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

The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

charliechaplin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 412 posts

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#131

Post by KittenInABox »

Zetobal wrote: post #27
virtue3 wrote: post #22

I know a lot of people here are missing the mark - the issue here is EMPATHY not -feelings-. "We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. " "We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness." Please take…

Empathy is not the problem everyone has empathy for their own social groups. The problem is the division between these social groups. There is no grey anymore just black and white. You either hate me or love me.

I agree but I also think its more complicated than either hatred or love. Conversion therapy is, I think many people would agree, a form of hatred on gay people. But a parent trying to force their child to be straight would argue they love them dearly and that, if the parent was gay, they would happily undergo therapy to become straight and normal, so they are also empathetic. It's hard to argue about empathy and hatred and care when logic is twisted like this.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#132

Post by alternative_a »

vpribish wrote: post #88

"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart" - I think many have this so very wrong. Is support for fascism is a sensible, logical, well-thought-out policy? No, it's a heart-felt, emotional appeal to scared, proud, paranoid, crude, brutal people (who seem to be about half of our neighbors). surely the mindful decision is empathetic, constructive, and wise - not just base.

Two faculties are listed and the phrase implies the good working order of both.

This then leads to the conclusion that the meaning is “reason alone can not determine all decisions”.

Now a mind in good working order may be confronted with a matter that his or her heart of good working order is objecting to. This phrase reminds us to listen to our heart in these cases.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#133

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

This thread has some debate about whether thinking or feelings lead to the bad mindsets that nurture bad behavior.

For me, bad mindsets typically arise after some thinking. Often effortlessly.

Conversely, my best mindsets happen after being engaged in a positive effort and/or being in a safe, enriching environment. In these conditions, my better self just forms, seemingly without me exercising any will.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#134

Post by nox100 »

roughly wrote: post #113
zirror wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I read about longevity research and how many people are in favor of it I can't stop thinking about this speech. And one of the endings of Cyberpunk 2077.

I think people generally, and the Silicon Valley set in particular, have a hard time abstracting from “would I like” to “would the world be a better place if”. Would I like to live a thousand years? Yes, with the obvious caveats. Would the world be a better place if the technology for living a thousand years existed? Absolutely not, at least not at first, and certainly not today. There’s a great many people around ri…

How many times has your life or someone close to you in your life not died from something they would have died of 100yrs ago? If you're happy medical tech saved their lives then you're arguably for life extension because all it really means is saving more lives from more things that kill them.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#135

Post by radlad »

qingcharles wrote: post #44

I always liked this version with music added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo I remember sharing a jail cell with a 19-year-old Mexican kid once and we were talking about the guards being assholes and he said "they're like machine men"; and I said "with machine minds and machine hearts?" and he was like "YES! You know it?!" -- it was a good moment, we spent the next few days trying to remember the whole s…

My partner is very partial to this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzKl0oD6sU :)

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#136

Post by oddevan »

Geisterde wrote: post #123
bear141 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to focus on philanthropy and feelings after your monolithic megacorp has ground your competition into dust.

Hi, hello, I work here, google is down the street, as is microsoft. I can assure you they are not dust. All amazon has done is build more data centers, they havent taken some kind of hostile action towards the competition. The money was on the table, those companies didnt want to spend the time or take the risk, so amazon will gladly hoover it up.

Glad you have a job and stable employment! When I think of who Amazon has "ground into dust," it's not Microsoft and Google. It's Barnes & Noble, Borders, Waldenbooks, hundreds of thousands of small independent bookstores, small businesses that once worried about Walmart moving into the neighborhood now contending with the omnipresence of Amazon. Some of them adapt, yes. Some were going to close anyway, of course. But you can't deny that retail looks a lot different now than it did ten years ago, and most of that is because of Amazon.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#138

Post by johnnyworker »

riku_iki wrote: post #75
przem8k wrote: post #10

"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart". In tech we value data and being right so much, we may be too often missing the important part of being a decent human being.

> we may be too often missing the important part of being a decent human being. "decent human being" is too vague and easily manipulated term, so it could be better to follow hard metrics and data.

That's like saying calories can't be counted with 100% certainty, so we should eat integers instead.

> What has come to light is neither nihilism nor cynicism, as one might have expected, but a quite extraordinary confusion over elementary questions of morality — as if an instinct in such matters were truly the last thing to be taken for granted in our time.

-- Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#139

Post by zgin4679 »

qingcharles wrote: post #44

I always liked this version with music added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo I remember sharing a jail cell with a 19-year-old Mexican kid once and we were talking about the guards being assholes and he said "they're like machine men"; and I said "with machine minds and machine hearts?" and he was like "YES! You know it?!" -- it was a good moment, we spent the next few days trying to remember the whole s…

https://youtu.be/XbUvDTMkjwA

Yet another good version.

Re: The Final Speech from The Great Dictator (1940)

#140

Post by rsynnott »

appleskeptic wrote: post #125
vpribish wrote: post #88

"Don't let your mind speak louder than your heart" - I think many have this so very wrong. Is support for fascism is a sensible, logical, well-thought-out policy? No, it's a heart-felt, emotional appeal to scared, proud, paranoid, crude, brutal people (who seem to be about half of our neighbors). surely the mindful decision is empathetic, constructive, and wise - not just base.

[flagged]

… I mean, you’re describing, er, maybe North Korea? Not sure anywhere else has those policies. Maybe the Soviet Union in the Stalinist period (substitute gulags for execution).

I’m… not sure that these policies are proven to make most peoples’ lives better. Where are you getting that? Historically, places which pursue these sorts of extremely draconian policies tend to be very, very nasty places to live.

Post reply on HN