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The group chats that changed America

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Re: The group chats that changed America

#121

Post by ryandrake »

Apocryphon wrote: post #94
acdha wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re right but would also add the nascent tech worker organization during the same period. I think many of these guys were bitterly resentful of the idea of workers trying to unionize or otherwise negotiate on a more even level, and that made the general political concerns very personal.

Not just tech unions but the brief shift in tech labor power also saw phenomena like the Great Resignation, overemployment, quiet quitting, etc.

Yea, no matter how left-leaning the business owners are, the second that labor gets even a smidgen of power, they all suddenly turn into Ronald Reagans.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#122

Post by ryandrake »

roguecoder wrote: post #58
dist-epoch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The "kids" are not the ones kidnapping people who disagree with them. Bill Maher still has a show, despite having spent more than twenty-five years being a racist POS. There is no such thing as "Cancel Culture": there are just people who are SUPER mad that their kids think their racism is bad.

"I have been silenced!"[1] says the side with all three branches of government, owns newspapers and TV stations, business leaders and executives in front of microphones all the time. But, yea--they're the ones that are being silenced.

1: https://leftycartoons.com/2018/08/01/i-have-been-silenced/

Re: The group chats that changed America

#123

Post by ryandrake »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #79
slibhb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the very left people I know would describe themselves as anti-woke...but they all make it very clear that they find wokeness (or whatever you want to call it) ridiculous.

I wish when people use the term woke they would say what they actually mean. I suspect they don't because they don't want to be seen as racist, sexist, homophobic, or whatever. What do you mean by woke?

"Woke" is the right's word that means "Anything I don't like." Similar to what "fascist" means when the left says it.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#124

Post by int_19h »

kenjackson wrote: post #84
dralley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fundamental difference is that conservative viewpoints support the majority (or plurality), whereas the liberal viewpoints support the minority view. Be specific and put up numbers. There is a wide, wide swath of issues where the "liberal" position is the majoritarian one.

Conservative positions are generally pro-hetero, white, and Christian. Also male, but that is the one where they're not the majority, but very close to 50/50. There are "liberal" positions that are popular, but generally the current big conservative pushes are against minority populations. E.g., DEI, trans, immigrants (from certain countries), etc...

You present it as a dichotomy when that's not actually the case. I'm heterosexual and white, but I don't see how policies that e.g. allow gay people to marry - a stereotypically "liberal" position - harm me in any way.

There are some things where it's a zero-sum game, such as affirmative action. And those do in fact tend to be less popular even among liberals (as evidenced by referendums on those topics in blue states). But that's a relatively small part of the overall liberal platform.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#125

Post by slibhb »

ajross wrote: post #114
slibhb wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't dispute that these are "efforts to do good stuff in the real world". It's just very obvious that they are having the opposite effect. I don't kow what that has to do with an "echo chamber". > People can be wrong and not "woke" (which you're clearly using to connote "evil" or "enemy"). Of course they can. The Trump administration is wrong and unwoke. I did not use "woke" to connote "evil" or "enemy". Where are…

> It's just very obvious that they are having the opposite effect. I don't kow what that has to do with an "echo chamber". Yikes. When something is "very obvious" to you, to the extent that you find yourself exasperated by everyone else's inability to see the obvious truth you're taking as a prior... You are almost certainly in an echo chamber. The stuff you sneer about here has real argument around it. It's not as d…

You jump from bizarre accusation to bizarre accusation.

Here's my go at diagnosing you (and this goes for many people in this thread): the centerpeice of your worldview has been "liberals good, conservatives bad" for your entire life. Now, when faced with clear evidence of well-meaning liberals enacting harmful policies in the name of "racial justice," your brain short-circuits and you start sputtering gibberish (or arguing semantics, e.g."you can't define wokeness!").

The way out is to admit that liberals are human, they make mistakes, and "wokeness" and its associated policies are examples of this. Don't worry, after you start seeing reality more clearly, you can still vote for the Democrats! They're still better than Trump!

Re: The group chats that changed America

#126

Post by [deleted] »

vuggamie wrote: post #77
doom2 wrote: post #14

HN seems loathe to have any meaningful discussion about or reflection on how and why notable SV figures seemed primed to embrace the Trump/MAGA right (see, for example, quote in OP from Chris Rufo). I don't think it was simply being repelled by the left, as Andreesson has stated before, but an earnest rightward turn. Also, after articles like these, will calls for "viewpoint diversity" finally apply to conservatives…

Like all other forums, public and private, HN has an ideological filter. I'm as surprised as the next person that the HN ideological filter turned out not to be permissive enough to discuss the downfall of the free society that fostered its creation. The oligarchs will not lose their freedom or power and they won't fight (or even inconvenience themselves) to preserve yours. Next time you're reading a blog or a biogra…

[deleted]

Re: The group chats that changed America

#127

Post by neilv »

dang wrote: post #41
neilv wrote: post #7

[flagged]

We got complaints about your use of the word "rabid" and I think they have a point. That crosses into name-calling in the sense that the HN guidelines ask you not to do. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

OK, sorry for violating the decorum. At the time I wrote it, thought it was an apt term, about behavior by "my own team", but point taken, and I think I have a better sense of the rule now, thank you.

Re: The group chats that changed America

#128

Post by throw0101c »

cptroot wrote: post #32

As always, Chris Rufo lays the game out in plain terms: > Rufo had been there all along: “I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right.”

> Christopher Ferguson Rufo (born August 26, 1984) is an American conservative activist,[1][2] New College of Florida board member, and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.[3] He is an opponent of critical race theory. He is a former documentary filmmaker and former fellow at the Discovery Institute, the Claremont Institute, The Heritage Foundation, and the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.[4][5][6]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo

Re: The group chats that changed America

#129

Post by neilv »

UncleMeat wrote: post #22
neilv wrote: post #7

[flagged]

The disinvitation data is so incredibly small that there's no way on earth we can call this "rabid." In Haidt and Fukuyama's "The Coddling of the American Mind" they present data on disinvitations attempts . And it is in the tens of attempts nationwide. They even have to present the data with Milo Yiannopoulos removed since he made up a considerable portion of all disinvitation attempts. You can think that students a…

Campus talk de-invitings are only small part of the set of behavior I was referring to.

(I was sloppy, and didn't integrate the anecdote well as I wrote the comment, so I think the anecdote confused my message more than helped.)

Re: The group chats that changed America

#130

Post by neilv »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #17
neilv wrote: post #7

[flagged]

It's kind of unreal that in the comments of an article about an actual (successful!) conspiracy between ultra-wealthy tech elite and extreme right activists to undermine american democracy for their own benefit, you're most concerned about liberal campus protests. You may not be as progressive as you think!

The anecdote was my writing mistake, not what I was most concerned about. (I started writing the anecdote, then decided what was important was the much larger problem, and oopsed the writing.)

As for your point, I had some of the same thoughts about the overall article as you did. But I quoted a small piece of it, to narrow in on one point I wanted to make, which might be less obvious to people who think like us about the topic.

Of course some wealthy and powerful have been undermining democracy; but what if that quote was honest: is it a valid criticism, and can we improve the situation?

As long as we're stuck with billionaires, wouldn't it be great if more of them decided it was better to promote an informed and functioning democracy?

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