So democracy is falling in the most militarily powerful country on earth, citizens are being executed and rights stripped… and you think it’s not OK to be angry?
You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
no, it’s perfectly fine to be angry, I would be very concerned with anyone’s mental health who isn’t angry about this.
> You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
Well, if we just want to discuss how angry we are, that’s just called venting. That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion. I don’t find venting about how angry something makes you to be all that compelling most of the time. Sometimes someone distills the issue at hand into something very poetic and poignant, and that can sometimes be cathartic, but other than that it’s just pure emotion being tossed around and it just amplifies hatred.
> Putting our heads in the sand will not help.
Not sure where you’re drawing this conclusion that I’m putting my head in the sand. Or that people posting their outrage on HN are somehow not sticking their head in the sand, as if the dispensing of internet hot takes is somehow “doing your part” (hint: it’s not.)
> That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion.
The idea that discussion should be dispassionate and analytical is just wrong. All that does is hides biases.
Discussion should be honest; often that means being messy and angry.
there are a lot of places to be angry on the internet. in fact, basically every single website other than HN is a place to be angry. HN is deliberately not that, or at least it aims to not be that.
But people on HN are angry in non-political threads all the time, to the point that there are several items in the guidelines about it (the latest being "don't be curmudgeonly".)
And not everyone in every political thread is simply expressing anger. The majority of comments in this very thread are reasonable. The ones that aren't have been flagged, which is proper.
But flagging all political threads for "anger," regardless of the actual anger on display, while being far more lenient towards it elsewhere (no one is flagging every thread where someone expresses rage about javascript or AI or the modern web) seems hypocritical.
Yes, you should discuss only what is allowed. If you use the technology to dissent against your rulers, then it should be switched off (until you come back to your sense and submit yourself to the mercy of mulas).
> it's easy to see the very real authoritarian bend of comfortable professionals who are smart but also in favor of, say, summary execution of people for protesting
There’s that rhetoric I’m talking about! Thanks for giving a perfect example.
For topics like these, the expectation is that everyone comes in here and expresses sufficient levels of outrage. After all, if you’re scrolling through all the posts showing these awful things, you should have built up the requisite level of outrage by now, so if you post anything other than “HN is obviously ok with executions”, you must be one of them and therefore further evidence that these comfortable professionals are complacent and pro-murder.
The nuanced takes are nowhere to be found, because people who might want to come into these discussions with it, see the rhetoric being tossed around, and think “nope, this is all toxic, no way I’m joining in”, flag it, and move on.
But you can look at that exact situation (people flagging the post) and conclude “yup, the person doing the flagging is okay with executions.” It’s wild.
The sad thing is that there is a nuanced discussion to be had here. In fact it’s critical to this country’s survival that we are able to navigate our way through this. But this discussion, this navigation, needs to happen in small groups, where we can actually engage face-to-face. When we can see each other’s humanity, and know that the other person isn’t a monster, and doesn’t want to see innocent people die any more than you do. Where we can dissect each other’s viewpoints carefully.
None of that is really possible in online forums, because the group think is real, and the rhetoric destroys nuance, destroys compassion, destroys the ability to find common ground. It’s sheer toxicity.
You might consider (though perhaps not agree) that no where in my post did I insinuate that "flagging" was the same as taking a position on the subject:
my statement was about why I do, indeed, find utility these conversations you don't find useful.
That a) says nothing about my take on your understanding/ position on the issues around protest or politics and b) is a request to understand my position and not, like, a statement about the morality of your position.
And further, to me "being okay with the summary execution of people for protesting" seems like a pretty specific sentiment, and one which I have heard echoed here quite a bit. I find it super useful to see demonstrated so frequently that a person with excellent technical chops in a domain may often have massive deficiencies in their reasoning, if for no other reason that it helps me understand the weakness of my own cognition.
So, perhaps consider that it's you, in projecting a statement I didn't make in a very short and fairly clear post who is "giving a perfect example" of the level of nuance-free assumptions that do (as you correctly point out) often run rampant- and not just on this site, but in discourse in general.
To push my point a bit further, I am not here to make moral judgements or change peoples' mind on these political topics; rather, over the decade during which I've been interacting on this site, it has= has been super informative to trace the nascent fascism that breed in many of the confluences of technology and capitalism.
That may, to you, sound like hyperbolic rhetoric that is dismissive of other folks' opinions; from my position you're not understanding that this examination of (what is to me) highly disagreeable and almost sociopathic political discourse -is- the process of finding nuanced and useful understandings of our political situation.
> Nuance is completely thrown away. People immediately dial up the rhetoric to infinity.
The lack of self-reflection in your post might be the most disturbing thing I've read in this thread.
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So democracy is falling in the most militarily powerful country on earth, citizens are being executed and rights stripped… and you think it’s not OK to be angry?
You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
Putting our heads in the sand will not help.
> and you think it’s not OK to be angry?
no, it’s perfectly fine to be angry, I would be very concerned with anyone’s mental health who isn’t angry about this.
> You think we just shouldn’t discuss it at all because people are angry?
Well, if we just want to discuss how angry we are, that’s just called venting. That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion. I don’t find venting about how angry something makes you to be all that compelling most of the time. Sometimes someone distills the issue at hand into something very poetic and poignant, and that can sometimes be cathartic, but other than that it’s just pure emotion being tossed around and it just amplifies hatred.
> Putting our heads in the sand will not help.
Not sure where you’re drawing this conclusion that I’m putting my head in the sand. Or that people posting their outrage on HN are somehow not sticking their head in the sand, as if the dispensing of internet hot takes is somehow “doing your part” (hint: it’s not.)
> That’s fine, vent. But don’t confuse that with discussion.
The idea that discussion should be dispassionate and analytical is just wrong. All that does is hides biases. Discussion should be honest; often that means being messy and angry.
there are a lot of places to be angry on the internet. in fact, basically every single website other than HN is a place to be angry. HN is deliberately not that, or at least it aims to not be that.
But people on HN are angry in non-political threads all the time, to the point that there are several items in the guidelines about it (the latest being "don't be curmudgeonly".)
And not everyone in every political thread is simply expressing anger. The majority of comments in this very thread are reasonable. The ones that aren't have been flagged, which is proper.
But flagging all political threads for "anger," regardless of the actual anger on display, while being far more lenient towards it elsewhere (no one is flagging every thread where someone expresses rage about javascript or AI or the modern web) seems hypocritical.
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> HN is deliberately not that, or at least it aims to not be that
Is this a joke? I don't think anyone in this thread is half as angry as people get about React or Cloudflare
Yes, you should discuss only what is allowed. If you use the technology to dissent against your rulers, then it should be switched off (until you come back to your sense and submit yourself to the mercy of mulas).
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> it's easy to see the very real authoritarian bend of comfortable professionals who are smart but also in favor of, say, summary execution of people for protesting
There’s that rhetoric I’m talking about! Thanks for giving a perfect example.
For topics like these, the expectation is that everyone comes in here and expresses sufficient levels of outrage. After all, if you’re scrolling through all the posts showing these awful things, you should have built up the requisite level of outrage by now, so if you post anything other than “HN is obviously ok with executions”, you must be one of them and therefore further evidence that these comfortable professionals are complacent and pro-murder.
The nuanced takes are nowhere to be found, because people who might want to come into these discussions with it, see the rhetoric being tossed around, and think “nope, this is all toxic, no way I’m joining in”, flag it, and move on.
But you can look at that exact situation (people flagging the post) and conclude “yup, the person doing the flagging is okay with executions.” It’s wild.
The sad thing is that there is a nuanced discussion to be had here. In fact it’s critical to this country’s survival that we are able to navigate our way through this. But this discussion, this navigation, needs to happen in small groups, where we can actually engage face-to-face. When we can see each other’s humanity, and know that the other person isn’t a monster, and doesn’t want to see innocent people die any more than you do. Where we can dissect each other’s viewpoints carefully.
None of that is really possible in online forums, because the group think is real, and the rhetoric destroys nuance, destroys compassion, destroys the ability to find common ground. It’s sheer toxicity.
>The sad thing is that there is a nuanced discussion to be had here.
If you say there's nuance, then out with it. Stop self censoring and speak your mind. What nuance do you see?
2 replies →
You might consider (though perhaps not agree) that no where in my post did I insinuate that "flagging" was the same as taking a position on the subject:
my statement was about why I do, indeed, find utility these conversations you don't find useful.
That a) says nothing about my take on your understanding/ position on the issues around protest or politics and b) is a request to understand my position and not, like, a statement about the morality of your position.
And further, to me "being okay with the summary execution of people for protesting" seems like a pretty specific sentiment, and one which I have heard echoed here quite a bit. I find it super useful to see demonstrated so frequently that a person with excellent technical chops in a domain may often have massive deficiencies in their reasoning, if for no other reason that it helps me understand the weakness of my own cognition.
So, perhaps consider that it's you, in projecting a statement I didn't make in a very short and fairly clear post who is "giving a perfect example" of the level of nuance-free assumptions that do (as you correctly point out) often run rampant- and not just on this site, but in discourse in general.
To push my point a bit further, I am not here to make moral judgements or change peoples' mind on these political topics; rather, over the decade during which I've been interacting on this site, it has= has been super informative to trace the nascent fascism that breed in many of the confluences of technology and capitalism.
That may, to you, sound like hyperbolic rhetoric that is dismissive of other folks' opinions; from my position you're not understanding that this examination of (what is to me) highly disagreeable and almost sociopathic political discourse -is- the process of finding nuanced and useful understandings of our political situation.
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