6 ms·

I lament the days where HN was a place for intelligent discussion. Today the top post to submissions like this is an idiotic populist gut feeling, complete with

by roel_v 10y ago

I lament the days where HN was a place for intelligent discussion. Today the top post to submissions like this is an idiotic populist gut feeling, complete with dubious metaphors, calls for violence, a complete lack of any understanding of why things are the way the are and how we got there, as well as a blissful ignorance of proposed and/or tried solutions to age-old problems. There must be something in the water these days that spurs these insults on sane discourse, I have a vague feeling of recognition when going over current events in politics across the world the last few weeks...

omginternets 10y ago
Why don't you state what's wrong with the opinion rather than stating that the opinion is wrong?
- dionidium 10y ago
  The original opinion describes an abstract organization of people in anthropomorphic terms as something that can be punished. That's absurd on its face.
  - Fordrus 10y ago
    Now, I don't necessarily disagree that it's a bad idea overall, but the anthropomorphic quality is NOT what makes this absurd. Not at all, not even a little. An abstract organization of people can be invested in, have its collective behavior driven by regulation or investment pressures, and can, out of 'fear' of losing value, allow regulation to override investor pressure. The point of things like massive fines and suggestions like the corporate death penalty is to create a situation where a CEO or VP will, despite knowing there's a lot of money to be made by, say, selling protected patient health information (and therefore substantial shareholder value to be generated from so doing), categorically refuse to do it, because they know the ensuing violations will ruin/bankrupt the company. In other words, if you told me that anthropomorphizing an organization like this were absurd on its face, I would accuse you of rank ignorance of the law, the rationale behind the law, and the whole idea of behavioral incentivization. The reason why we're all discussing this AT ALL is because the fines are often losing their ability to disincentivize the bad behavior - if a company can make 19 billion in a year using only 1 billion, and then be fined for 15 billion, then they can pay the fine can and pocket the 3 billion difference, and report a hefty profit to shareholders. Trying to influence collective behavior through incentives and disincentives is not 'absurd on its face,' dionidium, and I challenge your grasp of the overall context for asserting that it is.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      That's all fine, but we have a far simpler alternative, which is to punish individuals when they break the law. There is no need to target the organization when you can target individual lawbreakers.
      - Fordrus 10y ago
        Except that this allows organizations to participate in fallguyism. Organizations that cannot be punished and individuals who can create an effect where the individual can do something illegal but extremely beneficial for the corporation, bear the consequences, and then be received into lifelong benefits after their punishment is complete, jail time over, etc. The extreme rub here is that even if an individual is hit with a finance demolishing, unbankruptable fine and extended jail time, that individual's situation can STILL be VASTLY improved, finances strengthened, etc. by being the fall guy for a large organization. (If you've ever thought, "I would go to jail for ten years if I got 10 million dollars at the end," then you understand the incentive structure there already.) There is no way to effectively punish saavy, loyal individuals when individuals from within their respective organizations can shelter them from the consequences and/or incentivize them to break the law despite the consequences. If the whole matter is implicit, it doesn't even necessarily require the organization to 'rescue' their fall guy afterwards, people are just another resource in an organization, if the benefit to the organization of breaking the law is greater than the benefit the organization derives from the person who would ultimately be the fall guy, then even the potential of a 'rescue' is enough, if the incentives are otherwise strong enough! Only if BOTH the individual AND the organization must pay a price for misbehavior is it possible to truly disincent illegal but profitable behavior. Under your scenario, an organization can simply shuffle through its minions until it finds one willing to break the law and offer the profits for a given incentive package- indeed, organizations under your model are incentivized to seek out and hire criminals who lack analytical depth, and then implicitly make the desired course clear, and then allow the criminal to take the fall for them, while the organization and its investors pocket the profits.
        dionidium 10y ago
forrestthewoods 10y ago
HN grew too big. This always happens to internet communities when they grow too large. :(
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 10y ago
GP was on HN long before you were. If you disagree with him, tell him why.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >GP was on HN long before you were So what? That doesn't make his comments about "lining executives up against the wall", below, any less ridiculous.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    That was a reflection on how according to roel_v HN was a place of intelligent discussion when he joined. The comment below is stupid (hopefully meant in a proverbial way) but since this is in another subthread my comment had no bearing on it.
    - roel_v 10y ago
      "That was a reflection on how according to roel_v HN was a place of intelligent discussion when he joined." Tss, rose-colored glasses and all, and the world is a different place from what it was 10 years ago; still at least back then the main 'problems' were the excessive focus on nootropics and quantitative finance; not that it was overrun with populist high-school angsty political drivel.
- pc86 10y ago
  I didn't realize age of the account had any bearing on the intelligence of the comments posted under it.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    It wasn't, but in case you didn't get it, the comment by roel_v actually made the discussion worse, not better.
- roel_v 10y ago
  His account is much older than mine, yes. I've been reading for about as long as his account. No sure what the relevance of that is. Anyway, I'm just using your comment to respond to several others at once that all make roughly the same point. It's rather meta to the OP though, so maybe it would better be detached from here (seeing that my response now seems to be the top voted reply out of many, which is rather ironic in the light of the following). But on to my point: not all points or opinions should be 'reasoned' with, or deserve an intellectually honest debate, or even a reply. To paraphrase the old quip, 'don't wrestle a pig in the mud. You'll get dirty and the pig likes it'. Many other commenters try to engage the GP in a fact-based 'debate', but that is impossible with sophistic extremists who use terminology like 'corporate death penalty'. It's meant to incite an emotional reaction only. There is no point in refuting Stormfront posters either, or Truthers, or pick the fringe of any group that you ideologically disagree with. Now I know that the general rule for posting here is 'don't post negative things' and 'stick to substance and not the person' etc.; and my off handed reply is essentially contrary to all those things; and I fully realize that with this reply I'm polluting even more. My point is: there seems to be some sort of naive believe that 'all opinions are equally valid', 'all viewpoints deserve equal consideration' and 'the only way to respond to fringe/populist rhetoric is with meticulous fact-based refutation'. That's simply not true. Call me a 'reactionist' or a 'fascist censor' - but I liked the days when 'letters to the editor' from lunatics were thrown in the bin and only those with substance and without inciting language were published (I mean that metaphorically, I was born in 1979, I'm from a generation where 'letters to the editor' were already an anachronism). I'm not talking about shunning content because of its content; but rather shunning content that employs mala fides sophisms like purposefully using incendiary phrasing. So in summary: no I won't be seduced into a useless 'debate'. And on top of that, I would much prefer much more heavy-handed moderation where many more posts were simply and summarily deleted (and yes that includes some of my own, that were written too hastily) in order to increase the intellectual content per 1000 words in the comments; failing that, we (as in, all posters) need to ignore and/or shun extremism instead of giving it a podium by replying with well-intentioned fact-based answers and thus attracting even more attention to it.
amalcon 10y ago
You're not helping.
Fordrus 10y ago
And holy monkey, your comment is about as self referential as they get. You don't offer any coherent points to argue, you make a comparison so vague that, indeed, you do not actually tell us what it is, but rather just that you have a 'vague feeling of recognition,' and a bevy of insults that you don't elect to justify with specific reasoning (is the corporate death penalty idea violent, or is it something else that causes you to call the parent comment violent?). You have every right to complain about situations you don't like, but because your comment so clearly exemplifies the very situation about which you are complaining, I would be foolish to give your complaint much credence.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990293 and marked it off-topic.

by roel_v 10y ago

omginternets 10y ago

Why don't you state what's wrong with the opinion rather than stating that the opinion is wrong?

dionidium 10y ago
The original opinion describes an abstract organization of people in anthropomorphic terms as something that can be punished. That's absurd on its face.
- Fordrus 10y ago
  Now, I don't necessarily disagree that it's a bad idea overall, but the anthropomorphic quality is NOT what makes this absurd. Not at all, not even a little. An abstract organization of people can be invested in, have its collective behavior driven by regulation or investment pressures, and can, out of 'fear' of losing value, allow regulation to override investor pressure. The point of things like massive fines and suggestions like the corporate death penalty is to create a situation where a CEO or VP will, despite knowing there's a lot of money to be made by, say, selling protected patient health information (and therefore substantial shareholder value to be generated from so doing), categorically refuse to do it, because they know the ensuing violations will ruin/bankrupt the company. In other words, if you told me that anthropomorphizing an organization like this were absurd on its face, I would accuse you of rank ignorance of the law, the rationale behind the law, and the whole idea of behavioral incentivization. The reason why we're all discussing this AT ALL is because the fines are often losing their ability to disincentivize the bad behavior - if a company can make 19 billion in a year using only 1 billion, and then be fined for 15 billion, then they can pay the fine can and pocket the 3 billion difference, and report a hefty profit to shareholders. Trying to influence collective behavior through incentives and disincentives is not 'absurd on its face,' dionidium, and I challenge your grasp of the overall context for asserting that it is.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    That's all fine, but we have a far simpler alternative, which is to punish individuals when they break the law. There is no need to target the organization when you can target individual lawbreakers.
    - Fordrus 10y ago
      Except that this allows organizations to participate in fallguyism. Organizations that cannot be punished and individuals who can create an effect where the individual can do something illegal but extremely beneficial for the corporation, bear the consequences, and then be received into lifelong benefits after their punishment is complete, jail time over, etc. The extreme rub here is that even if an individual is hit with a finance demolishing, unbankruptable fine and extended jail time, that individual's situation can STILL be VASTLY improved, finances strengthened, etc. by being the fall guy for a large organization. (If you've ever thought, "I would go to jail for ten years if I got 10 million dollars at the end," then you understand the incentive structure there already.) There is no way to effectively punish saavy, loyal individuals when individuals from within their respective organizations can shelter them from the consequences and/or incentivize them to break the law despite the consequences. If the whole matter is implicit, it doesn't even necessarily require the organization to 'rescue' their fall guy afterwards, people are just another resource in an organization, if the benefit to the organization of breaking the law is greater than the benefit the organization derives from the person who would ultimately be the fall guy, then even the potential of a 'rescue' is enough, if the incentives are otherwise strong enough! Only if BOTH the individual AND the organization must pay a price for misbehavior is it possible to truly disincent illegal but profitable behavior. Under your scenario, an organization can simply shuffle through its minions until it finds one willing to break the law and offer the profits for a given incentive package- indeed, organizations under your model are incentivized to seek out and hire criminals who lack analytical depth, and then implicitly make the desired course clear, and then allow the criminal to take the fall for them, while the organization and its investors pocket the profits.
      - dionidium 10y ago

forrestthewoods 10y ago

HN grew too big. This always happens to internet communities when they grow too large. :(

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 10y ago

GP was on HN long before you were. If you disagree with him, tell him why.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>GP was on HN long before you were So what? That doesn't make his comments about "lining executives up against the wall", below, any less ridiculous.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  That was a reflection on how according to roel_v HN was a place of intelligent discussion when he joined. The comment below is stupid (hopefully meant in a proverbial way) but since this is in another subthread my comment had no bearing on it.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    "That was a reflection on how according to roel_v HN was a place of intelligent discussion when he joined." Tss, rose-colored glasses and all, and the world is a different place from what it was 10 years ago; still at least back then the main 'problems' were the excessive focus on nootropics and quantitative finance; not that it was overrun with populist high-school angsty political drivel.
pc86 10y ago
I didn't realize age of the account had any bearing on the intelligence of the comments posted under it.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  It wasn't, but in case you didn't get it, the comment by roel_v actually made the discussion worse, not better.
roel_v 10y ago
His account is much older than mine, yes. I've been reading for about as long as his account. No sure what the relevance of that is. Anyway, I'm just using your comment to respond to several others at once that all make roughly the same point. It's rather meta to the OP though, so maybe it would better be detached from here (seeing that my response now seems to be the top voted reply out of many, which is rather ironic in the light of the following). But on to my point: not all points or opinions should be 'reasoned' with, or deserve an intellectually honest debate, or even a reply. To paraphrase the old quip, 'don't wrestle a pig in the mud. You'll get dirty and the pig likes it'. Many other commenters try to engage the GP in a fact-based 'debate', but that is impossible with sophistic extremists who use terminology like 'corporate death penalty'. It's meant to incite an emotional reaction only. There is no point in refuting Stormfront posters either, or Truthers, or pick the fringe of any group that you ideologically disagree with. Now I know that the general rule for posting here is 'don't post negative things' and 'stick to substance and not the person' etc.; and my off handed reply is essentially contrary to all those things; and I fully realize that with this reply I'm polluting even more. My point is: there seems to be some sort of naive believe that 'all opinions are equally valid', 'all viewpoints deserve equal consideration' and 'the only way to respond to fringe/populist rhetoric is with meticulous fact-based refutation'. That's simply not true. Call me a 'reactionist' or a 'fascist censor' - but I liked the days when 'letters to the editor' from lunatics were thrown in the bin and only those with substance and without inciting language were published (I mean that metaphorically, I was born in 1979, I'm from a generation where 'letters to the editor' were already an anachronism). I'm not talking about shunning content because of its content; but rather shunning content that employs mala fides sophisms like purposefully using incendiary phrasing. So in summary: no I won't be seduced into a useless 'debate'. And on top of that, I would much prefer much more heavy-handed moderation where many more posts were simply and summarily deleted (and yes that includes some of my own, that were written too hastily) in order to increase the intellectual content per 1000 words in the comments; failing that, we (as in, all posters) need to ignore and/or shun extremism instead of giving it a podium by replying with well-intentioned fact-based answers and thus attracting even more attention to it.

amalcon 10y ago

You're not helping.

Fordrus 10y ago

And holy monkey, your comment is about as self referential as they get. You don't offer any coherent points to argue, you make a comparison so vague that, indeed, you do not actually tell us what it is, but rather just that you have a 'vague feeling of recognition,' and a bevy of insults that you don't elect to justify with specific reasoning (is the corporate death penalty idea violent, or is it something else that causes you to call the parent comment violent?). You have every right to complain about situations you don't like, but because your comment so clearly exemplifies the very situation about which you are complaining, I would be foolish to give your complaint much credence.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11990293 and marked it off-topic.