Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#451

Post by kofejnik » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #441

kofejnik wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as I was preparing to answer your comment about physicists, you edited it. But wow, is this really your argument - "disprove the results or they are considered valid"? Ever heard of Russel's teapot? Using the method is nice, but let me know when they learn to reliably predict anything, such as election outcomes.

And you let me know when mathematicians come up with ways to predict intractable processes. Sadly, dynamical systems are subject to similar undecidability and intractibility results as those affecting computer science. Biologists can't predict specific evolutionary adaptations, either, but that doesn't mean they don't understand the mechanics of evolution. Tracing the cause of a bug is much easier than predicting pro…

The difference is, when real scientists say they know, they will tell you p-values and usually they can reliably predict things. And when they don't know something, they usually say so.

Contrast that with loud aggressive types who will call someone racist and demand that we agree unequivocally, because they know better. That is, until someone higher in their pecking order comes up with even more ridiculous redefinition of dictionary words.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#452

Post by kofejnik » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:16 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #449

kofejnik wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we have a privileged caste of self-appointed social 'scientists' who get to decide what constitutes racism and who gets their life ruined. this is gold, seriously

I'm not sure understand what you're asking. Researchers in every field are always a "self appointed caste" and, yes, they tend to be privileged. Racism as an academic term is defined by the academic discipline that studies it, just as physicists get to decide what constitutes energy under the academic definition of energy, even though the word had existed thousands of years earlier, and with a different meaning. I do…

No, because without repeatability and predictability, an academic is usually just a charlatan

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#453

Post by jsmith0295 » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:34 PM UTC

spacemanmatt wrote: post #305

jsmith0295 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is really not true given the full history of things. Most Republicans were very willing to compromise after Obama first took office, but he elected to completely ignore them instead since he had a super majority. At that point the only thing they had left to do was to be obstructionist, and I'm sure he was very aware of the potential political consequences of jamming legislation through in the beginning of his a…

> since he had a super majority. That doesn't explain the other 6 years pure obstruction.

It sort of does. Having been pushed out of negotiations around things like the stimulus bill they ended up as a unified opposition, which resulted in the "tea party" and the party moving drastically to the right

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#454

Post by jsmith0295 » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

ejstronge wrote: post #310

jsmith0295 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is really not true given the full history of things. Most Republicans were very willing to compromise after Obama first took office, but he elected to completely ignore them instead since he had a super majority. At that point the only thing they had left to do was to be obstructionist, and I'm sure he was very aware of the potential political consequences of jamming legislation through in the beginning of his a…

I think we must have lived in two different countries following Obama's election. The financial world was crumbling, and both parties recognized that drastic economic action was required. Later, when Obama undertook healthcare reform - a project he had won both EC and popular support for - Republicans initially supported him. The Tea Party and the coming midterm elections pulled them to the right, and their success i…

Weren't those negotiations with Boehner mainly just intended to avoid sequester? That's a fairly unusual situation. Outside of that I don't recall anything, but I may have just not paid enough attention.

As for the party moving right, that's basically what I was referring to. Having been excluded from negotiations on legislation early on, with the stimulus bill and such, the Republicans became a unified opposition when many were initially willing and politically able to compromise. This is what made room for the tea party in 2010, which has been a big obstacle for them afterwards in my opinion. It's all sort of a lose-lose situation.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#455

Post by jsmith0295 » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:43 PM UTC

lightbyte wrote: post #276

jsmith0295 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses. People call things "white" as in insult, they constantly say things like "white people have no culture", and really do seem to believe that all evil in the world is the result of things white men do…

>It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses. This is just a personal anecdote. I'm 23, also live in Ohio, and went to a very liberal private school. I have never met a single person who has un-ironically said these things.

Yeah, I would imagine things are milder than they have been in my experience. But I've heard people say the phrase "white people have no culture" upwards of 10 times by several different people, the majority of whom were white themselves, which is a little mind boggling.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#456

Post by sethrin » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:47 PM UTC

jimmywanger wrote: post #446

sethrin wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones "rambling on" are the conservatives. They invented this issue, and immediately started to legislate it. At which point people started objecting. Stop making laws about bathrooms and we all can stop worrying about it. Mindshare may or may not be a finite resource but there is nothing suggesting that we are over-budget on that. But if that is a problem, again, your team created it. You are the party of legisla…

> The ones "rambling on" are the conservatives. They invented this issue, and immediately started to legislate it. That is ridiculous. We've had gender separated restrooms for the longest time. It's only until now that social mores weren't enough to enforce the fact that you're just not supposed to use a restroom not of your gender, except for children with their parent under a certain age. A law is a heavy handed wa…

> That is ridiculous. We've had gender separated restrooms for the longest time.

Actually that's pretty modern, historically. And thanks for telling me what my gender is, I really needed the guidance.

> Since the Constitution doesn't say anything about sexual relations or orientation at all, it devolves to state rights.

State rights and the People. I don't feel the need to make a moral argument about human rights on this issue, but I am sure one could be made. > Get over yourself. When a majority of people in a political jurisdiction believe a certain thing, either learn to live with it or move.

The majority is not always right, and democracy does not mean "majority rules". Also appeal to tradition is a fallacy, not a valid argument.

> I repeat points in the media because they make sense.

The triumph of rationalization over empiricism is nearly complete.

> Ad hominem much? I have not attacked you personally at all

Right, that thing where you said all trans people are insane or faking it was not in any sense a personal reflection. You do seem to be persisting in that belief though, which again does not reflect empirical reality. You are insisting that laws be made on the basis of your feelings -- and then blaming your opponents for it.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#457

Post by throwanem » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:54 PM UTC

candu wrote: post #418

throwanem wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm arguing that this change to the status quo (ante), of heterosexual specificity in marriage, was not warranted. To support that argument, I'm explaining why that status quo has value which is reduced, rather than increased, by permitting marriage among homosexual couples as well. As I've tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to point out, this isn't the same as arguing that permission to marry should be contingent upon p…

You're cherry-picking one of many possible arguments for the status quo, arguing that this argument should be considered in the particular case of same-sex marriage while ignoring other cases where it might also pertain, and then repeatedly moving the goalposts, but whatever. You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here? From a logistical perspective, it doesn't exist: you pass a l…

I've addressed all your other points elsewhere in this thread, but the following is new:

> You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here?

That marriage should now be an institution open to homosexual couples as well as to heterosexual. Taken in isolation, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, either. But nothing in society exists in isolation, and quite aside from the historical novelty of it, many millions of people regard this particular change as a very big, and very undesirable, deal indeed.

The impression I have is that those with whom I've argued the point here today see no reason to doubt that they know better than those many millions who share this opinion - so much better, in fact, that there's no point taking very seriously any argument, opinion, or belief, other than that which they themselves advance, espouse, or profess - or at least already agree with on all substantial points.

I was that confident once, too. Sometimes I miss it. But nothing is ever simple, and pretending otherwise can make fools of us all.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#458

Post by woodman » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 12:04 AM UTC

icanhackit wrote: post #450

woodman wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a good way of accurately gauging the political spectrum but I'm not sure I'd say it doesn't work at all. As it fails in such a modest charge, I'm comfortable saying that it doesn't work. The only variable that it would come close to measuring is individual freedom vs collective comfort. A multidimensional representation would do a better job, but it would quickly become so complex that it would be useless…

> think of it as a second dimension on the traditional spectrum Maybe I'm missing something but in this thread I haven't seen anything that shows how the alt-right is fundamentally different to, despite the flawed labeling system, what is standard fare for the far-right. What sits in this second dimension, and does the rule apply to the left? Is it consistent?

I'm certainly no expert on the matter, but I'd doubt anyone who said they were. The first thing that comes to mind is that the alt-right is nationalistic and has no problem with some form of collectivism. The far-right, on the other hand, is much closer to the min part of minarchism.

The alt-left, if it is presently a thing, is even less defined than the alt-right. But in the interest of maintaining symmetry, I'd say that it would have a progressive agenda by way of individualist means. Emergence?

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#459

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 12:39 AM UTC

colemickens wrote: post #434

Karunamon wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you implying that I support the idea of any person telling any other person to kill themselves. !? Holy shit dude, if that's what I implied, I apologize, because that was absolutely not my intent whatsoever. That statement was directed at Twitter, not you. That was an awfully artful way of saying you were full of shit without having to actually admit you were wrong. I was wrong. Better? I was more interested in tryin…

>Fine, we'll instead go with "a liberal conspiracy to to place angry conservative tweets as more important than terrorist propaganda", something for which there is plenty of evidence of. And someone already addressed that alternative flavor of absurdity yesterday too. Twitter has purged hundreds of thousands of terrorism-related accounts and continues to do so. (I'm sure you'll counter with the Hamas account, but you…

Except the Hamas account (and others) had been around for a lot longer, and received more reports, and they decided to do something about it only (coincidentally, I'm sure...) after a lawsuit was filed.

Did the CEO get off his ass and talk to someone from the State dept? No, but he sure got off his ass to talk to some random Hollywood celeb who was getting mean tweets.

As I said earlier, and you apparently missed in your angry rant, 235k accounts is nothing. It's utter child's play, given how disposable Twitter accounts are. Twitter has a "trust and safety" team that's entirely far too concerned about feminist's feelings and not concerned near enough with terrorists using their platform. If that makes me this terrible monster, sign me up.

Re: Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

#460

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 12:41 AM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #177

Karunamon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/hipsterocracy/status/796353512208625666 https://twitter.com/_g3orgia/status/796263284282454017 https://twitter.com/cervines/status/795679114673852416 https://twitter.com/_mr_parker25/status/796521044492349440 "If you voted third party in a swing state you should kill yourself." "Kill yourself" "Kill yourself. Honestly kill yourself. You wouldn't be missed" "To everyone who voted for trump as a jok…

There's one thing i'd like to point out to that. But first: Yes, such posts are abhorrent and unacceptable and come from people who're very childish, emotional and lack self control. That said, it helps to understand where this comes from. Many of these people (particularly the one responding to 2) feel that thanks to the policies of Trump and the people he surrounds himself with, they or their friends are being indi…

Everybody using Twitter in this manner feels themselves to be correct.

..I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make, or how it is useful for discussion. Irrationality that ends in violence is irrationality that ends in violence.