses to the question and we need a language to discuss risk intelligently.

[deleted]

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#332

Post by namlem »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

Letting neighbors veto projects isn't democracy. Democracy is "rule by the public". That means the whole public, not just a small subset of it. Why were the neighbors consulted but not those in other parts of the city, or other parts of the state?

Localism is sham democracy, it's oligarchy wearing an democratic mask.

Furthermore, giving people a seat at the table is not the same as giving them veto power. People should have a right to voice their opinion, not to unilaterally control others.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#333

Post by zmgsabst »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #199
xorcist wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear about one thing: The hyperloop was intended to cast suspicion on infrastructure investments, primary rail. Who knows what will happen in the future? Maybe low pressure tubing will rule and no one will use rail? Then your investment will be for naught! It's an age old method, the same as used in telecom to justify not spending on fiber infrastructure. Who knows what will happen in the future? Maybe wire…

> It's an age old method, the same as used in telecom to justify not spending on fiber infrastructure. Who knows what will happen in the future? Maybe wireless? Look at this idea what a future wireless service might bring! With SpaceX's immediate success in becoming a global ISP, this turned out to be true.

Not really…?

Starlink is twice as expensive for a tenth the bandwidth as when I had fiber in a modern apartment.

That kind of 20x factor is presumably what the other person meant.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#334

Post by ysavir »

drewbeck wrote: post #324
kansface wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's hard for me to see that as a bad thing I'd buy this argument so long as you actually sit down to do the math at hand. Did you add up the man years we now spend waiting on safety? How does that compare to the lives we saved waiting, or the money we spent doing so? I'm personally guessing a very large amount of the required waiting exists chiefly for bureaucratic needs, not human. How much of that extra 6T$…

In your mind how many man years of savings do you think is worth one human life? Let's say we can save half the time on a big project but periodically one random person is killed. Worth it? I'm being glib here and/but/also we need to be talking about this directly. There's a spectrum of possible responses to the question and we need a language to discuss risk intelligently.

I think their point is that we can accomplish all the safety needs while only increasing costs and time so much, and that some portion (maybe big, maybe small) of that time is needless bureaucracy. They aren't advocating for more risk.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#335

Post by thrown_22 »

Tsiklon wrote: post #300
thrown_22 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most American thing in the world is to worry about the 4 deaths per year caused by the faults in that car while ignoring the other 40,000 deaths a year caused by cars in general.

I’m not American, this is whataboutery and absurd to argue, everyone wants safer roads. The example of the Pinto is famous worldwide; famous for the disgusting disregard Ford had for it’s own customers. That it would rather send its own customers to a painful death than have the decency to pay to fix the fault it was aware of, is abhorrent. This behaviour resulted in a known unsafe product remaining on sale long afte…

A product which when it works as expected kills orders of magnitude more people than the faulty version.

This is the definition of putting a band aid on a decapitation.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#336

Post by BiteCode_dev »

diordiderot wrote: post #311
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment can only originate from someone who has lived in democracy all their life. Having travelled the world for most of my life, and saw dictatorship at work, I think a lot of HN and Twitter evil sensors need serious calibration. It's like looking at somebody with diabetes and saying they have terminal AIDS.

These days HIV is much easier to live with than diabetes.

I'm pretty sure __terminal__ AIDS is not easier to live than diabetes. In fact, it's probably not easy to live for long.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#337

Post by Xc43 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

Fascism is a dead political movement that lived in Europe beginning to mid 20th century. Everything else that came afterwards is something else, different. By using that term you are referring to those dead political parties. Who is a Nazi nowadays? The political party does not exist anymore as far as I know. ie No one is a Nazi today.

You do you, use that word if you want but you are not promoting a healthy conversation if you start labelling people and assuming to know their perspective.

I agree that democratic governance is good. Yet let's be frank, kids have no place at the table. It is the responsibility of their parents to listen to them and promote their needs at the said table. ie at the table everyone should be taken into consideration (whether they are a kid or not) but not everyone should be at the table. (as for who is a kid and who is not, that is another subject)

I believe not everyone deserves to be at the table, the same way not everyone deserves to be part of a board of directors. As for why, I am certain you can figure that out on your own.

I answered you because I was slightly disturbed by your use of the word fascism. I hope you see that we are on the same boat. ___

On an adjacent note, personally, I do not care about nations/organizations. I care about people. Individuals. Does my country care about me? No, a country has no brain, no emotion. The question anthropomorphizes an entity emerging from a group individuals. A group cannot love me but each or any individual of said group can.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#338

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

kansface wrote: post #319
rwl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a cost in human life. I saw a photo exhibition [1] about the construction of the Bay Bridge once, containing many beautiful shots from the point of view of the workers. The photos were taken by Peter Stackpole, a 20 year old kid who basically just talked his way onto the boats that took the workers out to the site. He took photos of the towers as they were being riveted together, of the cables being wo…

> But it's hard for me to see that as a bad thing I'd buy this argument so long as you actually sit down to do the math at hand. Did you add up the man years we now spend waiting on safety? How does that compare to the lives we saved waiting, or the money we spent doing so? I'm personally guessing a very large amount of the required waiting exists chiefly for bureaucratic needs, not human. How much of that extra 6T$…

This is a perfect example of the bourgeoisie complaining that worrying about Proletariat lives is harming their ability to optimize profit.

One wonders how they feel when the proletariat decide to optimize their own lives and rise up against the bourgeoisie.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#339

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

svnt wrote: post #313
throwawayacc2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely! I saw an NDC Cooenhagen talk recently. I think it was called “Biggest mistakes in programming” or something like that. In the talk the guy mentioned at some point fixing a db problem. The way he described it, he was contracted to describe the problem and provide guidance on how to fix it. Not to actually fix, just analyse and describe the solution. But the problem was so simple he just made the fix and off…

Probably there was a long history of people proposing fixes to this particular problem. While a specific technical issue was obvious to him, the problem was not understood at that level by those in charge. Those in charge also had far more to lose than he did by accepting the input of yet another expert on faith. Chalking this up to pointless bureaucracy is in a sense the inverse of the “build it like that but six in…

If it's not understood then those are the wrong people to be making decisions wrt to the problem.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#340

Post by dionidium »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

> Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings?

Ironically, the state preventing people from demolishing irrelevant structures to build housing that will exist entirely on their own private property is actual Fascism. I suspect it's a Fascism you're sympathetic to, but it's much more literally Fascism than the alternative.

Post reply on HN