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Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

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Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#161
post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

Thanks for your generic dismissal of our reasons for not voting. I vote in local government matters, but I'm not really sure what the point of my federal vote is supposed to be right now while I'm a blue voter in a permanently very blue state.

If we had pure direct democracy that'd be one thing, but in the age of the electoral college, your dismissal of youthful naivety comes across to me as empty arrogance from someone who's convinced his own beliefs are the only ones worth adhering to.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#162
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well what better way to make sure a large number of people don't vote than to let them convince themselves that voting doesn't matter. My point is that the net effect is the same for both things, one you don't vote because your vote was suppressed and the other is you not voting because you don't think it will matter. Obviously if it's worth paying money to try to make sure than many people can't vote then it's even…

>well what better way to make sure a large number of people don't vote than to let them convince themselves that voting doesn't matter. Sure, if you can convince large numbers of people of the validity of that argument, you could potentially affect the election. That doesn't mean the argument is actually wrong though. >My point is that the net effect is the same for both things, one you don't vote because your vote w…

Honestly I'm not super invested in whether the argument is "correct" or not, I'm invested in the actual situation that affects actual people's lives. I personally don't make my decisions on what opinions to espouse and who to try to convince of anything based on a rigid structure of "validity" of an argument. It helps and it's a decent indicator of the right way to go sometimes, but if I know something is going to have a negative effect on people's lives based on whether or not I spread the idea or opinion, I don't care if it is "valid"/"correct" or whatever, I care about the effect. It is also important to note that even if the argument is not correct, that does not mean that the conclusion is not. A fool with no notion of "proper" argumentation can make an argument espousing any conclusion (right or wrong) that comes to him, but that has no bearing on whether any of those conclusions were right or wrong (also known as the fallacy fallacy)

I have this concept I use internally a lot where I consider what I believe to be true and what I consider to be "useful", and sometimes I will choose to believe things that I am sure are false because it is more useful to me personally to believe it is true. One example of this is the concept of karma. I am don't believe there's some mystical force in the universe that will balance everything out and ensure "what goes around comes around", but it sure is useful to believe in some mystical balancing force so that I don't feel compelled to avenge every instance of me being wronged. Instead I just let it go and assume that the universe will right itself. The previous paragraph is taking this type of analysis to an external level when I decide what I will propagate with my time and energy and what I will simply read and move on.

I don't particularly care whether or not the idea is structurally sound for some framework of debate and a system of rules for determining if it is valid or not, I'm more concerned with the real implications of believing and propagating belief in the idea. You mention that it's not the same net effect because personally deciding not to vote would change the tally by 1, but the voter suppression targets a group of more than 1. Yet here you are trying to spread the idea to other people to convince them that they also should join you in evaluating this idea as correct and thus not vote. This increases that count to more than 1, and the better you are at it, it increases further. It is exactly the same net effect because humans are social creatures and ideas spread through socialization and group acceptance. People who read your post and agree with it will feel that your reasoning justifies their belief in not voting as well. In a way, whether intentional or not, you are commenting on this topic in a way that serves to disenfranchise voters through self-disenfranchisement. If that is not your intent, I would ask that you examine what the effects of your efforts are and how they align with your goals in life and reality and perhaps focus less on systems of logic that are meant to help simplify and parse arguments, not determine your every action.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

For someone who claims to like and respect Aaron, you are rather dismissive of him and his "rant". Your recommendation to find your news, local or otherwise, might have been valid 50 years ago, but it isn't today as most news ( local, national and international ) is owned by a handful of conglomerates who more or less share the same value. Your recommendation is like telling people who don't like facebook to use inst…

> For someone who claims to like and respect Aaron, you are rather dismissive of him and his "rant".

People you like and respect can have very naive ideas.

>but it isn't today as most news ( local, national and international ) is owned by a handful of conglomerates who more or less share the same value.

You might be thinking of broadcast news? It's definitely not true of all local news sources.

All journalism is full of biases (of the institution, of the individual reporter, etc). You can (and should) still get the news out of them. Learning that your local council is holding a big vote in a week is still important news whether or not its coming from a source on the payroll of a company owned by clearchannel.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

The US is structured as a representative democracy, specifically because following politics and making reasoned decisions on all this stuff is a full time job. We elect people who we think will do a good job researching, reasoning and governing. I started my academic career in political science, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. Ultimately found that computer science had problems that I was better at working thr…

> The US is structured as a representative democracy, specifically because following politics and making reasoned decisions on all this stuff is a full time job.

I don’t think the original intent was that government would be involved in “all this stuff”, but I agree that representative democracy works for the system we’ve built since then.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#166
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

We frequently need to update our mental model of the world (e.g., how are things in country X? what can I do there? is it reasonably safe to visit? what happened yesterday at place Y?). However, mainstream news usually gives me little information and whatever it gives is skewed by that channel/journalist political affiliation. I do not know of a general solution. Sometimes it is talking to neighbors; sometimes doing…

>I grew up in a place practicing one-candidate votes (i.e., you choose between "in favor" that in the end will show 95+% and "against" with no alternatives) so acquired immunity to "citizen votes solve all problems" mentality.

I grew up in a place with effectively single party rule, and it was imbued into our culture that it's pointless to vote because you'll never unseat that party anyway. A big recent change was when, in a semi-recent election, an opposition party won an electoral constituency, worth a mere 5% of parliamentary votes, by the thinest of margins. I couldn't tell you what the opposition platform was today. But regardless of the fact that the opposition still wielded absolutely no legislative power, this led to an era of what many would consider a very electorate friendly legislative push.

This "don't vote for the lesser of two evils" business is nonsense. Use your right to vote relentlessly: to punish arrogant politicians, to press on single issues, to fight for the lesser of two evils because it is the LESSER of two evils. Finding and balancing the lesser of two evils is your job as a voter.

Even if your desired choice has no chance of winning, grinding down the margin, year after year, makes the other side nervous and more willing to compromise. Even if your desired choice has no chance of losing, expanding the margin gives them more room to take less "centrist" stances and push for the things you want. If there's a lesser of two evils, keep voting until the more of two evils has no choice but to compromise and become less evil. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

Thanks for your generic dismissal of our reasons for not voting. I vote in local government matters, but I'm not really sure what the point of my federal vote is supposed to be right now while I'm a blue voter in a permanently very blue state. If we had pure direct democracy that'd be one thing, but in the age of the electoral college, your dismissal of youthful naivety comes across to me as empty arrogance from some…

>for not voting. I vote in local government matters

"I vote in local government matters" doesn't really put you in the "not voting" camp.

>while I'm a blue voter in a permanently very blue state.

It provides signals. Vote for other blue candidates to show support.

>your dismissal of youthful naivety

The dismissal is of people who don't vote. Those people are the issue because voting is the only way to get changes into your local governments, etc.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not what he says at all. He implies that everything you need to know to vote can fit on one side of an index card. The point is you don't need to follow the news to make informed voting decisions.

He also suggests reading books instead of daily news! He says weekly or monthly reviews would be fine too. This whole thread is full of people thinking he’s suggesting you stay ignorant, when really he’s saying the culture of everyone must read the news is wrong, and we can get our information from better sources than the news.

>and we can get our information from better sources than the news.

I'm not convinced. Reading books just subjects you to different biases from those authors. How are they supposed to be immune to problems periodicals have?

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#169
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which if you want to go down that route I think it's important to note that many of the policies meant to protect against the specter of voter fraud in the US drastically increase the cost of voting on a segment of population that the propagating party (Republicans in this case) does not consider to be a part of their base. Sure, this could be accidental, but with the number of times it has happened in separate place…

I don't disagree, but probably the best way to value the importance of your vote is some equation where the biggest variables are the % chance of your side winning and the importance the issue at hand. The amount of voter suppression going on is, I think, an indirect way of estimating both of these things.

yeah, you're right about that, but given how difficult these things can be to actually measure in reality, I think an indirect measure is better than no measure at all (or a gut feeling). A lot of these races with heavy suppression were extremely close races, which obviously begs the question of how effective the voter suppression was and if it turned the tide (my money is on "almost certainly).

It turned out my vote was not particularly instrumental in the election I was participating in, but if just assumed that from the start I definitely wouldn't have gone out canvassing and trying to convince other people that their votes matter. If other people like me made similar decisions and didn't vote and didn't try to mobilize, would the election I participated in still have gone favorably? Maybe, but I know I sure felt a hell of a lot better doing everything I could than sitting on the couch worrying and fretting about things instead of actively trying to influence them.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#170
post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

While I like and respect who Aaron was and what he did for us all, I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive. It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting, also the same logic my fellow parents use as reason for not attending town meeting. Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your frien…

I think the point he was making is that the news is broken. I want to invent a better a news app.
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