The culture war is killing us [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#61

Post by dang » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #59

dang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please make your substantive points without putting down your fellow user. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the sentence I was reacting to was "You do not have a good understanding of King's work." Since it has been edited out now, I'm going to mark this subthread off topic and collapse it.

The claim seems factually accurate and supported. We wouldn't consider an expert saying "you don't understand transformer ML models" with quotes supporting that claim, as being putting down the user, no? I often read technical conversations on HN in which one user tells another they don't have an accurate understanding of some topic. Just because it's a historical or cultural matter doesn't mean it's ad hominem to st…

It's just the same when the topic is ML models. HN readers shouldn't be making pejorative comments about each other in those conversations either, and when we see it we moderate it the same way.

There's no need to comment pejoratively on the other person. The post is stronger without it, and the expected value of such swipes, in terms of the impact they have on subsequent discussion, is sharply negative.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#62

Post by XorNot » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:52 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #46

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

The problem is it's not an argument that manipulates you, it's passive reporting and it only has to be echoed by one other real person before it becomes "the rumor on the twittersphere" or whatever.

Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#63

Post by objectivetruth » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #54

Pfhreak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King did not call for calm, in fact often the opposite. Here's a quote from him: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. . . . I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’” King was non-violent , but he…

Please make your substantive points without putting down your fellow user. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the sentence I was reacting to was "You do not have a good understanding of King's work." Since it has been edited out now, I'm going to mark this subthread off topic and collapse it.

What would be the ideal "HN-friendly" way to point out that the parent does have serious misunderstandings of the topic at hand?

I'm struggling to parse that first sentence in a way that someone would be offended by.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#64

Post by lend000 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

People actively self-select for this type of tribalism. Be it sports or politics, it gives average people the feeling of identity and purpose.

There was a brief period in the mid 20th century when centralized communication was far superior to decentralized communication, and the populous hadn't had much time to apply selective pressure toward more divisive media, but even then, you had McCarthyism, Jim Crow, pro-war/anti-war, etc.

Humans are a tribal species and hate comes easy. You can't blame any single player or small groups of players. It's more of a species level problem. And I'm not convinced the current levels of divisiveness are historically unprecedented, albeit high.

Buried in this otherwise mediocre article posted a few weeks back is a visual called "Ideological positions of the major parties" [0]. It can be a proxy for relative internal divisiveness in the country (note that the lowest periods of divisiveness had high international divisiveness).

[0] https://www.economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Ne...

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#65

Post by dang » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

objectivetruth wrote: post #63

dang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please make your substantive points without putting down your fellow user. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the sentence I was reacting to was "You do not have a good understanding of King's work." Since it has been edited out now, I'm going to mark this subthread off topic and collapse it.

What would be the ideal "HN-friendly" way to point out that the parent does have serious misunderstandings of the topic at hand? I'm struggling to parse that first sentence in a way that someone would be offended by.

The ideal way would be to simply omit that sentence. If the comment began with the sentence "King did not [etc.]", it would have exactly the same information content and would not contain a personal swipe at the other user. Win-win.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#66

Post by titzer » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

clcaev wrote: post #10

I believe the cultural wars focus the population's attention on issues that divide us, rather than issues that would unite: concentration of power, gutting of main street, etc. The detachment of our news and media from local civics denies our population practice working together, with real problems, with real consensus. Instead the polarization is on more abstract, national, and intractable concerns -- political spor…

> As technologists, how can we work to rebuild regional and local political and economic sovereignty?

I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, technologists are naturally focused on scaling solutions up to the entire world. We want to use technology to push hard real world problems behind a screen, behind keyboards, and behind servers. This creates a contradiction in our thinking that cannot be resolved. It cannot be resolved because the political climate is created by exactly that phenomenon of scale, by pushing people and their problems behind screens and servers and making them dance at the touch of our keyboards.

You really want to fix things? Stop thinking about technology and making money and help out in your local community.

Don't take this to mean you, personally. Just someone else. Someone else should work in their local community. We can still write code and make money.

Oh wait. Dang it again.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#67

Post by Pfhreak » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #54

Pfhreak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King did not call for calm, in fact often the opposite. Here's a quote from him: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. . . . I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’” King was non-violent , but he…

Please make your substantive points without putting down your fellow user. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the sentence I was reacting to was "You do not have a good understanding of King's work." Since it has been edited out now, I'm going to mark this subthread off topic and collapse it.

Sure. It wasn't meant to be pejorative, just factual. Your comments in this thread make sense though.

Would a "This is a commonly held misconception about King" be more appropriate?

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#68

Post by dang » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #67

dang wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please make your substantive points without putting down your fellow user. Your comment would be just fine without the first sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: the sentence I was reacting to was "You do not have a good understanding of King's work." Since it has been edited out now, I'm going to mark this subthread off topic and collapse it.

Sure. It wasn't meant to be pejorative, just factual. Your comments in this thread make sense though. Would a "This is a commonly held misconception about King" be more appropriate?

It would! Thanks for the kind reply.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#69

Post by bostonsre » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

I'm not sure corporate media had much choice in the matter if they wanted to survive. Almost all are for profit companies that lost heavily when eyeballs shifted to social media. Social media companies make money off of ads, so they optimized viewership without being concerned with the consequences. In order for corporate media to stay alive and stop hemorrhaging viewers, they needed to play by the new rules. It's a shit snowball that is growing as it rolls down hill and it doesn't seem like there is anyway to slow it down or stop it. Or maybe it's more feedback loop like, like a closed loop toilet where no plumber is brave enough to confront it.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#70

Post by _kaz4 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

GingerMidas wrote: post #8

A FPTP two party system almost necessitates culture war, since by definition if you're for one party you're against the other. At the end of the day you're forced to pick a side. The anchors are suggesting you ignore that eventuality.

No, they're suggesting that the people who vote for either party don't have to hate each other with absolute hatred. They're saying that people should remember that they still have a lot in common. You can be against the other party because you disagree with their policies and still not think that they are evil that must be destroyed.