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Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

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Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#161

Post by PhasmaFelis »

pavelrub wrote: post #87
koevet wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you find unserious in that statement about Israel?

Just that regardless of your political inclinations, you need to be extremely ignorant of the complexity of the situation in the Middle East to be able to make such clear cut statements about what's justifiable and what's not. Disclaimer: I live in Israel.

Please correct me if I'm wrong: within living memory, a large area of land already occupied by many humans was unilaterally declared not to belong to them anymore, and they were largely either forced out or subjugated to make way for a different batch of humans who wanted to live, literally, in their houses.

My nation did something very similar to the Native Americans more than a century ago, and it's now universally regarded as an atrocity.

Of course none of this means that suicide bombers are justified or that Israeli children are war criminals. The world is more complicated than that, as you say; whole generations of innocent Israelis have now grown up on that land, and no more deserve to be forcibly displaced than the original occupants did. But I've never heard a convincing justification as to why the occupation was morally justified in the first place, and it doesn't become more justified with time.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#162

Post by wonderzombie »

thirsteh wrote: post #77
crystaln wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite simple. Rice and Eich are not directly useful and their dismissal would have no effect on the protestors, so there is almost zero sacrifice. There is no sacrifice necessary on behalf of the protestors. Dropping AWS on the other hand could be difficult and expensive for many, so protesting AWS requires either hypocrisy or sacrifice.

While I personally think Eich shouldn't have been CEO, you sum up Internet protests nicely: People will scream and moan, but only a fraction of those people would continue to do so if it required they actually do anything--even something as simple as moderate physical exertion.

Why wouldn't people take action which has even a small percentage of success when it requires negligible effort and little time? It seems utterly rational to me.

Likewise, moderate physical exertion (read: effort and time) for a low percentage play is a more dubious proposition. There's a fixed amount of time in a day and you simply can't get more of it; you can only optimize.

I'm not saying people don't jump on bandwagons or whatever. I think outrage & anger are in some sense addictive and cyclical on their own. (Whether they are "legitimate" in any given case is orthogonal IMO.) And I'm sort of with you in spirit, as I gather you're basically criticizing slacktivism.

But if you're trying to set a bar for "real" activism, it's best to keep the above in mind, particularly when people feel otherwise disempowered.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#163

Post by wonderzombie »

res0nat0r wrote: post #23
dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

I believe this and Eich are easy targets (soft targets if we want to keep with the war theme) for people to go after. Seeing the internet mob rally behind this and Eich remind me that these are easy targets for people to pick because it doesn't require much work (internet slacktivisim at work). It would be more enlightening if someone would research all of the board members of many well known SV companies whos names…

...which are all rational ways for people to optimize their time. And lo, it works sometimes.

So what you're really saying is that even though this is a fairly well-optimized use of people's time and effort, it's illegitimate because people aren't sweating for it. This is HN— if you leveled a similar complaint at a CEO, startup, or corporation, you'd be criticized for implying they're lazy rather than rational.

Don't get me wrong; I don't love slacktivism, either. I suspect it has an opportunity cost. I tentatively agree that it's a proxy for more substantive protest. However, I submit that this is because people don't otherwise feel empowered. If you believe any sort of activism is low percentage, then why not choose the route that is the least amount of effort?

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#164

Post by chc »

scarmig wrote: post #158
dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

I hate these maximalist "unless you do X and Y and Z, you have no right to criticize ANYTHING, because I say so, so shut the fuck up" ideas. It's startlingly close to the USSR's "and you lynch negroes" response to any criticism of its policies by the USA: it brings up an irrelevancy, and it's made in bad faith. The only way to escape it would be to detach entirely from the system. Would you have criticized MLK for on…

I hate political posts on Hacker News because they lead to petty, histrionic bickering like this.

What is intellectually gratifying about mean-spirited sarcasm like:

> You have no right to criticize me for trying to reduce how implicated I am in one of the most evil acts of the 21st century.

> And if you disagree, well, I can name a thousand other forums for you to post your comment in before you come here to Hacker News. Otherwise you're just being wildly inconsistent and deeply morally corrupt.

Political threads make people forget how to make positive contributions and instead they compete to express the most outrage. Nobody wins from that.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#165

Post by wonderzombie »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #11

I think it's important to ask not only whether somebody is a good ideological representative for a company, but also whether ousting them does us any good. The parties on both sides of the Rice/Dropbox debate have good arguments: * Ms. Rice has been a very important representative of a US administration that caused a lot of people to die in Iraq and elsewhere; * but she is not the only one in the government of that d…

other (non-bullied) politicians

Is this how people are co-opting the term "bullied" now? To describe criticism of prominent people in public life? C'mon. Condoleeza Rice served in two presidential administrations. She is not some ingenue who accidentally stumbled into the spotlight.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#167

Post by doesnt_know »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #156
azth wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been meaning to do something like that myself. Did you use off the shelf tools for crypto, or did you write something yourself?

Yeah, I'm using gpg.

Would you be willing to do a little write up or make a blog post about your process or something?

I've been meaning to setup encrypted backups for a while. At the moment mine are all unencrypted, but are stored on hardware under my control that I have direct physical access too.

I'd like to use a convenient offsite storage provider, but have no interest in trusting them with data. Tarsnap would be ideal if it was actually Free Software, but the current license is a deal breaker.

Already use gpg in my workflow for some documents and password management. Do you literally just tar and then gpg the result or is it something more involved? It seems that would be fairly bandwidth heavy.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#168

Post by BenefitOfDoubt »

Ironic that is is highly likely that the majority here who are posting criticisms actually were in support of the Iraq was at the time that it happened. Many here also support/vote for government officials who voted for and supported it at the time.

It is understandable but sad that not only will people not admit this, but that they criticize someone who felt the same as they did at the time. You may justify your actions by saying that we civilians did not have the intel that Condi, the President, and congress had at the time. This may be true, but how do you know what intel that they actually had and if it was even good intel (Congress did and you still support them). Many of you here criticizing Condi, support Hillary/Benghazi and excuse her because she had bad intel. The scale of course is much different, but you sure that you are not applying different standards to different people because of political bias?

I think yes.

I am sure that I do the same things, it is human nature (I am not saying that it is morally right though). I just wanted to put this out there, Food for thought.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#169

Post by r00fus »

avenger123 wrote: post #72
dmix wrote: post #13

Amazon is building a $600 million datacenter for the CIA. The CIA did all of the bad things listed in Dropbox article as directed by Bush and Condoleezza, and they are still actively trying to cover up torture. I've never heard anyone here not using EC2 over it? The tech scenes pitchfork mobs are wildly inconsistent. I have a feeling this one hit a nerve because Condoleezza Rice is famously hated across the internet…

The CIA is a big massive blob that represents thousands of people. Rice is an individual. Much easier to critique.

Rice is a public figure that helped sell the Iraq War by lying.

She's done some pretty slimy stuff and essentially admitted to it, so that's why she's easy to target.

Re: Knuth: Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice (2002)

#170

Post by azth »

doesnt_know wrote: post #167
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm using gpg.

Would you be willing to do a little write up or make a blog post about your process or something? I've been meaning to setup encrypted backups for a while. At the moment mine are all unencrypted, but are stored on hardware under my control that I have direct physical access too. I'd like to use a convenient offsite storage provider, but have no interest in trusting them with data. Tarsnap would be ideal if it was act…

> Tarsnap would be ideal if it was actually Free Software, but the current license is a deal breaker.

I looked at it from the angle that it is basically a 1-person company. The bus factor is too high! :)

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