7 ms·

Meta-commentary: This is one of the more fascinating threads I have seen on HN. It seems to parallel many of the problems with political discourse in the world

• punkrex 9y ago
  Honestly to explain the nuance of the situation would take too long and isn't super easy to reduce to right and wrong. The background required to understand how syria came to be is not something that can be sufficiently and succinctly explained in a comment thread. Attempts to simplify it run into the exact issues you've noticed above. You're bias comes into play which conflicts with various other peoples PoV, and it all devolves into a shouting match. Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks.
  • knz 9y ago
    > Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks. Do the "Sykes-Picot people" attribute everything to that agreement or just view it as a logical starting point for many of the current political problems seen in the Middle East that can not be attributed to other factors (geography, sectarian conflict, control of natural resources, migrant populations that defy modern borders, a history of historical conflicts/slavery, and/or pressure from environmental, political, and cultural changes)? Sykes-Picot isn't exactly a fringe internet theory.... any textbook on the modern Middle East is going to devote substantial time to it.
    • punkrex 9y ago
      I dislike it personally because it robs any agency on the part of the locals and ascribes everything happening because of Westerners. I think the simplistic view presented in textbooks is wrong. Sykes-Picot never really came into effect and as much as the British/French tried to control the area their attempts at control were co-opted by savvy local nationalist parties to establish local nation states after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. The map of the modern day middle east has more in common with Ottoman Provinces then it does with the Lines of Control that Sykes-Picot proposed. Now I am not trying to absolve the west of all it's guilt, it did a number of shitty and horrific things, but I think the narrative that the West screwed up the Middle East ignores both a significant history of conflict in the area over land and resources, as well as the political situation on the ground being influenced more by locals then outsiders. I am also not saying that colonialism is not a horrific thing, I think that efforts elsewhere(Africa, Asia) started earlier and were more heavy handed. The reason why Sykes-Picot appeals to so many people is that it provides a simplistic political narrative for why the region is so messed up, and allows blame to be shifted on a politically convenient scapegoat. Hopefully as we shift away from the "Great Man"(and I think Westerners trying to impose their will on the Middle East were bad folks) theory of history we will come to view these simple theories as useless and try to understand the nuance of how the modern Middle East came to be as not something that two Westerners in 1917 could ever hope to dictate.
      • knz 9y ago
        Fair enough - as you indicate, nuance is important and sadly it's often lacking from many media articles and debate these days.
• matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  > trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause. I've seen this idea brought up a few times here in our community, and have been accused of it at least once for expressing an unpopular opinion. I have such a hard time believing there's state sponsored posters who troll hacker news. It seems extremely tinfoil hat to me. Honestly folks we're not that important.
  • pjc50 9y ago
    It's fairly well established that intelligence agencies have active "social media" operations, and that there's paid distributors of "fake news" about. Establishing any particular account as a paid troll is almost impossible, although the moderators might be able to infer things from the login IP addresses if their opsec is bad.
    • matt_wulfeck 9y ago
      How is it established? What proof of any kind do you have that people are being paid to troll in our corner of the internet? Even if agencies had a presence on social media, what advantage do they having coming to HN and trying to convince a bunch of computer nerds that life was better in Syria under Assad?
      • ionised 9y ago
        NSA and GCHQ document leaks outlining their shilling operations.
      • hackuser 9y ago
        You can find plenty of articles in serious sources which contain serious research on Russian astroturfing operations. Based on those, any forum is a target and HN is more influential than most.
        • shitgoose 9y ago
          I am afraid that burden of proof is still on you. The habit of throwing in an accusation and suggesting that your opponents go and look for proof, became too widespread.
• Danihan 9y ago
  Nice of you to label everyone who preferes a more isolationist approach to global policy as a "troll" How open-minded of you.
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  • k-mcgrady 9y ago
    'Isolationist' and 'anti-humanitarian' are not the same thing.
    • remarkEon 9y ago
      While I agree, it seems to happen quite often that the two are deliberately conflated.
  • awkwardtortoise 9y ago
    Whenever syria comes out, the propagandists come out. These people try to label people in order to marginalize their views. You can spot them easily because they use labels like "trolls", "conspiracist", "tin foil hat", etc to label their enemies.
    • tjr225 9y ago
      You mean labels such as "propagandists?"
  • ruthvik947 9y ago
    I see nothing in the parent's comment that insinuates this. What specifically are you referring to?
• 6stringmerc 9y ago
  It's not easy, but it's pretty simple. Longer attention spans, and not treating all opinions as equally reasoned and/or valid. We are in the midst of a terrible anti-intellectualistic & dirt-kicking-religious-fundamentalism conundrum globally. Education is the only atmosphere where growth is the only goal - every human enterprise involves winning and losing, more or less. In the context of Education, the goal is self-reflexive when employed properly - as in, discussion and growth and learning for their own sake, not because some asshole in the Federal Government wants every kid from Baton Rouge and Seattle and San Diego to be able to pass a highly sterile, multiple-choice "NCLB" type test. There's a lot of stuff to un-screw up. A person like Betsy DeVos is akin to Emperor Nero's Horse.
  • ep103 9y ago
    Wealth inequality is higher than its been in quite a long time. Massive numbers of people feel that they aren't being represented in government, which at its root, is usually accurate (1). This results in distrust of economic elites. Since economic elites are usually also leaders of establishment, it is easy for ire for one camp, to bleed over to the other. Especially since talk of economic inequality rarely finds its way into (American) public discourse. Once you adopt that mindset, it is easy to become jaded. At that point, anything elitist or intellectual starts sounding suspect and untrustworthy. I swear, 99% of the issues in this country (us) boil back to wealth inequality one way or another. 1 - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
• lefstathiou 9y ago
  What I find interesting about the Syrian issue is that it is becoming increasingly clear that diplomacy, the UN, media exposure etc is failing. Despite this "humanitarian crisis" (which I fully agree is reaching crisis levels), my impression is that almost all the media outlets and pundits are ignoring the obvious solution to this problem... unilateral US military intervention (and before we go there... keep in mind that if that doesnt solve the problem, nothing can). So the question I have for the parent is as follows: how far do things have to deteriorate before military intervention is the only viable and recommended solution? It is 100% within the means of the United States to end this situation.
  • jl6 9y ago
    What would such an intervention involve? Shoot the bad guys? Which are the bad guys and how do soldiers identify them?
    • euyyn 9y ago
      If by the bad guys you mean only ISIS (and not Assad's or the rebel forces), that's what the people currently fighting there are doing. Why would it be harder for US soldiers?
  • nyolfen 9y ago
    i have absolutely no idea how anyone could think major US intervention would improve the situation after iraq, afghanistan, libya, etc. it creates huge power vacuums and decades of conflict in its wake.
  • alistoriv 9y ago
    The issue is that unilateral US military intervention hasn't solved similar situations in the past.
  • palerdot 9y ago
    If you think bad guys are sitting in glaring colourful robes for the US military to come and shoot them, you are way off the mark. Political crisis like this are difficult to contain by external players because you never know the good guys from bad. Maybe US (and other powerful nations) can stealthily fund the locals and arm them to face the radicals, so that the change comes from within rather than outside. Again the problem lies in identifying the innocent locals from the radicals. At this stage, I'm not even sure if there is a solution for syrian crisis.
• ashark 9y ago
  > state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause. What's the anti-humanitarian cause? Throwing enough resources at the fight to keep it going for years instead of weeks/months, but not enough to actually end it, for what I hope are callous realpolitik reasons and not simple incompetence?
  • deeth_starr_v 9y ago
    There are a bunch of reasons. I recently sat next to an Asian mom at the passport office and when the news came on about Syrian refugees she said to me "no Syrian refugees." She complained they cost us money. I asked her a couple questions about Syria and Iraq and she was completely clueless and not interested in learning about the situation. With her accent it's likely she emigrated from Asia. People constantly amaze me.
  • Udik 9y ago
    You hope that the international actors- among which, prominently, the USA- have willingly fuelled a bloodbath for years for "realpolitk" reasons instead of having done that unwillingly, out of incompetence?
    • ashark 9y ago
      I hope that there's been some hidden benefit I'm unaware of that's so large it could from some point of view that's not simply insane or stupid justify fueling a massive immigration crisis in Europe, with all the consequences that've fallen out of that, and causing years and years of suffering and death in countries halfway around the world from us while in many ways strengthening the radical jihadist movement(s), yes. The alternative is that we've been too dumb, for years on end, to just stop, or else that we've done it because we made a (huge) mistake initially and are trying to save face, both of which I judge to be somewhat worse. Iraq may have been more expensive but this is shaping up to be a much bigger strategic blunder, if there's not some really smart hidden agenda driving it. It's certainly a massive humanitarian disaster. I've found it utterly bizarre that in all the partisan bickering this didn't take central stage in the "Obama (and Hillary) aren't fit leaders" narrative, since on the surface the whole thing looks like a gigantic policy disaster on the part of the US—and I feel that way as someone who almost always supports Democrats over Republicans, and protested Iraq II. I don't get how more blame for the situation isn't publicly falling on the US and the Obama administration.
• hackuser 9y ago
  > how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another? I think this is an essential question, and one that people often dismiss as having no solution. IMHO it's an excellent, highly valuable problem for someone to solve. In my very humble thinking, I've come up with or collected these ideas: 1) You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Facts are can be common ground on which all good faith people can stand, and in which they all share an interest - whatever your opinion, you want it to be true and consistent with the facts. Of course, that's trickier in practice than in theory; see the note on propaganda. 2) Some fields have methods for separating fact from fiction, such as science and law. Some parts of those methods can be applied here, though of course people in Internet forums don't have the resources (especially time) to utilize those methods completely. 3) We must decide to trust some people and sources to a greater degree than others. As someone said, there is no art, no judgment, in trusting nobody. I trust the NY Times more than (some random conspiracy site), for example. 4) Propagandists try to disrupt all of the above; keep an eye out for their tactics. A/the fundamental tactic of professional propaganda (and seemingly adopted by amateurs, maybe unwittingly) is not to persuade but to create uncertainty: Portray all fact as equivalent opinions and discredit any trust in anything, from science to government to news media. Consider climate change, where false uncertainty has brought U.S. federal government action to a standstill; that is exactly the means and outcome of propaganda (as I understand it). Another tactic is to drown signal with noise using a barrage of baseless allegations. 5) As a way to both filter out propagandists and greatly improve the content of forums, focus on input that are based on sound factual foundations and which contributes value - which significantly adds to the reader's knowledge. The propagandists generally reduce knowledge or create uncertainty; they raise endless questions without basis. (Other people do this too; they aren't all intentional propagandists, but it has a similar effect.)
• awkwardtortoise 9y ago
  Don't forget 6) agenda driven propagandists like you...
  • dang 9y ago
    We've banned this account for making personal attacks despite our asking you to stop. I agree with you that people are far too quick to cry 'troll' and that it's not a legit move unless there's evidence. But that doesn't mean you can personally attack people and expect not to get banned here.