51–60 of 90 posts
The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis America is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of America from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with Europe. Free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The story goes, at least a few people don't like hearing about Musk so often, and so we need to let all news about the rapid strip-mining of our government and economy be flagged without question. The capital class are set to receive trillions in tax breaks off the gutting of things like Medicaid and foreign aid to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world. The CEO of YC and Paul Graham are cheer-leading th…
I've always held dang in pretty high regard seeing his answers on controversial topics, and haven't seen what you said above. Do you actually have to provide a reason for flagging a post? If so, I would love to see the reasoning behind flagging this one, and dang's reason for keeping it that way. But of course, this is a private website, so I'd understand, albeit disappointingly so, if this is buried.
He's probably one of the best moderators on the internet. Thoughtful, patient, level-headed - determined to keep controversy to a minimum here, no matter what the controversy is.
Tech companies aiding genocide? US torture chiefs given top positions in the tech field? Post-adolescent racist ex-hackers given physical access to federal systems managing trillions of dollars? Too controversial. Maybe let one post a month slip through, maybe not.
The effect of suppressing this discussion, in dang's view, is to save HN from becoming a toxic flamewar wasteland like everywhere else on the internet.
There is another effect though - to whitewash techbro crimes, like aiding torture, genocide, and treason. That these crimes just happen to be making tech billionaires a lot of money (contracts, tax cuts, hush money, back scratching deals etc) is not relevant to dang's stated goal of creating a safe space where people can discuss number theory and computer games without too much reality creeping in.
You can see some of the many flagged DOGE stories in my favorites. Any that appear unflagged in there were only unflagged after hours of being suppressed, by which time the algorithm puts them on page 5 or 6.
And you can see dang's response to my request for a dedicated thread on this topic here [0]. That's the level of debate, and dang doesn't make any attempt to hide it. Posts requesting a discussion on all the false flags lately get some initial traction, and are then flagged within minutes.
> Do you actually have to provide a reason for flagging a post?
Nope. It's an incredibly easy system to game; and this is explicitly by design to keep HN nice and anodyne, ie, inoffensive and utterly ineffectual against any group that is motivated enough to make a few legit looking HN accounts.
Is this sufficient in a time where you can verbally ask an AI to start a few HN accounts and make them look real? Dang says, shut up, Hacker News isn't a place for discussing hackers taking over federal systems. And we want that, apparently, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis America is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of America from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with Europe. Free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
> What I worry about is the threat from within. I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or an…
click Expand for details https://x.com/i/grok/share/fov27TB0Zn9jH5ZYIV70nTqN2
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I worry about is the threat from within. I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or an…
Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat". And it's said that e.g., Russia themselves is no great threat, they're basically an incompetent tinpot dictatorship with a ramshackle military easily beaten by us / our allies. It is the traitors within who "collude with Putin" who are the real problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat". And it's said that e.g., Russia themselves is no great threat, they're basically an incompetent tinpot dictatorship with a ramshackle military easily beaten by us / our allies. It is the traitors within who "collude with Putin" who are the real problem.
Intolerant groups are a special problem for societies that wish to be tolerant. A tolerant society must be specifically intolerant of the intolerant to keep being a tolerant society. It's a required bit of looking within to maintain a tolerant society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Though I'm sure right-wing groups believe themselves to be tolerant of one-another and their allies and others with similar aims, and that groups that oppose them are intolerant and therefore must be met with intolerance. The paradox of the paradox of tolerance is that you can't claim tolerance by excusing your intolerance with the paradox of tolerance. Or said another way, one man's tolerance is another's intolerance.
I feel tired reading about him and it doesn’t even phase me anymore. It‘s just another thing I add on to the pile. Maybe it’s part of the plan to go numb to everything he does.
It is part of the plan. Search “flood the zone.” They’re intentionally doing so much crap that you can’t keep track.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I worry about is the threat from within. I'm not judging or anything, but this is typically the mythos of far-right movements. Basically "we are superior to our external adversaries, but the internal enemy prevent us from beating them". This is sightly different, but you should really assess your fears and try to see if this "threat from within" is really that threatening. And if it is, see if organizing or an…
Seems like a typical mythos of most political movements these days, doesn't it? E.g., "the far-right is our greatest threat". And it's said that e.g., Russia themselves is no great threat, they're basically an incompetent tinpot dictatorship with a ramshackle military easily beaten by us / our allies. It is the traitors within who "collude with Putin" who are the real problem.
The mythos of the liberals is way more personnalized, usually assigning moral failings to people who disagree eith them, something like "those people are dumb enough to be manipulated, we ought to explain thing slower/better" "we are on the reason's side". The fondamental attribution error is probably the fallacy for which liberals (authoritarians liberals especially) are the most susceptible to.
For the leftist movements, the mythos will either go to a marxist or neomarxist "We oppose the billionaire/landlords/owner class, and must struggle together to put it down, educate yourself and those close to you" or to a more generic anti-system mythos.
Furthermore, the left is often egalitarian, and the "traitor in our rank" mythos is mobilized to explain why you are not above X depite being (genetically for nazis, culturally for fascists) superior.