After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#241

Post by moistly » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:20 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #237

moistly wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never asked for shit from you, buddy, so feel free to keep your biz your biz. Back to the point, after thirty-two years of hanging out in BBS networks, Usenet, and dozens of web social media sites, I see nothing special about HNs denizens, other than an inflated sense of their own worth. This site has as many idiots and blowhards as any other.

Sorry to pile on the scolding I already posted ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963043 ), but I don't think this description of HN users is either accurate or fair. You can find samples of anything in any large-enough sample, but the median HN user doesn't say that they're special, and we certainly would never claim such a thing. Comments like this are one reason why we added this guideline: " Please don't sn…

Also, I agree, I wasn’t being accurate or fair, at least in general. There are topics where the quality of commentary is dismal.

I’ll try to not comment when I feel a sneer. Thx.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#242

Post by dang » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

moistly wrote: post #240

dang wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to pile on the scolding I already posted ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963043 ), but I don't think this description of HN users is either accurate or fair. You can find samples of anything in any large-enough sample, but the median HN user doesn't say that they're special, and we certainly would never claim such a thing. Comments like this are one reason why we added this guideline: " Please don't sn…

“Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense” claims specialness and, yes, I took the bait. Sorry.

Thanks for the kind reply. I know that people sometimes say such things, but they're a tiny minority of HN users. I cringe inwardly when I hear them, and I'm probably oversensitive on the point.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#243

Post by gjm11 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 2:16 AM UTC

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #188

gjm11 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think almost everything you say about Japan is wrong. "99.9% of people accused of a crime ..." -- this is a reference to the fact that the Japanese criminal system's conviction rate is a startlingly high 99.9%. But what's going on here is that about 60% of criminal cases in Japan get suspended without going to court; prosecutors only proceed in cases where they are nearly certain of getting a conviction, so their 9…

>I think almost everything you say about Japan is wrong. Tiny part of my comment, no offense or anything. Certainly hoping to learn where I am wrong. >"99.9% of people accused of a crime ..." -- this is a reference to the fact that the Japanese criminal system's conviction rate is a startlingly high 99.9% To be fair, it's hard to compare to English law systems. Perhaps it's totally fine, but when you connect the forc…

On the US conviction rate: page 8 of https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao/legacy/2013... says "Of the 87,709 defendants terminated during Fiscal Year 2012, 80,963, or 93 percent, either pled guilty or were found guilty. [...] The rate of conviction remained over 90 percent, as it has since Fiscal Year 2001." I believe that "terminated during FY2012" here means that they went to trial, and their trial ended during that year.

That does seem like it's the figure that's formally comparable to Japan's alleged 99.9% conviction rate, no?

It may well be that in the US, as in Japan but to a lesser extent, cases are dropped when it doesn't seem like they will get a conviction. And of course the US tries very hard to persuade people to plead guilty by threatening them with extra-harsh sentences if they don't but are found guilty.

What apples and oranges do you think are being compared?

You said that 99.9% of people accused of a crime in Japan go to prison and have to work there. Which of the following do you disagree with?

1. Only about 40% of people accused of a crime in Japan have their cases go to trial at all, rather than being abandoned.

2. Only about 15% of people convicted of a crime in Japan go to prison.

3. If only 40% of people accused have a trial, and only 15% of convicted people go to prison, then at most 6% of people accused go to prison and have to work there.

4. 6% is smaller than 99.9%.

You haven't given any justification for your claim that "the only reason Japan hasn't collapsed to about 30% poverty like Greece is because of the forced labour". Again, there simply aren't enough people in prison in Japan for anything like that to be true.

You say you don't believe their figures. That's your choice, I guess. But it seems like quite a stretch, especially if you expect this to rescue your claim that forced prison labour has somehow saved Japan from otherwise inevitable economic disaster.

The official figures say that about 0.4% of the Japanese population is in prison. What fraction of the population would have to be in (I think almost all low-skilled) kinda-sorta-slavery to make the difference between an economy like Japan's and an economy like Greece's? I can't see how less than, say, 4% could do that. (I'd actually have thought it would need to be a lot more.)

In other words, for your theory to work, there'd need to be some sort of secret prison population ~10x the size of the official prison population. How are you suggesting that happens? Do you think lots of people who are officially reported as having been fined were actually hauled off to prison? (How come their friends don't notice that the official accounts have been falsified?) Do you think there are secret prisons in Japan that no one knows about, where these people are held? Or what?

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#244

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

gjm11 wrote: post #243

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think almost everything you say about Japan is wrong. Tiny part of my comment, no offense or anything. Certainly hoping to learn where I am wrong. >"99.9% of people accused of a crime ..." -- this is a reference to the fact that the Japanese criminal system's conviction rate is a startlingly high 99.9% To be fair, it's hard to compare to English law systems. Perhaps it's totally fine, but when you connect the forc…

On the US conviction rate: page 8 of https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao/legacy/2013... says "Of the 87,709 defendants terminated during Fiscal Year 2012, 80,963, or 93 percent, either pled guilty or were found guilty. [...] The rate of conviction remained over 90 percent, as it has since Fiscal Year 2001." I believe that "terminated during FY2012" here means that they went to trial, and their trial ende…

> I believe that “terminated during FY2012” here means that they went to trial, and their trial ended during that year.

It means their charges were resolved during that year; very often (guilty pleas plus charges dropped) without trial.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#245

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:43 AM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #91

wallacoloo wrote: post #32

> This is what happened after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning. (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What’s debt? Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting…

I'm not sure the $2T cryptocurrency industry is a response to govt's handling of 2008. I think Satoshi cared very deeply about it: I'm not sure all of the $2T worth of participation in the current economy does, nor am I certain that the current crypto industry addresses many of the problems that existed in 2008.

[deleted]

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#246

Post by kf6nux » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

wallacoloo wrote: post #32

> This is what happened after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning. (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What’s debt? Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting…

That's market cap, right?

When people say something is a $x industry, I normally think revenue per year.

How big is the industry as measured by transaction/service fees?

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#247

Post by olalonde » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

dgan wrote: post #8

olalonde wrote: post #5

It's strange to see this upvoted on HN of all places. Some marxist inspired ramblings with no clear conclusion. Fact is that the free enterprise system works very well when you let it work and this is backed by a lot of empirical data.

I haven't noticed any Marxist rambling here. People have right to write their opinions, even if dreamful

I was referring to the "class struggle" theme.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#248

Post by mdp2021 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #242

moistly wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense” claims specialness and, yes, I took the bait. Sorry.

Thanks for the kind reply. I know that people sometimes say such things, but they're a tiny minority of HN users. I cringe inwardly when I hear them, and I'm probably oversensitive on the point.

Hi Daniel. Sorry but I do not quite understand your point. It seems like you are censoring my statement «Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense», and you found it cringeful - it even seems like you state you are glad "my position represents a minority". I am also interested in your "sensitivity", also (not just in terms of sheer human relation) because I do not quite understand what "touches" you in that direction.

I have not yet managed to read (all) pg's interventions. I just read though that according to him "down arrows [can be used to] express agreement". As I tried to observe formerly, though, this contrasts with the direction of "reasoning". If one just "felt" disagreement, but cannot justify it (or will not out of laziness), there will be no progress, no discussion, no quality. The guidelines, I a pretty sure, specify to warn against cheapness, and there is very little cheaper than one's statement "I disagree [end of statement]". What are we debating for if disagreement is not rationalized? I was pretty sure we are meant to be reasoning here, not to do some expressive "performance art". (Note: which I do myself, as an aside luxury, always taking care though that the intellectual structure it accompanies appears solid. Never alone, never without the important bits attached.)

What I tried to express in fact to the user that seems obsessed about the idea that some "feel special", in my last intervention, is that "expression of "feeling" will be consistent with this apparent framework when it will be expressed within a rational framework, which will allow it to be managed within a discussion". Without that, it will not be "information exchange, insight and debate": it will be noise. The very fact that on average we restrain ourselves from joking, to try to keep density high, is indicative.

The quality of debates here are completely different from what you can find elsewhere: as mentioned, for example, YT and Reddit - where noise and low quality are abysmally huge. What is the filter that causes that increase, if not that using the "head" is promoted here instead of lower bits? (It was a rhetoric formula: I am sure it is that.) To quote Daniel G. (read somewhere else), "We are just trying to build a [cannot remember term] that does not suck". It is the direction of consistency with "intellectual curiosity" which is granting that.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#249

Post by mdp2021 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

moistly wrote: post #240

dang wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to pile on the scolding I already posted ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963043 ), but I don't think this description of HN users is either accurate or fair. You can find samples of anything in any large-enough sample, but the median HN user doesn't say that they're special, and we certainly would never claim such a thing. Comments like this are one reason why we added this guideline: " Please don't sn…

“Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense” claims specialness and, yes, I took the bait. Sorry.

Moistly, there was no claim of specialness in that idea, and there was no bait. You almost seem to defend a relativism in which all ideas are worth the same, if you make "making sense" akin to "specialness". If that were true, there would be no point to debate. Surely, feeling alone does not constitute any basis for rational exchange - only for communication in terms of "sharing". HN does not read like "There is a shortage if lithium" // "I feel your pain, bro": some of us are very glad it so is, because it would make a largely useless, noisy reading.

Re: After the pandemic, we can’t go back to sleep (2020)

#250

Post by mdp2021 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #249

moistly wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Here it is not about how you feel: it is about whether you make sense” claims specialness and, yes, I took the bait. Sorry.

Moistly, there was no claim of specialness in that idea, and there was no bait. You almost seem to defend a relativism in which all ideas are worth the same, if you make "making sense" akin to "specialness". If that were true, there would be no point to debate. Surely, feeling alone does not constitute any basis for rational exchange - only for communication in terms of "sharing". HN does not read like "There is a sh…

Disambiguation at re-reading: «Surely, feeling alone does not constitute any basis for rational exchange» is to be read as "A mediated (unfiltered) expression of feelings in a language which does not work for rational exchange, consistently is noise when attempting that (information exchange, insight and debate)".

Expressed in my unedited (too late), it «feeling alone» ("feeling" alone) could have been read as "when feeling lonely". Which is not what was intended, but seems almost a point: if somebody is here for the greatest laughters, enveloping warmth, or tickling, I am not sure it is the place. Some language and thinking is fit here, some elsewhere.