22 ms·

No politics please, we're hackers, too busy to improve the world

• varjag 9y ago
  We can argue all we want, but it is clear that in 2016, blocking one Twitter account could alter the course of history.
  • Sunset 9y ago
    Lets say, theoretically they block that one account. What would be twitter's recourse if the POTUS decides to Gitmo their CEO/developers/prod engineers in retaliation.
    • mkesper 9y ago
      I read it as: Blocking that one account would have blocked Trump from becoming president.
      • Sunset 9y ago
        I think you underestimate the brand recognition of Trump's name. His twitter profile pales in comparison to the years of Movie and TV exposure, the construction business and so on. Trump has been a brand for an upwards of 50 years.
  • staticelf 9y ago
    Yes or it could have the opposite effect. What I think is that a lot of people feel hated upon from the rest of the society. In my country there is a political party that has been excluded from a lot of public things, other politicians telling them they are fascists, racists and just any kind of slur basically. They were even excluded from a party where Saudi Arabia was invited. Just think about that. Now, they are the second largest party in the country and well on their way of being the largest. They had everything to gain being the underdogs and their opponents has been their best ad for gaining trust and votes.
    • varjag 9y ago
      Fascists are excluded from public discourse in many societies, and I'm not positive it makes the situation worse in any respect. People still supporting them no matter what are typically like-minded bigots rather than some sort of libertarians sticking up to authority.
  • overgard 9y ago
    If they had done that, that would have just played into his narrative about the media being against him, along with vindicating a lot of accusations against twitter for "shadowbans".
• hawski 9y ago
  We're hackers, too busy helping extract wealth from the population as efficiently as possible.
  • samdoidge 9y ago
    You do know wealth can be created?
    • Super_Jambo 9y ago
      It can but the market is currently showing us this is far less profitable than collecting rents and Phishing for Phools.
• justin_vanw 9y ago
  Lets all waste time virtue-signalling about things we have no experience or expertise in, that are dominated by charismatic dummies we can barely communicate with, and that we'll have no measurable impact on! Or we can keep doing what we can do well and has actually, fundamentally changed the world for the better and made us rich.
  • 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
    Well, if you negate what "politics" mean and conflate it with the current politicians star-system, your reasoning holds. Although I can raise doubts whether it has made the world better, it certainly has made many people rich, at the expense of others. What you said is very political, ironically.
    • justin_vanw 9y ago
      Very solid points, totally agree.
      • 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
        That being said, I'm not sure about how discussing politics on HN would go. While I think it's essential to assess the political implications of any project, especially in CS where things go global real fast, it will be difficult (although interesting) to have meaningful interactions between people of wildly different viewpoints and axioms when decrypting reality.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• nice1 9y ago
  It may be difficult to improve the world if you neglect politics.
• maaaats 9y ago
  I'm sad the posts about USA withdrawing from the Paris deal all got purged fro the front page yesterday. Yes, some political issues aren't relevant on HN, but this I think was. Edit: Kinda ironic that this post is now having the title [FLAGGED] and being dropped from the fp as well. Edit2: Still flagged but back up, interesting
  • lloydjatkinson 9y ago
    No HN only allow political ideologies or narratives they agree with. The moderator team do not hide that they are SJW's. As another example, currently HN's narrative of choice is how Uber is literally the worst thing since Hitler and you can't go a week without seeing 3 or 4 top-voted links bitching about Uber. Perhaps some people like being able to conveniently travel from point A to B without caring about what some whiny keyboard warrior hates about Uber this week.
    • insin 9y ago
      What's an SJW? Not playing dumb, just interested in what it personally means to someone who applies it to others as a (pejorative?) label.
      • TeMPOraL 9y ago
        A Social Justice Warrior, though it's mostly used to refer to people who weaponize feminist ideology and use it to disturb peace in a community. I don't know what SJW accusation has to do with Uber here, nor have I observed any particular SJW inclination within the mods. There's plenty of SJW action on HN, especially in threads about diversity in IT industry - but I'm yet to see a HN mod behaving that way.
        • nl 9y ago
          I went and checked, and the OP seems to have been offended over this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379 The OP posted "*he" as a "correction" for a "she" talking about Chelsea Manning, and seems to have been offended they got downvoted. Apparently they may not be familiar with the difficulty of assigning gender. The least politically charged way to seeing this is to look at Olympic sports, and https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-olympians https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-olympian... is a good overview. I'd draw particular attention to the case of Ewa Klobukowska who was stripped of an Olympic Gold medal for "failing a chromosome test" (ie, exactly what the OP is claiming should be the arbitrator of gender). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez-Pati%C3%B1o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez-... is another case. Ewa Klobukowska later had a son, and had her medals returned.
• atemerev 9y ago
  Right. But are you comfortable with the fact that not all hackers will be on the same political side? I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra-libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse? Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction of change.
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 9y ago
    How does that relate with the blog post?
    • atemerev 9y ago
      Leaving politics aside allows e.g. me to collaborate productively with e.g. ultra-left socialist bicycle-driving UBI-supporting people. If we leave politics aside, we can agree to disagree and still work together on something useful. If we will discuss politics, our time will be spend in unproductive discussion without actually changing the world in any direction.
      • kelnos 9y ago
        > ultra-left socialist bicycle-driving UBI-supporting people I think that's the problem right there. I suspect you didn't intend it to sound that way, but that part of your statement comes across as dismissive and condescending. I point that out only to suggest that there's no reason why people with different political views can't work together, as long as they respect each others' views and don't discuss them in a demeaning way. I don't think that necessarily means you're "putting politics aside", and in fact I think that can be harmful in some cases.
        • presidente20 9y ago
          I think for many people political views are quite tightly bound up with their sense of identity and therefore in practice political debates tend to end up being quite personal and negative. I tend to avoid politics except with very close friends for that reason and therefore agree with atemerov that working relationships should be preserved.
• tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I'm interested in politics, I follow it closely and I am a member of a political party. But I don't want to see it here, I don't think HN is a good venue for it.
  • kelnos 9y ago
    That's a shame, because the things we discuss here have political consequences, and it's irresponsible to ignore them. I wouldn't want to see posts strictly about politics on the front page, but I think discussion of political topics that relate to technology and our industry is not only interesting, but necessary.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      It's not irresponsible to keep discussions in their right place, of course politics will seep in everywhere but if I want to talk about the US pulling out of the Paris agreement (and I do) then there are better places to do that than here.
      • humanrebar 9y ago
        The problem is "the right place" is always somewhere else.
        • gmancruthers 9y ago
          "political discussion" gets 252,000,000 results on Google. This simply isn't true.
• 5thaccount 9y ago
  Coverage of political machinations is pointless, but information on political outcomes is invaluable - there is a massive difference. Chomsky has said the only paper that tells the truth is the Financial Times, in part because you don't make money with lies, whereas most news is designed to push an agenda and obfuscate anything real. Understanding political outcomes is very different to listening to political debate/punditry/noise, and learning, for example, that certain subsidies are ending is not the same as reading political arguments on the environment, and they shouldn't be confused. Knowing that Trump is president means one can predict certain things - the Paris accord ending - but not others, for example budgets are far less fungible than people think, and a lot of the budget of any nation is kinda locked in, so a lot of the noise on funding cuts and changes is unlikely to come to fruition. If you read a lot online/watch a lot, how do you know which of the multitude of BS will come to fruition? I reckon if more news focussed on "this is the debate, these are the likely outcomes, these industries would be affected in these ways", then reading more would be invaluable. OTOH, Covfefe coverage? I'll Pass.
• franciscop 9y ago
  TL;DR: I think the appropriate thing to do is talking about ETHICS here as that's universal and some times it will involve politics, but not just politics for the sake of it. From an opposite point of view to this article, politics vary greatly around the world and I'm guessing that by politics the article mainly refers to USA politics. For instance I ignore my country's politics talk since it's too old fashion and USA politics talk since it feels quite pointless arguing/bashing for the sake of it most of the times. I do enjoy a meaningful politics discussion from time to time, normally in person and with someone I trust already. While I do agree on the big picture--USA is one of the most influential countries, politics there affect all the world--this article seems to be setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter (metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became quite unbearable at points TBH. So I would say that the things we should continue doing is talking about ethics (especially when it is related with hacker ethics). My short list of rules for HN topics are (the more the better): - It is about hackers/startup/programmers/IT/privacy/etc. - It is interesting for a global audience. - It is something new or happening right now. - It is noteworthy or at least interesting/geek.
  • erikb 9y ago
    Your comment is political. It adds a point of view to the discussion about politics in HN. It also tries to achieve something (talking about ETHICS). This is politics. No need to talk how US government politics is different from Russian government politics. We can just talk about our politics here.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      If you take such a broad definition of "politics", then the word becomes meaningless, since everything is "politics". 'jacquesm wrote about politics as in what politicians in the governments do. This is a particular thing, and I personally believe it's rarely useful to discuss it on HN.
      • erikb 9y ago
• notzorbo3 9y ago
  The tools we create can be used for both good and evil. It's not my place to decide who can and can't use the tools I create and what they can use it for. Frankly, I simply don't care at all about any kind of politics, which is why I got into programming in the first place. And if the author doesn't like that, than that's just too bad for them.
  • rbanffy 9y ago
    > It's not my place to decide You are still responsible though. "It's not my place to decide who uses the torture devices I design. My job is only to make them as painful as possible."
    • Sean1708 9y ago
      I make kitchen knives. People use kitchen knives to kill each other. Am I now responsible for these deaths?
      • kelnos 9y ago
        You're not responsible, perhaps, but you should think about it. Choosing an extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous (hooray cherry-picking); there are plenty of things you could build that have positive, innocuous uses but also could be used for bad in a much less trivial way than a simple kitchen knife... and for some of those things, one might suggest that the builder is responsible.
        • Sean1708 9y ago
          > Choosing an extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous I completely disagree, I think most of the things that we build as developers are as innocuous as kitchen knives. If you're building (for example) pen-testing software then I completely agree that you should be thinking about how this software might be used against others. But if you're building some software which helps run processes across multiple nodes then I don't think it's up to the developer to police how this software is used (What would they even do about it? You can't not write software like this just because it could be used for nefarious purposes.). And I genuinely believe that 99% of us are writing software which is much more like the latter than the former.
• 0xcoffee 9y ago
  What makes HN so great is that when a topic is discussed, often someone with direct participation in the topic is somewhere in the thread, to give an inside view. What I miss about mixing HN and politics, is that HN doesn't have politicians who can pop in and say 'oh hi guys I wrote this bill feel free to ask me some questions'. (I'm not saying nobody on HN participates on politics, I remember reading an interesting post about someone who ran for governor(?), but those posts are rare). For example, a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides, people who write some controversial bills, people who take part in lobbying, and even senators. This approach has really opened my eyes to the political process and I have heard many well formed counter arguments which made me reconsider some of my positions. I cannot say I have ever experienced this on an online forum.
  • aaron-lebo 9y ago
    That's a big issue. HN has no special insight on politics so the discussions turn into the same old canards and groupthink on Reddit or anywhere else. There's just very little informative or useful about those discussions. It's pretty often that stuff which is factually wrong but meets emotional needs gets upvoted without a second thought. Disagreement with the notion the world is ending or Trump is literally James Harden and is gonna start the Holocaust (a popular feeling at HN 4 months ago) gets swiftly downvoted because it doesn't meet how people feel. Every time one of those groupthinky discussions happens it makes HN less attractive to informed discussion. I'm sitting at -12 in a thread from yesterday in which a guy responded "No offence you don't seem to have much knowledge of post ww2 history" after he was the one who made a weird historical analogy and I more or less copypastad part of a wiki article on the issue. I don't really care about being wrong or losing Internet points, but when stuff like that happens it just convinces me that even really intelligent people would rather agree with their biases over actually debating something. No thanks. It's the kind of behavior expected on r/politics.
    • mowenz 9y ago
      I cant find the thread, but last year someone posted something close to 'all Trump supporters are idiots, I don't know how he got so popular,' and someone replied, 'I have a top uni degree, successful career and I am voting for Trump, so start with reassessing your assumptions about Trump supporters if you want to understand them,' and everyone just downvoted him. Nobody asked him anything. For the record I'm not a Trump supporter, but I can see that when it comes to politics people think emotionally and ideologically, and very few are asking themselves "have I not made any mistakes?" in the same way we do (everyone does make mistakes) when we care about being proficient. I studied economics and had a passion for public policy and realized how corrupt that all is. There's no moral excuse for anyone to still suffer in 2017--but it persists. People are irrational, greedy, and selfish. Not all, but enough.
• chicob 9y ago
  Hackers have nothing to do with politics. Just as much as whistleblowing and exposing fraud, espionage, or illegal activities has nothing to do with journalism and transparency. Let alone politics. In general, software has nothing to do with anything but software itself. Take encryption: it has nothing to do with privacy, which has nothing to do with with surveillance which has nothing to do with politics. Also - Startups also have nothing to do with the economy; Automation and design has nothing to do with the industry. And while we're at it: Science has nothing to do with politics. That's why politicians ignore climatologists, physicists and biologists.
  • tudorw 9y ago
    FeelsBadMan, I got it though ;)
    • chicob 9y ago
      It's like conventional currency vs cryptocurrency. If you couple the two, given enough market size for each, volatility couples as well. No need to go through the meanders of algorithms or blockchains. (Coincidently, cryptocurrencies are just another target for some hackers with deep consequences for any economy that trusts them.) Some things cannot be ignored, or seen as independent. They are stuck together since their conception.
• mmjaa 9y ago
  One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by computerising everything. This may or may not be true. In the meantime, computer programmers all over the world are working on computerising subjects that are traditionally used to having political power/influence involved. Pulling the humans out and replacing them with shell scripts, in this scenario, is of course a source of contention. Fundamentally, governments and politics are broken. Computers can be used to fix them. However, this is one of the most controversial areas of computerisation and - like politics itself, along with governance - a cause of never-ending social strife. Its almost like something, "ethical", is missing in the equation.
  • wodenokoto 9y ago
    > One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by computerising everything. I agree with the first part, but personally disagree with the second part. Yes, I find politics broken, but I have absolutely no faith in fixing it in any way. So I hack away on problems I feel like I can solve or at least improve on. This keeps me sane.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Same here. I don't buy fixing politics with computers - not until we take politics entirely away from humans and give it to a superpower AI that will act as a god. The argument for this belief is this: people keep gaming stuff. No matter how smart your system is, given enough interest someone will hire someone smarter to cheat it. Even mathematics won't save you here, because math is too narrow-scoped. For any theoretically secure system on paper you can find holes in its messy real-life implementation. See e.g. quantum entanglement used to create untappable communication channels being defeated by simply tapping at the classical endpoints.
      • soundwave106 9y ago
        Right. There's no incentive to "fix politics" with computers from a business standpoint. If anything, there is plenty of incentive to break politics from a business standpoint with computers. A well known example: Target people with a particular political persuasion, make them mad or shocked with some bait headline, and get clicks. Basically the well known phenomenon of "clickbait", which is also implemented non-politically. As implemented in politics, such might reinforces "echo chambers" or epistemic closure. But they also made some people a fair bit of cash. The same goes for what large social networks probably are already doing to keep everyone happy in a polarized environment: curate people's news feed to match their "political tribe". EG: the red feed blue feed concept reported on in the Wall Street Journal (http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/). Again, same concern: such may reinforce "echo chambers" or epistemic closure. But the alternative might be users quitting there social network = less ad dollars. So there is no incentive to promote balance. Unfortunately, humans are very tribal creatures. To break away from this requires active resistance of what is a very human trait. I don't think hardly any human alive has done this completely. So even in the "superpower AI god" case, probably another "tribe" would come along to make another "superpower AI god" with a completely different filter, and we'd be in the same place.
• thinkingemote 9y ago
  two things, firstly don't confuse hackernews with hackers as a group. secondly and the most important is that politics posts here usually devolve into flame wars, and people don't like that. Finally this submission has already been flagged, I notice.
• elorant 9y ago
  Hackers don't bother with politics because they understand that it's the people who change the world and not the politicians. Politicians' job is to get re-elected, everything else is irrelevant.
  • ohashi 9y ago
    Politicians are people, they definitely are changing the world and affecting people's lives. If you care about your society, the world in general, then it is relevant.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      I think the question isn't whether it's relevant, but whether it's an efficient way of doing things.
      • kelnos 9y ago
        Efficient or not, politics does change the world (both for the better and worse), so it'd be foolish not to at least pay attention.
        • TeMPOraL 9y ago
          True. The problem is - most of the political public sphere is just noise. To the point that e.g. following regular media sources is just a waste of time (and risks infecting the brain with lies). Being efficiently engaged in local or global politics has little to do with discussing e.g. the latest media blunder of a politician, or whatever promise they made that probably won't happen anyway.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Agreed, but not entirely - people in position of power do have a theoretical opportunity to make some meaningful change, but they seldom make use of it (often exactly because they focus on being re-elected). The way I phrase it is usually this: if you want to change the world, politics is waste of time. It's one of the least efficient ways of helping, because you'll end up stuck in constant battles over trivia, status and, well, office politics. By the time you wind up in position of actual power, you'll likely be up to your ears with various deals, and you won't be really helping society anymore. (Corollary: I don't buy that the higher up you go, the more power you have. Looking at the dynamics of political parties, it's very rare someone will let you achieve position of power if you've not proven again and again to be open for deals and preserving status quo. My current belief is that usually, the higher you go, the less actual agency you have.)
• scandox 9y ago
  I never saw an article that was both flagged and still on the homepage...Didn't know that could happen. Badge of honour really.
  • erikb 9y ago
    I would guess moderator influence here. And it's reasonable to keep it on the front page, since it doesn't contain anything flag-worthy.
• wand3r 9y ago
  I don't think one must devote themselves to politics. However, this thoughtful essay by regular contributor here should be UNFLAGGED. It is piercing, but measured and in line with the ideals here on this site AND the reasonable discussion. If dang or another moderator could weigh in; this is not how I believed flags were meant to be used. We defend free speech here unless we have a strong reason.
  • DanBC 9y ago
    It's tedious bullshit that makes a bunch of mistakes - some of which have already debunked. In particular it mostakes the reason for the detox. This was only ever about stopping tedious pathological arseholes making the same boring hyperbolic bullshit flamebait arguments that a not particulary bright 16 year old would make. HN thinks of itself as smart but the political discussion here is normally embarrassingly weak.
    • wand3r 9y ago
      > mostakes > Not particularly bright 16 y/o I found his write up of the custom Lego sorter hardware design he made to be innovative. With a treadmill and some spare parts he made a classifier and trained a neural net. Either way; I think your comment is rude. If you don't like his piece-- which again I am not sure I agree with either; use <hide> not flag.
      • TeMPOraL 9y ago
        The second thing you quote ("not particularly bright 16 y/o") isn't about the piece, but about the type of content that happens and what HN political detox was meant to limit.
• sbuttgereit 9y ago
  Oh dear. I couldn't disagree more with the assessment of this story's position on Hacker News. There is a difference between sticking your head in the sand politically and having a forum where people with differing political opinions can come together and discuss ideas in other areas than politics. You can both be politically active AND participate in a forum that avoids politics. Hacker News policy and avoidance of most political issues is precisely right in this regard. I know I come here to listen to stories dealing with computer technology and expert/practitioner commentary on those stories and business people engaged in the business of technology, particularly start-ups. At those times public policy has direct bearing to these subjects, such as patent law or net neutrality, I do expect to see discussion here. Some here have been saying this has to do with US/Paris Accords. I agree with those topics being purged from this forum. I mean, really! How many readers of Hacker News do you think are on the fence about this subject: probably not zero, but my money says pretty damn close. I would wager that most here not only have already formed opinions on the subject, but strongly held opinions on the subject. If that's the case what possible value is yet another place to shout how right you are and wrong the other guy is at the top of your lungs given the number of other venues for such virtue signaling? I doubt you move the needle in one direction or the other on such terms. So, what can you possibly achieve by being political in all venues and discussion forums? I suppose you can further entrench the move to ideological purity in all endeavors, further degrade any ability to find common ground with people that don't otherwise agree with you, further degrade the political discourse, and achieve a flourishing sense of tribalism in a large, complex society. Is politics important? Sure it is. But so is time and place.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I guess jacquesm would like to see a political discussion of the same high quality many technical topics are discussed here. But it won't work - you can't shove politics into a quality tech forum and expect quality politics to come out, simply because political discussions inherently invite low quality. They're rarely about facts, mostly about status and opinions. Hence, I agree HN should keep limiting political discussions.
    • CM30 9y ago
• erikb 9y ago
  I love how this article became an example exactly of what's wrong in politics in general. There is a huge group of people in every political unity, that doesn't care about general consensus, understanding problems, considering different points of view. Yet, these people tend to turn on their political flak cannons from time to time and march into the political landscape like elephants into a porcelain shop (thinking about a funny picture with Trump here). Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self-responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't even see that it exists. So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable to them, no matter what the results for the group are. I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just ignore them because they are so many.
  • kradem 9y ago
    "The eagle's hunt is direct, straight down to the goal" - Friedrich said. What he would say today when every eagle's goal is the good cage and feeder? https://damiravdic.bandcamp.com/track/bog-je-koncept https://damiravdic.bandcamp.com/track/bog-je-koncept Damir Avdić - God is concept ________ Everything worth "reading" about ex-Yu wars and world/EU politics one could find in the works of this guy, afaic the greatest artist of 21. century - the position took in 20th century by the Jew is now taken by the Muslim.
    • erikb 9y ago
      What are you trying to say?
      • kradem 9y ago
        Your last paragraph reminded me on the verses of this guy Avdić. The rest is politics - in 20th society turned a deaf ear to the hint of the holocaust and artist like Dylan had well shaped our souls afterwards. At the end of that century there was a war in the middle of Europe only few understood at that time and those few are even decimated these days. Zaev took the cabinet yesterday and there's no link on HN about that and that's fine. Still, don't think because of that that Zaev wasn't the greatest news in European politics this year. And about daily politics, what you guys think it would have greater impact on US economy: Paris withdrawn or Riyadh drawn?
• Lio 9y ago
  <personalOpinion> The problem with political or religious discussion is that much of it is irrationally about 'tribes' and self image. Some positions cannot be easily influenced with mere 'facts' because you're arguing against people's feelings and cognitive dissonance is very powerful. Bringing politics up on Hacker News will rarely positively influence anyone's opinion but will almost always be divisive and distracting. </personalOpinion>
  • humanrebar 9y ago
    Sometimes the goal isn't to "convert" people to your political or religious views. There is immense utility in reinforcing that there are intelligent and congenial people (who deserve the benefit of the doubt) that disagree with you on important issues. I think pushing "controversial" discussions to the edges of polite society has been shown to make us more culturally ignorant.
• eternal_intern 9y ago
  I'm not sure if I agree with the author. Hackers do care about political issues. My question is whether political discussions over short form text do more harm than good to a community. To me, HN detoxing politics seems more like the librarian enforcing a rule of silence rather than encouraging ostriching. And polarizing topics like politics, especially over short form text, to me, seems like it would destroy that ideal of HN. That being said, the Internet sure could use a proper forum for political discussions.
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 9y ago
    Why is the post flaggeg, then?
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Because enough HN users clicked the "flag" link, most likely.
• kradem 9y ago
  You guys, what would be the crucial ingredient in "socdem" vs. "libdem" diff that makes you so angry when someone compares it to "angular" vs. "react" diff?
• cyphunk 9y ago
  Let's start with the techno-essentialism that many in the tech world depend on for their mental well being: Yes developers impact the world, no they do not impact them as much as TV (still), comedians and most other fields of science. Dumping movies, 0days, user databases online, developing some new prediction market with whatever cryptocurrency doesn't change that. Still, I completely agree one should be aware of the ethical implications in the code they write. Relevant quotes from article: > and that hackers, more than any other profession, create the tools and the means with which vast changes in the political landscape are effected. > The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers, far longer than you’d normally be able to achieve > Between ‘Wikileaks’ and ‘Cambridge Analytica’ it should be more than clear by now stop this. Go back and look over CA's marketing material. They brag about taking Ted Cruz from a field of 20+ into 3. Not exactly a winning pony. And I'm sure there were plenty of other analytic companies that would have used it to their marketing benifit if their pony got further instead. The "we predict you better than your mother with just 300 likes" is a line people already wanted to believe. Someone just made a good story for us to bite into it. Still, I do agree "everything has a political dimension"
  • iamcurious 9y ago
    We are, right now, influencing each other through a filter. A filter designed by Paul Graham and friends with some values in mind. For instance, there is no picture of each other, no reference to sex, nor race. That prevents many prejudices from being activated. That is impact. If actions speak louder than words, infrastructure, that which dictates which actions are possible at all, speaks much louder. Developers are building new infrastructure all the time, for every action and human need. Right now I can buy groceries online, get a remote job, and find a date on an app. That is techno-essentialism. The future belongs to the hacker in much the same way that medieval Europe belonged to the knight and the bishop. The power of the computer is obvious to anyone that isn't living under a rock, naturally, this brings many fakers, if you focus on them it all seems like a bubble, because you are focusing on the bubble. Treat yourself better and focus on what pervades. The Times They Are A-Changin'.
• cyphunk 9y ago
  That HN flag's this post but not some VC B.S. about company valuations is ironic. Can we call a moritorium on posts entirely about finance and money as well as posts like this one here about politics?
• retox 9y ago
  Politics is driving people away from the Google homepage.
• forgottenpass 9y ago
  Does it ever occur to people who want to introduce explicitly political conversation to a project, that a "lets focus on the task at hand" policy might be for their own good? That bringing the political dimension in might chase away contributors with whom their interests were temporarily aligned? I can understand bringing up politics when the topic is something like deliberately using psychological manipulation against their users. Because if you think it's morally wrong, your interests were never even slightly aligned, and the goal is to be off-putting. Hopefully in a way that puts people off of what they're building, rather than putting them off of venues where you can converse with them. But using that case as rhetorical cover for bikeshedding a minor slight that occurred in the context of an otherwise noncontroversial piece of software? That is why people hate "politics." (I wish I had the link to where I saw this argument presented first, but I'll guess my poorly rephrased version will have to do.)
• qudat 9y ago
  From my point of view, discussing politics is a waste of time. We don't make progress by discussing the daily musings of the people who appear to wield power in the world. I'm more interested in the technology that will eventually render their power useless: counter economics. For me the goal isn't to find the right people at the right time to seat the power of nation-states, but to make it impossible for them to wield any meaningful power at all. I am deeply interested in politics, governance, and the way humans interact at scale, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in what bills get passed, who gets elected, or what Trump said in a tweet. While these small blips in history do have an impact, I think technologies such as bitcoin, uber, etc., have a much bigger impact on the world because they usurp political power.
• Overtonwindow 9y ago
  I am a lobbyist and I work in Washington, so I'm surrounded by politics every day. I think what makes HN great is that it avoids politics, for the most part, and true intellectual stories and debate is able to take place. Politics is extremely polarized, and permeates every aspect of our society to the point of extreme. I prefer an HN sans politics, without incendiary articles and commentary, because I learn a lot more about the world and society that way.
  • bluesroo 9y ago
    I agree with everything you've said. There's enough politics in everything else; I come here to be a nerd and learn about nerdy things. Also I've noticed that even though HN tends to promote discussion pretty well on technical subjects, even here political discussions tend to devolve into flame wars.
  • drvdevd 9y ago
    One of the more interesting lines of political inquiry that I think has arisen lately outside of HN, is the question of the actual true affect "hacking" (and I don't just mean in the Security sense -- I mean in the Hacker News "Comp Sci" sense as well) actually had on recent elections around the world. In what way, technically speaking and regardless of your personal political affiliations or beliefs, could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical means? Maybe there are some good links to technical resources that others could direct me to? I think the rest of the world desperately needs the Hacker News viewpoint on this, in detailed, non-partisan technical manner. I believe there is some deeper, non-polarized, apolitical (think, "highest bidder") aspect to what is actually happening right now around the world.
    • eduren 9y ago
      Well in the interest of discussing that, I do have some thoughts: >could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical means One could claim that an intrinsic variable in democracy is the "voice" of any one citizen. For lots of years that has stayed stable. If a politically minded individual wanted to affect change, they could only "shout" so loudly. They could spend day and night lobbying, petitioning, speaking, getting elected, but all that effort is only a constant multiplier. Technology in politics, just like in other areas, can move the needle orders of magnitude more effectively. When any one person or organization can use technology to add voices (apps, hacks, robots, etc), it can exacerbate issues and cause secondary effects that weren't present when 1 person = 1 voice.
• spion 9y ago
  There are two different types of politics and we often conflate both. The type that many people hate is "politics the art of manipulating people". The second meaning refers to actual policies and their effect on people's quality of life. I don't think anyone would have trouble discussing that - that is, if it were somehow magically separated from the manipulation. But often its not. If you look at the first meaning, things like "detox week" make a lot of sense - its about getting rid of the manipulation so that your brain can process information better again. "Squelching political debate" means stopping discussion that attempts to manipulate, and so on. Since the tools used for manipulation are currently better than ever before, and we don't like manipulation, I suppose the best approach would be to work on things that expose manipulation and/or defend people from it. edit: exercise - try to replace the word "politics" with "manipulation" in the article and re-read it. The point that we shouldn't burry our head in the sand still stands, but the reasons why that happens become much clearer.
  • marvin 9y ago
    Politics, from my Norwegian social studies textbook, is defined as "the subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society". Nothing to do with manipulation there. The same definition can be used for office politics. Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't carry them.
    • spion 9y ago
      Thats a fairly naive way of looking at it. Modern politics is all about manipulation (mostly emotional manipulation) from all sides, even those that fight for just causes. Simply laying down the facts and research about what we know is not enough to change people's minds. Instead, political messages are crafted to have emotional impact: the goal is to cause people to feel empathy, outrage, shame, fear etc depending on the circumstances.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > The same definition can be used for office politics. > Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't carry them. ... which is pretty much the exact meaning of the term "office politics". You don't talk about "office politics" when people get rewarded appropriately for their contribution to the company. You only talk about it in the context of e.g. sucking up to managers, backstabbing cow-orkers, taking credit for something you didn't do, etc. As for the government-type politics, "the subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society" is as good a definition as "the subject of distributing land and wealth of a society" is a good definition of war. It's technically true, yet totally misses the important and problematic aspects of it. Definitions are a way to draw a broad-stroked border in thingspace, so that you know the general area in which the meaning of a word lies. Nothing more.
• defkev 9y ago
  >THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" ... Next time read the license.txt
• johngalt 9y ago
  You know how you have that hacker meetup, or small conference that starts off as all meaty tech topics? How great that feels to be able to learn/teach/demonstrate advanced topics knowing that everyone is on the same page. Then gradually money/business interests get involved to the point that the fundamental flavor of the group changes, and the first ones to leave are the most interesting. Five years later it's just a bunch of business/sales guys in suits giving power point presentations to each other. Of course no one would say that money, or business interests aren't important, but something has been lost here that is difficult to rebuild. It's true that we should all consider the ethical ramifications of what we do, but opening the floodgates on politics will have the cost of reducing the utility of HN. The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the day. I miss Erlang day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145
  • maze-le 9y ago
    >> You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang Interesting concept, but, I (and I guess I am not alone on this one) would have found this particular topic extra interesting, and would have generated a few more site-interactions this way (instead of the other way around). But I can understand the gist of it...
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Yeah, that's the point. People like you would stay, people who want cheap news discussions would leave.
  • eksemplar 9y ago
    You know, I think you could actually swap out "tech" with "political", in your first sentence, and make everything you said equally true about politics. Because most of what actually happens in politics, starts with passionate talented people, who are creating brilliant new ways to do things better. The more groundbreaking something new is, the more the businessmen take over. Only in politics it's the bureaucracy and career politicians rather than shareholders and MBAs (though there are more and more MBAs on the political scene as well). I recently wrote major parts of the digitization strategy for the municipality where I work, and I participate in a lot of multi-municipality "unions" where we're working out how to digitize our future, so I may be a bit colored, but I see a lot of similarities between making politics and creating new tech.
• happy-go-lucky 9y ago
  > too busy to improve the world I would say I'm just busy trying to improve the world.
• wordupmaking 9y ago
  You're downvoted because you're exactly right. People on here generally can't handle inconvenient truths that include themselves. Never trust a person who can't rend their garments. > This generation No. Resoundingly NO! These smug clowns can't speak for anything and anyone. They're not even a generation, just farts in the wind. Even just 1% of the people paying attention outweigh them easily, and at any rate, the world belongs to those who genuinely care about it. Period, anyone who disagrees can come fight me. Think less "no child left behind" and more "Noah's Ark"; they had their chance, they made their choice, let's not be held hostage by them. At the very least, let them queue after those who are not ungrateful.
  • PythonicAlpha 9y ago
    I fear, you are right. Every time, I speak out for the truth on HN, I am down voted continuously, only half-hearted tech-blabla is suffered here. What adds up hat HN: Any discussion about important future stuff is instantly penalized by the system here. I really regret to have registered at all. Just doing geek-stuff and enjoying the live as techie is just to hollow for me. It really makes me sad.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > Every time, I speak out for the truth on HN, I am down voted continuously, only half-hearted tech-blabla is suffered here. Not every. Be precise. I checked. > Any discussion about important future stuff is instantly penalized by the system here. I disagree. Just browse the front page history if you don't believe me. There's plenty of discussions about important future stuff that's hanging on the front page every week. It's just that we have a strong quality expectation here, both in terms of posted articles and the discussions they generate. > I really regret to have registered at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ > Just doing geek-stuff and enjoying the live as techie is just to hollow for me. It really makes me sad. And I agree. It's hollow for me too. Personally however, I find politics to be one of the least effective and least efficient way of contributing to betterment of the world. Many people on HN disagree with me about that. But either way, lots of people are interested in things outside the tech sphere. It's just that when people are interesting in changing things, they're interesting in actually changing things - and not being sidetracked by ego-based flamewars.
• ivanhoe 9y ago
  In many people's view just being broadly aware of political situation around you is not enough anymore, they seem to believe that you need to have a strong emotions about (certain) political subjects, you need to take actions... even though for the most of time they don't do anything constructive about it either, except for venting off the frustrations on twitter or with friends over a beer. Which is perfectly OK, I do it all the time, but you need to be aware that some people just don't get that much emotionally involved in politics as you do. And that it's perfectly OK, because not taking active part in politics is also a form of politics. IMHO one should be free to choose his role in the society, without being forced into one or the other by peer pressure.
• randallsquared 9y ago
  Explicitly talking about politics is exactly what everyone who doesn't have any access to long levers is doing. Using those levers to accomplish something doesn't necessarily look like "doing politics". It might instead look like writing the bitcoin whitepaper, or running some tor exit nodes, or just improving wikipedia.
• thedevil 9y ago
  It's not that politics don't matter, it's that political discussions are not just useless - they're harmful. Political discussions almost always become emotional, rather than intellectual, discussions. They work on the wrong part of the brain. Virtually everyone takes absurd positions and then viciously attacks their fellow human beings who take a different absurd position.
• humanrebar 9y ago
  The irony in this entire thread is that sufficiently broad technical leadership is indistinguishable from organizational politics. It's all about talking stakeholders into doing "the right thing". I would love to just be able to solve Big Problems by hacking on them, but the more experience I get, the more I find that the biggest roadblocks involve changing minds, not changing code.
  • kaiku 9y ago
    Is organizational politics inevitable once you reach a certain size? Any ideas or lessons in avoiding politics in favor of solving problems – short of a mind meld?
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      The less people are there in a group and the less formal the area, the less organizational politics. The more difficult the problem, the more people you need to tackle it. Problems are made simpler by better tools (and smarter people). Idea: make more tools reducing complex problems to something tractable by small groups of people. Couple that with freedom of association and let people self-organize.
• guscost 9y ago
  Are you kidding me? It's not that I'm not political, but this isn't a place for doing anything with politics, it's for hacking and talking about that. Go away with this crap. Politics is OK to get into but I skip over any comments that directly provoke flame wars. I don't flag articles but I sure did flag this. And I deleted a personal insult from that first part. What are you thinking??
• yellowapple 9y ago
  "The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers, far longer than you’d normally be able to achieve comes with some obligations." If this is true, then "some obligations" would almost certainly include a reluctance to abuse those long levers or alienate a large swath of users. Power ought to be used responsibly. Back to reality, though, the reason why hackers and other tech-minded folk are averse to politics is the exacy reason why they're hackers: because politics is about as far away from the hacker ethic as possible. It'd be like asking a racecar driver to take up an interest in gardening; yeah, some NASCAR drivers can probably grow one hell of a vegetable patch, but it ain't exactly something one could or should expect them to do. Hackers would rather focus on being immune to politics. It should be no surprise, then, that they tend gravitate toward things like cryptocurrencies and other technologies resistant to governmental control (or providing a means for such resistance).
• euske 9y ago
  I tend to think of politics as resource arbitration. Say, you have limited resources (as we all do) and there are too many contenders who want to settle this without resorting to any sort of violence, then you need pretty much politics. Technically, a kernel scheduling algorithm or packet forwarding algorithm are politics too (hence they're called "policy"). The problem is that the real world is so messy and complex and has too many variables unlike CS stuff that we can hardly reach any sensible solution in a timely way. In theory we can tackle on politics in a somewhat objective manner but it's typically waay harder than any software project.
  • pdfernhout 9y ago
    See the book: "Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making" by Deborah Stone for an exploration of this issue of resource arbitration and politics. One simple example she uses is how do you divide up birthday cake? Equal pieces? What if come people arrive late to the party after you start cutting the cake and giving out pieces? What if some people are full but others have not had dinner yet? What if some people don't like the pieces with chocolate icing? While we can be "objective" within a set of established priorities, we can't be objective about designing a set of priorities. Albert Einstein wrote on this in "Science and Religion" about how science can tell you about what is and how it is all connected, but it can't tell you what should be. One other point Stone she makes is that when people are on the outside of an organization they want transparency of the decision making process -- while then the same exact people move to the inside of an organization they suddenly have many reasons why they want decision should be opaque. "Yes, Minister" has a great comedy episode on that called "Open Government".
• c-smile 9y ago
  Technology development does directly affect trajectory of where the humanity go as the whole. Yes. But I think that HN shall be the place where we can discuss how AI moves us from post-industrial to post-human world for example rather than particular fluctuations of the trajectory (a.k.a. realpolitik).
• lgleason 9y ago
  --A bit of a Rant--- I would argue that politics have infiltrated tech too much already. Don't believe me, try being a open, vocal Trump supporter or conservative at a major tech company in Silicon valley. You will be labeled a hateful, racist (fill in your favorite derogatory term) based on your political beliefs irregardless of your actual actions both at work or even in your personal life. Most people who are conservative are afraid to talk about their political beliefs due to the very real threat of losing their job. Look at Larry Garfield with Drupal. In the course of things stuff went as far as people in the Drupal association actively trying to ban conservatives among other things. The ruby community is just as bad. Rails Girls, Rails Bridge and later on tech404.io banned a woman because she was conservative https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-editor-172e93eccbb1 https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-editor-172e93ecc.... Then there was Opalgate where a community diversity leader tried to get a key contributor banned over his personal conservative beliefs. At this years Lambdaconf a black, first time speaker and military veteran, who grew up dirt poor in the projects, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps was blasted by a group of people because in his personal life he believes in the red pill, specifically, in his own words seeking the truth, not being anti-woman. As a moderate I really don't need to be concerned about someone's personal beliefs work with people or to even have a friendship with them. People are messy imperfect beings and there are many shades of grey with people and beliefs even when they hold views that I'm against. The only time that becomes an issue is if someone acts on it. IE: they steal from the company or murder someone etc. but that is not what I am talking about here. In all of the cases I mentioned here, these people did not act inappropriately in a professional setting. They didn't harass people, try to convince people about their personal beliefs, make sexist statements etc.. People who dedicate their lives to parsing out complex political/moral issues have a tough time doing it. If I go to a tech event I'm there to talk about tech not a political conference. The irony is that if people on all sides of the political issues have a place where they came come together and see someone as a human it also may be more effective than the division that the politicization of tech has been creating. Could that open us up to some bad, maybe, but politics being combined with tech are causing a lot of damage to the industry and people already. More importantly its not working. ---Rant over--
• luord 9y ago
  I'm yet to see a political discussion among people not dedicated to that or with no in-depth knowledge that actually accomplished[1] something. Several (hundreds) of posts/comments asserting opinions before dying out, or turning into a flamewar of insults, doesn't do much to change the world, as far as I see anyway. With that in mind, I don't see the point of promoting even more (it's not as if there isn't plenty of it already) political talk in HN. Is it important to be aware of political ramifications? Maybe, and that's why I personally follow several general news publications in my RSS feeds and not only tech blogs. Is it important to discuss it? Following what I said above, not, in my opinion. [1]: Even among knowledgeable persons, most of the accomplishment is swaying people from one side to the other and that can be good or bad.
• jasode 9y ago
  Jacques M, Presumably, you have read through the comments of the referenced thread[1]. If so, your essay omits a perspective about politics dicussion that many HN participants have. I'll attempt to summarize that position: 1) Yes, politics is extremely important. 2) Yes, politics touches every subject. 3) Yes, HN readers perform technical work in programming and hardware that affects politics, and vice versa. 4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of emotional comments instead of insightful ones. 5) The overall net effect of political discussion on HN is negative and we'd rather not have 1 of the valuable 30 slots of the front page taken up by a political story (e.g. "Trump denies climate change.") To reiterate the points above, it does not mean "climate change" is unimportant or that HN posters are "burying their head in the sand". That's a 1-dimensional caricature of the people who'd rather get their diet of political discourse from somewhere else besides HN. Therefore, it's possible to simultaneously hold the view that politics is super important and they don't want it on HN. Your essay doesn't address this perspective. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404
  • juliangoldsmith 9y ago
    I'd agree here. There's no reason to discuss politics on HN when there are numerous other places to do so. HN is a forum about technology and the startup world, let's keep it about that.
    • ry_ry 9y ago
      I kinda like the eclectic mix of articles linked on HN, and offers something in terms of content discovery.
      • juliangoldsmith 9y ago
        Why not just browse Reddit, then? r/all should give a good mix of content. If that's not to your taste, pick subreddits that interest you. EDIT: Sorry if this came off as snarky, but it wasn't intended that way.
• snth 9y ago
  Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political discussion. Maybe someone could build a forum that enforces civil discussion on political issues, either with automated or manual moderation, but Hacker News' moderation isn't nearly strict enough.
  • lotsoflumens 9y ago
    > Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political discussion. It's interesting that you think so, because this very discussion is extremely political, though perhaps meta-political. I think Hacker News may be unique in that political discussion can take place in a technical forum. The main barrier to thoughtful discussion may be the HN points system. I suspect that many insightful posts are not written due to self-censorship (fear of losing points). It's completely irrational of course, the points are meaningless, but when they are lost it can cause some distress. Nobody likes to lose a game.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political discussion. Hacker News does not disallow, and but for a brief experiment never has disallowed, political discussion. This non-existent ban does not, therefore, explain HN's quality.
    • snth 9y ago
      By "disallow", I'm talking about the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics ... and most people's willingness to support these guidelines with downvotes.
• cpt1138 9y ago
  The problem with politics and a great many other things is that talking about it is just talk. The vast majority of these problems are so outside the scope of any one's frame of reference and that creates two problems. Even the most educated of all people are only able to say "it's complicated" and most people only have opinions. It's glib to say that it will just turn into FB with everyone spouting their own un-educated opinions. But the reality is that unless you have actionable YES/NO type ideas, no one in the tech industry (or any other group) cares much about opinions other than their own.
• overgard 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure a lot of my favorite blogs on political subjects I discovered from reading hacker news, so im a bit skeptical of the premise. What I see get (mostly) rejected here is outright political activism -- but it doesn't seem like the place for that.
• jokoon 9y ago
  Even the Snowden leaks seemed not so important to me. Unless there is good oversight of who views what as long as there is due process, I don't see any reason to view those things as politically charged. Honestly I prefer having a nihilist point of view about politics in general, having a minimum amount of trust towards separation of power, always weighing the pro and cons, trying to guess what public opinion wants. It's much more freeing to see voters as children expecting things. Geopolitics are much more interesting honestly.
• appleflaxen 9y ago
  I think this title would be so much better without the ironic voice (or whatever the english term should be for saying one thing but meaning another). Something like "All technologists should care about politics" is so much more meaningful.
  • jokermatt999 9y ago
    "Sarcastic" would probably be the best fit. Good point also.
• braft 9y ago
  There are two claims here that should be considered separately. 1. Hackers are reluctant to acknowledge that their work has political ramifications. I believe this is true, and a problem. 2. Politics should be discussed more on HN. This is what most in the comments are disagreeing with, and I think with good reason. I like that HN avoids politics for the most part, but I'm also very glad to see someone point out that too many intelligent and technologically-inclined people insulate themselves from taking questions of values seriously.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    The topics of impact of tech on society, and of ethics in technology, are something that I too would like to see discussed more. Separated from politics as much as possible, per your point 2.
• mnarayan01 9y ago
  Political discussion tends to be of a fundamentally different type vis-à-vis technical discussion. Discussion mechanics like voting and flagging (particularly apropos here) which work well for technical discussions are often...lacking...when it comes to political ones. This is literally what much of the article is complaining about. If someone is pounding in nails with a screwdriver, I might suggest that they use a hammer instead. That doesn't mean that I think nails are beneath me.
• baizuo 9y ago
  It's strange to admit this, because I'm sure the OP doesn't share my worldview on most topics. But as a National Socialist I completely agree that everything has a political dimension. The code we write touches the lives of so many of our people. We should keep that in mind while we write it. Attempting to segregate one's work from the wellbeing of one's volk is a sign of a sick spirit.
  • erikb 9y ago
    Let me get that straight. You consider yourself a pro-active Nazi?
    • dang 9y ago
      Please don't feed trolls.
    • baizuo 9y ago
      Nazi is a slanderous term. I am a National Socialist. Because I believe that members of a volk should take care of one another.
  • dang 9y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470251 and marked it off-topic.
    • baizuo 9y ago
      I actually am a National Socialist. Does that warrant being plucked from a thread in and of itself?
• masondixon 9y ago
  Politics divides us. The more we can do together whilst holding opposing world views the better. If the left didn't excommunicate anyone they disagree with maybe there would be more a chance to have reasoned political discussions, but so far, anywhere online where there is a left-wing community, all opposing viewpoints are silenced. See Reddit, etc.