Game Over • Hacker News Board

Re: Game Over

#61

Post by true_religion » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:06 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #25

waratuman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People did not criticize the post but the person.

Free speech still applies even if it's offending another person.

I really do believe arguments about the 'freedom' of speech should be kept to the context of government versus the populace.

The government censors people through force, sometimes in autocracies this quite literally means a gun to a dissenter's head.

It is a separate thing all together, On the other hand, if individuals freely choose to criticize, flame, or just simple disassociate themselves with someone else because they disapprove of their opinions. We should all be free to do at least this without fear that merely by agreeing with the majority we will be accused of 'censoring' the minority.

Re: Game Over

#62

Post by jhickner » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:07 AM UTC

abraxasz wrote: post #57

jhickner wrote: post #54

Anyone smart enough to have an interesting opinion on this topic is probably also smart enough to see that there's absolutely no upside to expressing that opinion. It either parallels the mainstream (in which case it's redundant) or it differs in some way, in which case it invites a retaliatory shitstorm. In a nutshell Salvatore said that he prefers to raise the level of abstraction (as programmers are wont to do) fr…

>Anyone smart enough to have an interesting opinion on this topic is probably also smart enough to see that there's absolutely no upside to expressing that opinion. That's my exact conclusion for pretty much every interesting/controversial topic. There's a very small circle of people (not necessarily friends by the way) with whom I exchange ideas on politics/religion/philosophy or anything potentially controversial.…

Agreed. Any relationship where you can freely "entertain ideas without accepting them" (- Aristotle) is something to be cherished. pg wrote an essay on this topic, for anyone interested: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: Game Over

#63

Post by rntz » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:07 AM UTC

powera wrote: post #29

Just from reading the blog posts, it seems like this is a bit of an overreaction to some mild criticism of a mediocre blog post. Then I looked at Twitter. If there are multiple people tweeting basically "you're stupid" dozens of times ( https://twitter.com/kendall seems particularly egregious) it's not being in any way productive, it's a bunch of people being assholes and claiming "you're sexist" as a shield against…

It's twitter-endemic, if not twitter-specific, for the simple reason that it's hard to express a coherent, well-justified argument in 140 characters, but easy to express anger.

The anger might even be justified; just don't go to twitter expecting to read the justification.

Re: Game Over

#64

Post by jerf » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:10 AM UTC

blackhole wrote: post #8

Some people are going to say that he was in the right, and some will argue this is a consequence of being wrong, but this doesn't matter. What this illustrates is the dangerous precipice that the world of blogging is hanging on to, where the violent hatred that spews forth when anyone writes a remotely controversial opinion threatens to silence any opinion that sways too far from mainstream consciousness. The fact th…

"What this illustrates is the dangerous precipice that the world of blogging is hanging on to"

If I may... this wasn't the world of "blogging". This was the world of Twitter et al.

Blogging itself actually has a very interesting property, which is that even if somebody tears you a new one in their own blog post, you don't actually have to know unless you go looking for it. It's a lot easier to blog a controversial opinion than it is to twit it, Facebook it, or post it here or in a forum, because they all have the characteristic that any body with a pulse and a computer anywhere in the world can essentially stick their reply in your face. After the first couple of thousand nasty replies, this can start to wear on a person.

When it first got going around 2000, I found this very interesting, and I still think that there's something about that model that we need to find a way to recover in the Next Great Social Medium. It isn't perfect, because you don't get that immediacy that you get in a forum, and it's easy to end up feeling like a lone voice in the wilderness due to lack of feedback, and presumably that's why this medium faded as a means of generating community, killed by the immediacy and quick feedback hits of the more popular community mechanisms. To me it's pretty abundantly clear that all the "any idiot in your face" community technologies ultimately start falling apart (requiring either an inhumanly thick skin or flat-out sociopathy), and somehow I'd love to see if there's a way to build something a little more immediate and a little less likely to isolate people entirely, while at the same time retaining the fact that you aren't assaulted by what feels like an entire Internet of knaves and fools every time you open your browser.

Re: Game Over

#65

Post by potatolicious » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:11 AM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #20

blackhole wrote: post #8

Some people are going to say that he was in the right, and some will argue this is a consequence of being wrong, but this doesn't matter. What this illustrates is the dangerous precipice that the world of blogging is hanging on to, where the violent hatred that spews forth when anyone writes a remotely controversial opinion threatens to silence any opinion that sways too far from mainstream consciousness. The fact th…

I see this from a different perspective. We are finally getting to the point where a critical mass of people are not going to tolerate sexist misinformed crap as they encounter it, and will instead speak out en masse. The blog post on sexism wasn't a "controversial opinion." The author wasn't bravely standing up to the mainstream. It was just his crappy opinion that tech needs to continue to try very hard to move pas…

> "We are finally getting to the point where a critical mass of people are not going to tolerate sexist misinformed crap as they encounter it, and will instead speak out en masse."

Except this critical mass of people behave more like an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, rather than a room full of shouting retorts.

The internet has given us a remarkable freedom in expression - it has also lowered the floor for discourse. Instead of writing an angry email explaining how you're wrong, there are more people who will post your address, take satellite pictures of your home, threaten to kill/rape you... I could go on.

I don't think this post was about the people who disagreed with him (for the record, I do disagree with his first blog post), but rather the extreme, vitriolic, disturbingly violent blowback that we see so much these days.

And this applies to all subjects and all sides. On the internet it seems if you say something sufficiently controversial, you will be deluged by a flood of extreme sociopathic behavior. We're talking well beyond just ad hominem attacks and insults - many a blogger have been entirely silenced from blogging due to personal threats, mob outrage, incitement, and simply inhuman levels of anonymous cruelty that, prior to the internet, were the sole territory of deranged psychopaths.

> "He espoused his opinion, and then a whole bunch of other people espoused theirs. Nobody was silenced. Quite the opposite, actually."

I don't think the mild, "I think you're stupid and wrong" responses are why he's quitting Twitter.

Re: Game Over

#66

Post by king_jester » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:13 AM UTC

iamdave wrote: post #19

tomasien wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(edited because it was in the wrong place in the conversation) Your thoughts about sexism, at least how to express them? Absolutely. I don't want to diminish you or your ability to assess a complex system, but it seemed to me (and a lot of other people) that you expressed a great deal of ignorance and a lot of classic misguided assumptions based on limited and biased personal anecdotal experience. But if you don't ag…

based on limited and biased personal anecdotal experience. It's not as he presented his case as stone-cold fact and call me crazy, but aren't personal anecdotal experiences exactly the things that give birth to opinion? Since when did sharing a belief/stance/daring to opine on something demand anything other than anecdote? I don't like that thought pattern at all.

> It's not as he presented his case as stone-cold fact and call me crazy, but aren't personal anecdotal experiences exactly the things that give birth to opinion?

We are talking about the experiences/opinions of a man about sexist treatment of women. This is a classic example of someone speaking over the voices of people actually suffering from sexism and then making opinions that dismiss key issues about sexism. While the author is totally entitled to that opinion and speech, why would anyone be surprised that people got angry about the post?

Re: Game Over

#67

Post by zaptheimpaler » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:14 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #49

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, thats defamation/libel, and it is a civil offense, even a criminal offense in some cases. Free speech is not an unconditional right, it places responsibilities on those who exercise it.

Defamation laws are one of those laws that skirt on a thin-line of interfering with free speech rights (similar to hate crime laws). It's also not simply offending language that equals defamation. From wikipedia: "Opinion is a defence recognized in nearly every jurisdiction. If the allegedly defamatory assertion is an expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact, defamation claims usually cannot be brought b…

>It's also not simply offending language that equals defamation.

Based on the post, many of the tweets were insult - direct attacks against the author, and not simply criticism/opinions.

All but 4 states in the US also recognize cases of defamation per se, where the truth of the claims is irrelevant, and the damages are predetermined. Claims which impute the following fall under that category (I've omitted 2 of the 4):

  1. Allegations or imputations "injurious to another in their trade, business, or profession"
  2. Allegations or imputations "of loathsome disease" (historically leprosy and sexually transmitted disease, now also including mental illness)

Many of the tweets directed at him fall into that category, and hence are defamation per se.

Re: Game Over

#68

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:21 AM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #67

dmix wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamation laws are one of those laws that skirt on a thin-line of interfering with free speech rights (similar to hate crime laws). It's also not simply offending language that equals defamation. From wikipedia: "Opinion is a defence recognized in nearly every jurisdiction. If the allegedly defamatory assertion is an expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact, defamation claims usually cannot be brought b…

>It's also not simply offending language that equals defamation. Based on the post, many of the tweets were insult - direct attacks against the author, and not simply criticism/opinions. All but 4 states in the US also recognize cases of defamation per se, where the truth of the claims is irrelevant, and the damages are predetermined. Claims which impute the following fall under that category (I've omitted 2 of the 4…

[deleted]

Re: Game Over

#69

Post by Jach » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:25 AM UTC

antirez wrote: post #47

Jach wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about censorship, but sensitivity. I don't see how you drew from this that the world of blogging is in peril--if you write things that generate tons of hate comments, and you don't want to read those comments, disable comments. The discussion will continue elsewhere regardless. The haters aren't even censoring themselves (I guess you could make a case that their existing biases prevent them from seriously…

I'm not closing my blog, where I think I'll post more controversial stuff, as I've a controversial indole. Also I'm not sensible at all, the problem is, I'm realising that Twitter is becoming mostly low content replies. Among the trolling replies I got, a lot were from respectable developers, sometimes even of products somewhat related to Redis. If it's so low quality why should I stay in an environment where that's…

My comment about sensitivity was mostly directed at the people flipping out about what you wrote, but it's nice to have confirmation that you too aren't so sensitive that you stop writing altogether. It makes sense for you to ditch Twitter.

Re: Game Over

#70

Post by KevinEldon » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 1:26 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #32

blackhole wrote: post #8

Some people are going to say that he was in the right, and some will argue this is a consequence of being wrong, but this doesn't matter. What this illustrates is the dangerous precipice that the world of blogging is hanging on to, where the violent hatred that spews forth when anyone writes a remotely controversial opinion threatens to silence any opinion that sways too far from mainstream consciousness. The fact th…

Letting such perspectives pass without criticism does not help us solve problems; quite the opposite. A few outlandish suggestions are amazingly useful insights, but most of them are outlandish for a reason; it's not a case of every idea being right and wrong in different ways, there really are objectively good and bad ideas, and being able to cull bad ideas quickly is vital to progress. To my mind this is a case of…

Summary: Vicious responses are lazy and should be considered ignorant until proven otherwise.

I agree with you that vicious responses to different positions on emotionally charged issues are common. The word 'vicious' bothers me though; it's not ok to use non-arguments and threats or insults to respond to an argument. If someone told me that Abraham Lincoln was the current President of the United States I don't think I'd respond viciously... I'd tell him he was an idiot and show him some evidence on my phone. If he kept it up I think I'd just leave because I'm not responsible for someone else's idiocy. If someone argues with a more complicated position that I hold dear, then I can see how I might respond viciously if I had no actual counter-argument or if I didn't want to spend time to argue with this person. I think you're recognizing how the world works, for complex issues with a bunch of ignorant people you're likely to see very vicious responses because most people cannot articulate the reasoning behind their position or choose not to spend the time to and instead use violence (virtual or otherwise). Perhaps some have real counter-arguments and choose not to present them and instead just respond with arrogance; if so that's sad because no one is informed by better understanding.

My initial thought after reading your post was that your view is practical and accurate, that people like Antirez who care more about their primary work (Redis in this case) and not some other issue they have a perspective on (sexism in software) will be drowned out and crushed under the common view and those who choose to elevate a particular view or cause to their primary purpose. I think (with disdain) about "pundits" whose job is to promote some position regardless of its merit; people who spend their lives arguing passionately for whatever pays the most... that is ugly and works against adapting a culture to handle new ideas and situations.

EDIT: Spelling only.