Comment by anigbrowl
12 years ago
Some of this is because the HN demographic is young enough that many readers have never seen anything like this before, and thus think it's the Worst Thing Ever. I base this on the numerous counterfactual statements showing a lack of historical awareness in discussions on contentious topics.
Of course, I think this is partly the result of not teaching civics in schools.
That's true. On the other hand, maturity often comes with apathy to real societal problems and abuse from bad actors, masked as greater insight: a sense of "that's just the way things are".
A lot of it is indeed the way things have always been, but that absolutely does not excuse allowing such actions to persist in the future. However, posts with a sense of naive shock that nations have only started doing unethical things in the past 20 years (or that a certain nation has changed) instead of realizing nations have always done unethical/questionable things is a hyperbole. Even the most civilized countries of every time period performed highly unethical actions and were derided by fellow countries of the time period. Unfortunately, most of the discussions are filled with noise related to this, instead of posts that are constructively looking for a solution to such problems.
I feel much of those sort of posts would be remedied if people were more interested in the history of the world going back more than just within their own lifetimes + 20 to 30 years. I'm still in my late 20s, but most people I know only have a passing interest in history (even less so when it's not about their country) and saw such courses in school as a burden, rather than useful. I was just lucky to have family that encouraged having an interest in history and how it shaped the world. To me, it's just as important as teaching one's children about Science, Programming and Mathematics.
News and information are also much more widespread now than they were 10 to 20 years ago, so many start to think this is a new phenomenon as it used to be more difficult to stay informed. History is just repeating itself with some additional ingredients mixed in and outrage is not useful when nothing comes of it.
The phrase "Why should I care about history?" never range more true when people express outrage over issues such as the NSA. The "good old days" are not as good as many people like to believe. That does not mean we should roll over and accept everything though.
Honestly, I blame the way history is taught in America. It's neutered any sense of class solidarity, riddled with retroactive ideological lensing and the worship of personalities.
It would be interesting to know who remembers the days when Slashdot was good
I remember when it was good, but I don't really remember a time that there wasn't a fanatical vibe to it. The content there has always been strongly pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft. There was a time where people actually used the phrase, "Year of the Linux Desktop" without being sarcastic. Oh and writing "Micro$oft" was popular too. And there was always stuff about open source and GNU and GPL and etc.
The thing that made it good was the camaraderie, the general helpfulness, and the quality of posters. You used to be able to find some really intelligent content in the Slashdot comments, since some the smartest people related to that particular topic were probably Slashdot users themselves.
I always thought "MICROS~1" was funnier.
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Exactly. We remember the best comments, not the typical nonsense like first posts, lame in-jokes and the raise of online internet vapid celebrities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
You used to find people like John Carmack in there... and electronics stuff was also talked about. Ask Slashdot's were answered with interesting insight. Now everything is mainly one-liners with stupid comments and only very few worthy users (eldavojohn and the like) remain.
I have fond memories of it, and a user id in the ~10000 range. But I haven't been back in ages, and I can't say I've missed it.
If you are an active Twitter and/or HN reader you are already reading everything that is posted on Slashdot about two days before it is actually posted there.
I have a 5-digit uid there and remember when it really was a great site. But the comments started to become pretty terrible almost immediately.
I still visit it every day just to skim the articles, but only about 20% of them are interesting/something I didn't see posted somewhere else.
Slashdot always had a large number of terrible comments (four digit UID here - right from the start the site had a huge troll contingent), however the moderation really did yield a better S/N ratio if you browsed the higher rated comments: On Slashdot you earned the occasional ability to moderate, with a limited ability to do so once you did. That resulted in more careful and considered moderation and I still believe it is an unmatched model.
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Some of this is because the HN demographic is young enough that many readers have never seen anything like this before, and thus think it's the Worst Thing Ever.
To them, it is. Humanity's progress depends in part on freshly disillusioned young people to overreact to life's shortcomings and fight to correct them.
> Of course, I think this is partly the result of not teaching civics in schools.
We have civics at high school (of course not in the Finland sense, sadly), and I somehow fail to see the correlation.
I had a civics class in high school. It was the same class as economics, and we truncated the economics class in order to teach to the AP civics test. My only memories of that class were seeing the yearbook students wandering in and out, because they used the same room, and learning and playing card games. I think it may have been mentioned that there were three branches of government at some point.
Which recent topics do you have in mind? I agree in respect to quite a few namely the nsa spying and aaron situation to name a couple.
Those issues in particular, which I think have been unfortunately over-simplified here.
I've never had an easier time getting karma, so that certainly drives my latest interest in HN.