10 ms·

Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

147 points by mudil 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
huac 9y ago
> But in one of his final attempts to normalize relations with Cuba, President Barack Obama in January ended the program, which had allowed Cuban doctors stationed in other countries to get permanent residency visas for the United States. When I visited Cuba this spring, there was a palpable level of resentment towards Obama for this change, as well as the end of the 'wet feet dry feet' policy [1]. Tourism dollars are good but probably not worth giving up 'plan B.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy
- microcolonel 9y ago
  It's funny how the first priority of the Cuban government in those negotiations was to prevent the people from being able to leave. The second priority was to pimp out the people for more pocket money. Now that's Progressive.™
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
You know I can't really feel their plight. Take this: >Hundreds of miles away, in Minas Gerais State, Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment. “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.” Is that not the point? The communist government allows anybody to attend their very good medical schools totally for free. This doctor hasn't even made it to 34 and she wants to opt out, how many 34 y/o american doctors are even close to paying down their debt? Seems weird to come from a country which is explicitly organized around giving everybody a chance to succeed and then upon success saying, yeah but I don't like paying for it.
- nradov 9y ago
  Cuba is explicitly organized around keeping the Castros and their cronies in power. Propaganda aside, giving everybody a chance to succeed was never an actual organizing principle.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Maybe so but Cuban doctors hardly strike me as an example of people trammeled by the system.
  - jondubois 9y ago
    I think that there is a bit of truth to both arguments. There are a lot of very smart people in the west who never had the chance to study medicine (there seem to be a lot of American janitors with high IQs...) - Under a communist regime, those who are mentally able to become a doctor can generally do so; in the west there are many financial and social hurdles. Communism removes the element of luck from the system. I don't think it's quite fair to portray the doctors as having being treated unfairly though I also understand that it might feel that way.
    - nradov 9y ago
      That was never how it worked in communist countries. Admission to medical schools and other advanced education was often based more on political reliability (Party membership), family connections, and outright bribes. Sure some people made it on merit, but communism never removed the element of luck from the system.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I expect it largely comes down to them not defining success the way you are here.
- chongli 9y ago
  Why is it weird? Humans don't like to pay for the meal they ate yesterday. Far better to focus on tomorrow.
- 9y ago
jwilliams 9y ago
In Cuba often tourist dollars greatly outstrip the local economy. So you're ending up with a situation where qualified doctors are moving in to tourism - waiters, doormen - to earn more money.
- smt88 9y ago
  Where did you learn about this? I'd like to investigate in more detail.
  - kilroy123 9y ago
    I heard the same thing from locals when I was there. I have no other evidence to support this.
    - wcfields 9y ago
      Same here; evidence I have to support is that the ONLY people with (newer) cars [1] were Airbnb hosts. My host not only owned a late-model Suzuki 4door but also was getting into the business of "flipping" old apartments into Airbnbs/Casa particular. Since he had 24 hour access to the internet (somehow?? [2]) he also acted as the agent for other Airbnbs for people that didn't have access. [1] Of course there were people with the old cars, but these were passed down and are, as I understand it, required by law to act as a mini-bus service. [2] Although internet in Cuba is only officially available by buying a hourly code on a scratcher card from the telephone company and then Wifi is in the parks in Havana, I did notice bootleg Wifi SSIDs when walking the streets. They were easy to spot even without "war-walking" since they are a good 1/2 km from any nearby park and had usually a dozen folks on their phones browsing Facebook or using Skype. I suspect it's either an insider connection at the telephone company OR a clandestine Directway / Hughesnet satellite (there are NO visible dishes in Cuba, I believe it must be illegal).
      - wmil 9y ago
        Key West to Havana is only 170 km or so. Can you set up a microwave / laser link over that distance?
Klockan 9y ago
> The pastor was outraged to learn that, under the terms of their employment, Cuban doctors earn only about a quarter of the amount the Brazilian government pays Cuba for their services. This is how Sweden finances their free education as well, it is called taxes. The problem isn't with how Cuba treats specifically doctors but how Cuba refuses to let people emigrate in general.
- nslav 9y ago
  Yes that confused me a bit as well... I work for a US-based engineering company and they bill clients 3 - 4x what I earn for my work. Am I misunderstanding something about the article?
  - mark_edward 9y ago
    Yes. It's propaganda.
    - curun1r 9y ago
      It's propaganda, but it still points to a system of perverse incentives that the Cuban Government should address. My parents took a bicycling trip to Cuba a number of years ago. Their guide had a wife who was a doctor. He made ~20x what she did because he earned his money by serving foreigners. So in a country that tries to make everyone equal, there are still tiers of wealth and the people in the upper tiers are the ones who are arguably doing the least valuable work for their society. Note that this is a problem not limited to communist countries like Cuba. In America, in particular, we have this problem when it comes to our teachers. Teaching the next generation is one of the most important jobs we have and, yet, the pay is so low that the best people for the job are disincentivized to go into that profession. When a hedge fund manager managing teacher pensions out-earns an entire school faculty who are invested in his fund while underperforming the S&P, we too have a problem.
    - wooter 9y ago
      no. it isn't.
  - 9y ago
seanalltogether 9y ago
Am I right in assuming this is very similar to most work abroad agreements? I work for a company AAA that sponsors my visa to work in Brazil. If i want to leave AAA, I must go back to America or find someone else willing to sponsor my work visa? Additionally my company may be charging the client 2x-4x what they pay me.
- hellothere007 9y ago
  well, you can find someone willing to sponsor your visa but they can't, they aren't allowed to, and if the leave the "mission" they are considered traitors or deserters and get exiled for 8 years
throwawayknecht 9y ago
This feels like an awfully insensitive metaphor given Afrocuban history and its role in Castro's revolution. You might be getting an awfully short end of a stick, but if you're getting free education and free health care at that level, you are not justified invoking slavery as a comparison, given the history there.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people miserable, so miserable in fact, that multitudes of people risked their lives to flee it. TLDR: Nazism and Communism should be in the same bucket.
- baby 9y ago
  What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? People are dying because of this shit too.
  - dlokshin 9y ago
    45 million people died over 4 years in Mao's Great Leap Forward from starvation and execution. 10+ million people died in Stalin's gulags alone. Are you really trying to equate this with healthcare in America?
    - baby 9y ago
      Totally, we're past these times and living in a more stable and richer world, how is it that we're still letting people die because of competition? I think it's a fair comparison in today's standards.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? Well if you're going to be sensationalist about it. What about Socialism, where your material needs are provided for through extreme violence, via theft; using guns to take from one person against their will, to give to another. The entire foundation of all forms of Socialism, require extreme violence as a means to redistribute and at no time can that violence be relaxed, for it works at all times against human nature and self-interest. It's also why every nation that has ever attempted Socialism has collapsed into perpetual barbaric violence against its people, holding them as State slaves with few rights: Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, East Germany, Mao's China, Venezuela, North Vietnam, National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, the numerous Soviet satellites, Socialist Ba'athist Iraq, and so on.
nsxwolf 9y ago
The SV atitude on communism threads is always interesting. Communism is great, quit whining you greedy doctors. Helping people is its own reward! But for me? No no, I'm a developer! I deserve my salary!
- varjag 9y ago
  I once reported to a department manager who was an anarchist. He had pretty tight control structure in the org without any disregard to hierarchy.
  - partiallypro 9y ago
    Anarchy isn't the lack of governance or hierarchy, it's the lack of a government. Not an anarchist, they generally have the worst possible ideas...but he wasn't really a hypocrite for this.
- pdpgxpgxydx 9y ago
  Do we?
- taw55 9y ago
  You sometimes find threads full of libertarians too, it's weird...
- dang 9y ago
  You may have fallen prey to the 'HN commenters are in SV' fallacy. HN long ago became an international community, and even in the US its readers are mostly outside SV. The majority of HN commenters aren't that well-disposed toward SV. Users here have a broad range of politics, just like any sufficiently random large population sample. The ones who feel strongly about X are more likely motivated to post to X threads. So what you're seeing is not a high communism rate in general, just in (lord help us) communism threads. In other words the sample-bias fairy is afoot. To round out the bias list: a good test when you think you see a pattern on HN is to ask if the same is true of humans in general. We're seeing a return of classic ideological battles (e.g. communism vs. capitalism), but that's also true in society at large. It's the macro trend; HN just gets wet in the same rainstorm. I guess history didn't end after all!
jws 9y ago
The doctors are outraged at only getting paid 25% of their billing rate. Back in the '90s I worked with a lot of engineers billed out to customers by Digital at $200/hr who were paid less than $50/hr. They certainly didn't consider themselves slaves.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Back in the 90's you could have a better life with $50 an hour than today with twice that.
- spraak 9y ago
  That's not a 1:1 example.
- wooter 9y ago
  were they legally able to switch employers?
danjoc 9y ago
They should come to America. Doctors are never overworked here.
0xbear 9y ago
Yup. The only people who like communism are the ones who have never lived under a communist regime. Ask any Eastern European over 40 about what that’s like before you make any rash decisions out of ignorance.
hellothere007 9y ago
I had the luck of leaving Cuba 4 years ago and then my family came as well, my mother was a doctor for 25 years and I had asked her a lot of questions about why doctors left to go on a "mission" to any of these countries. One of the incentives the Cuban Government used to use to make doctors go to those "missions" as they call it in Cuba, is that once they have finished it they were allowed to buy a house or car, I say allowed because until recently you couldn't buy any of it without the government authorization. Nowadays they used another technique which is; we will allow you to bring back 1 container ( those in ships) full of whatever you want, as usual the with the government they haven't been allowing it even though those doctors already spent 2-3 years on the "mission" so those people went there with that promise and it turn got nothing.In Cuba the whole idea of making 1.3k/month sounds great and many doctors blindly agree to go without knowing first how much they will spend on food/clothes/supplements etc, but of course they can't really look up that information because internet until recently was non existent and nowadays WIFI access cost $1.5/hr ( CUC) which is their salary of a fully day. Of course that's modern day slavery, the government acts as your owner, they set the condition and can change it at will, if you don't abide them, well you have two options: - back to Cuba in 24 hours and be prepare to have your doctor's license removed - stay in the country and be exiled for 8 years. PS: Until recently, doctors in Cuba weren't allowed to leave the country under any circumstances except for "missions", the government train of thoughts is " I own all these people".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dang 9y ago
All: Generic discussions about communism and other grand ideological themes are off topic here. Because we're communists? No, because there's nothing new to say about them, at least not on an internet forum—if you've really found some, you should write a book. As a topic gets bigger and bigger, what one can say gets less meaningful. We end up in the space of 'what's new is not good and what's good is not new', and that is one of the lame squares on the intellectual curiosity board. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tmccrmck 9y ago
  Perhaps we should revisit the idea of a political detox? I for one have been noticing the signal-to-noise ratio on HN has been lowering over the past year. Discussions have become less about the content of the article and more about the title or some other related fact. Technical discussions are becoming increasingly derailed by bike-shedding, ideology, and flame wars. Hell, I bet even the average word count per comment is down. In signal processing, when noise becomes too high we implement a filter. It doesn't have to be too harsh of a filter, perhaps a band-stop filter which passes most frequencies unaltered but attenuates those in a specific range to very low levels.
  - dang 9y ago
    That didn't work, because the question of how to define 'political' is itself highly political. We knew that before we tried the detox experiment but boy did we know it afterwards. And it wouldn't be in HN's mandate (like, not at all) to try to limit it to technical stories. Our core audience, even if it feels like a minority sometimes, is readers who are interested in both technical and non-technical things. > the signal-to-noise ratio on HN has been lowering over the past year People have been saying that since the beginning. Is it true? Maybe, but there are strong biases (e.g. it always feels like things are getting worse) and it's hard to measure.
    - _dps 9y ago
      I agree that defining "political" is itself partly political. Having said that, and just as my 2 cents, I think the experiment was not run long enough to be conclusive. People always complain with changes. I think it's reasonable to believe that people who actively want politics on HN would be on the noisier end of the spectrum of complainers. Any attempt to get these conversations off HN was bound, initially, to cause a loud and pointed reaction from one subset of users. But people also adapt and forget. I think there's a real chance that after, say, 6-8 weeks, HN would have established a "new normal" and people would know that it's not a place to discuss the outrage of the week, just as it's already known it's not a place to discuss the latest celebrity-dancing-baking-show scandals. I'll reiterate that it's a very tricky problem. But I don't agree that there was conclusive evidence that the political detox "didn't work" -- it was canceled long before a steady state was reached.

147 points by mudil 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

huac 9y ago

> But in one of his final attempts to normalize relations with Cuba, President Barack Obama in January ended the program, which had allowed Cuban doctors stationed in other countries to get permanent residency visas for the United States. When I visited Cuba this spring, there was a palpable level of resentment towards Obama for this change, as well as the end of the 'wet feet dry feet' policy [1]. Tourism dollars are good but probably not worth giving up 'plan B.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_feet,_dry_feet_policy

microcolonel 9y ago
It's funny how the first priority of the Cuban government in those negotiations was to prevent the people from being able to leave. The second priority was to pimp out the people for more pocket money. Now that's Progressive.™

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

You know I can't really feel their plight. Take this: >Hundreds of miles away, in Minas Gerais State, Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment. “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.” Is that not the point? The communist government allows anybody to attend their very good medical schools totally for free. This doctor hasn't even made it to 34 and she wants to opt out, how many 34 y/o american doctors are even close to paying down their debt? Seems weird to come from a country which is explicitly organized around giving everybody a chance to succeed and then upon success saying, yeah but I don't like paying for it.

nradov 9y ago
Cuba is explicitly organized around keeping the Castros and their cronies in power. Propaganda aside, giving everybody a chance to succeed was never an actual organizing principle.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Maybe so but Cuban doctors hardly strike me as an example of people trammeled by the system.
- jondubois 9y ago
  I think that there is a bit of truth to both arguments. There are a lot of very smart people in the west who never had the chance to study medicine (there seem to be a lot of American janitors with high IQs...) - Under a communist regime, those who are mentally able to become a doctor can generally do so; in the west there are many financial and social hurdles. Communism removes the element of luck from the system. I don't think it's quite fair to portray the doctors as having being treated unfairly though I also understand that it might feel that way.
  - nradov 9y ago
    That was never how it worked in communist countries. Admission to medical schools and other advanced education was often based more on political reliability (Party membership), family connections, and outright bribes. Sure some people made it on merit, but communism never removed the element of luck from the system.
maxerickson 9y ago
I expect it largely comes down to them not defining success the way you are here.
chongli 9y ago
Why is it weird? Humans don't like to pay for the meal they ate yesterday. Far better to focus on tomorrow.
9y ago

jwilliams 9y ago

In Cuba often tourist dollars greatly outstrip the local economy. So you're ending up with a situation where qualified doctors are moving in to tourism - waiters, doormen - to earn more money.

smt88 9y ago
Where did you learn about this? I'd like to investigate in more detail.
- kilroy123 9y ago
  I heard the same thing from locals when I was there. I have no other evidence to support this.
  - wcfields 9y ago
    Same here; evidence I have to support is that the ONLY people with (newer) cars [1] were Airbnb hosts. My host not only owned a late-model Suzuki 4door but also was getting into the business of "flipping" old apartments into Airbnbs/Casa particular. Since he had 24 hour access to the internet (somehow?? [2]) he also acted as the agent for other Airbnbs for people that didn't have access. [1] Of course there were people with the old cars, but these were passed down and are, as I understand it, required by law to act as a mini-bus service. [2] Although internet in Cuba is only officially available by buying a hourly code on a scratcher card from the telephone company and then Wifi is in the parks in Havana, I did notice bootleg Wifi SSIDs when walking the streets. They were easy to spot even without "war-walking" since they are a good 1/2 km from any nearby park and had usually a dozen folks on their phones browsing Facebook or using Skype. I suspect it's either an insider connection at the telephone company OR a clandestine Directway / Hughesnet satellite (there are NO visible dishes in Cuba, I believe it must be illegal).
    - wmil 9y ago
      Key West to Havana is only 170 km or so. Can you set up a microwave / laser link over that distance?

Klockan 9y ago

> The pastor was outraged to learn that, under the terms of their employment, Cuban doctors earn only about a quarter of the amount the Brazilian government pays Cuba for their services. This is how Sweden finances their free education as well, it is called taxes. The problem isn't with how Cuba treats specifically doctors but how Cuba refuses to let people emigrate in general.

nslav 9y ago
Yes that confused me a bit as well... I work for a US-based engineering company and they bill clients 3 - 4x what I earn for my work. Am I misunderstanding something about the article?
- mark_edward 9y ago
  Yes. It's propaganda.
  - curun1r 9y ago
    It's propaganda, but it still points to a system of perverse incentives that the Cuban Government should address. My parents took a bicycling trip to Cuba a number of years ago. Their guide had a wife who was a doctor. He made ~20x what she did because he earned his money by serving foreigners. So in a country that tries to make everyone equal, there are still tiers of wealth and the people in the upper tiers are the ones who are arguably doing the least valuable work for their society. Note that this is a problem not limited to communist countries like Cuba. In America, in particular, we have this problem when it comes to our teachers. Teaching the next generation is one of the most important jobs we have and, yet, the pay is so low that the best people for the job are disincentivized to go into that profession. When a hedge fund manager managing teacher pensions out-earns an entire school faculty who are invested in his fund while underperforming the S&P, we too have a problem.
  - wooter 9y ago
    no. it isn't.
- 9y ago

seanalltogether 9y ago

Am I right in assuming this is very similar to most work abroad agreements? I work for a company AAA that sponsors my visa to work in Brazil. If i want to leave AAA, I must go back to America or find someone else willing to sponsor my work visa? Additionally my company may be charging the client 2x-4x what they pay me.

hellothere007 9y ago
well, you can find someone willing to sponsor your visa but they can't, they aren't allowed to, and if the leave the "mission" they are considered traitors or deserters and get exiled for 8 years

throwawayknecht 9y ago

This feels like an awfully insensitive metaphor given Afrocuban history and its role in Castro's revolution. You might be getting an awfully short end of a stick, but if you're getting free education and free health care at that level, you are not justified invoking slavery as a comparison, given the history there.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people miserable, so miserable in fact, that multitudes of people risked their lives to flee it. TLDR: Nazism and Communism should be in the same bucket.

baby 9y ago
What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? People are dying because of this shit too.
- dlokshin 9y ago
  45 million people died over 4 years in Mao's Great Leap Forward from starvation and execution. 10+ million people died in Stalin's gulags alone. Are you really trying to equate this with healthcare in America?
  - baby 9y ago
    Totally, we're past these times and living in a more stable and richer world, how is it that we're still letting people die because of competition? I think it's a fair comparison in today's standards.
- adventured 9y ago
  > What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? Well if you're going to be sensationalist about it. What about Socialism, where your material needs are provided for through extreme violence, via theft; using guns to take from one person against their will, to give to another. The entire foundation of all forms of Socialism, require extreme violence as a means to redistribute and at no time can that violence be relaxed, for it works at all times against human nature and self-interest. It's also why every nation that has ever attempted Socialism has collapsed into perpetual barbaric violence against its people, holding them as State slaves with few rights: Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, East Germany, Mao's China, Venezuela, North Vietnam, National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, the numerous Soviet satellites, Socialist Ba'athist Iraq, and so on.

nsxwolf 9y ago

The SV atitude on communism threads is always interesting. Communism is great, quit whining you greedy doctors. Helping people is its own reward! But for me? No no, I'm a developer! I deserve my salary!

varjag 9y ago
I once reported to a department manager who was an anarchist. He had pretty tight control structure in the org without any disregard to hierarchy.
- partiallypro 9y ago
  Anarchy isn't the lack of governance or hierarchy, it's the lack of a government. Not an anarchist, they generally have the worst possible ideas...but he wasn't really a hypocrite for this.
pdpgxpgxydx 9y ago
Do we?
taw55 9y ago
You sometimes find threads full of libertarians too, it's weird...
dang 9y ago
You may have fallen prey to the 'HN commenters are in SV' fallacy. HN long ago became an international community, and even in the US its readers are mostly outside SV. The majority of HN commenters aren't that well-disposed toward SV. Users here have a broad range of politics, just like any sufficiently random large population sample. The ones who feel strongly about X are more likely motivated to post to X threads. So what you're seeing is not a high communism rate in general, just in (lord help us) communism threads. In other words the sample-bias fairy is afoot. To round out the bias list: a good test when you think you see a pattern on HN is to ask if the same is true of humans in general. We're seeing a return of classic ideological battles (e.g. communism vs. capitalism), but that's also true in society at large. It's the macro trend; HN just gets wet in the same rainstorm. I guess history didn't end after all!

jws 9y ago

The doctors are outraged at only getting paid 25% of their billing rate. Back in the '90s I worked with a lot of engineers billed out to customers by Digital at $200/hr who were paid less than $50/hr. They certainly didn't consider themselves slaves.

user5994461 9y ago
Back in the 90's you could have a better life with $50 an hour than today with twice that.
spraak 9y ago
That's not a 1:1 example.
wooter 9y ago
were they legally able to switch employers?

danjoc 9y ago

They should come to America. Doctors are never overworked here.

0xbear 9y ago

Yup. The only people who like communism are the ones who have never lived under a communist regime. Ask any Eastern European over 40 about what that’s like before you make any rash decisions out of ignorance.

hellothere007 9y ago

I had the luck of leaving Cuba 4 years ago and then my family came as well, my mother was a doctor for 25 years and I had asked her a lot of questions about why doctors left to go on a "mission" to any of these countries. One of the incentives the Cuban Government used to use to make doctors go to those "missions" as they call it in Cuba, is that once they have finished it they were allowed to buy a house or car, I say allowed because until recently you couldn't buy any of it without the government authorization. Nowadays they used another technique which is; we will allow you to bring back 1 container ( those in ships) full of whatever you want, as usual the with the government they haven't been allowing it even though those doctors already spent 2-3 years on the "mission" so those people went there with that promise and it turn got nothing.In Cuba the whole idea of making 1.3k/month sounds great and many doctors blindly agree to go without knowing first how much they will spend on food/clothes/supplements etc, but of course they can't really look up that information because internet until recently was non existent and nowadays WIFI access cost $1.5/hr ( CUC) which is their salary of a fully day. Of course that's modern day slavery, the government acts as your owner, they set the condition and can change it at will, if you don't abide them, well you have two options: - back to Cuba in 24 hours and be prepare to have your doctor's license removed - stay in the country and be exiled for 8 years. PS: Until recently, doctors in Cuba weren't allowed to leave the country under any circumstances except for "missions", the government train of thoughts is " I own all these people".

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dang 9y ago

All: Generic discussions about communism and other grand ideological themes are off topic here. Because we're communists? No, because there's nothing new to say about them, at least not on an internet forum—if you've really found some, you should write a book. As a topic gets bigger and bigger, what one can say gets less meaningful. We end up in the space of 'what's new is not good and what's good is not new', and that is one of the lame squares on the intellectual curiosity board. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

tmccrmck 9y ago
Perhaps we should revisit the idea of a political detox? I for one have been noticing the signal-to-noise ratio on HN has been lowering over the past year. Discussions have become less about the content of the article and more about the title or some other related fact. Technical discussions are becoming increasingly derailed by bike-shedding, ideology, and flame wars. Hell, I bet even the average word count per comment is down. In signal processing, when noise becomes too high we implement a filter. It doesn't have to be too harsh of a filter, perhaps a band-stop filter which passes most frequencies unaltered but attenuates those in a specific range to very low levels.
- dang 9y ago
  That didn't work, because the question of how to define 'political' is itself highly political. We knew that before we tried the detox experiment but boy did we know it afterwards. And it wouldn't be in HN's mandate (like, not at all) to try to limit it to technical stories. Our core audience, even if it feels like a minority sometimes, is readers who are interested in both technical and non-technical things. > the signal-to-noise ratio on HN has been lowering over the past year People have been saying that since the beginning. Is it true? Maybe, but there are strong biases (e.g. it always feels like things are getting worse) and it's hard to measure.
  - _dps 9y ago
    I agree that defining "political" is itself partly political. Having said that, and just as my 2 cents, I think the experiment was not run long enough to be conclusive. People always complain with changes. I think it's reasonable to believe that people who actively want politics on HN would be on the noisier end of the spectrum of complainers. Any attempt to get these conversations off HN was bound, initially, to cause a loud and pointed reaction from one subset of users. But people also adapt and forget. I think there's a real chance that after, say, 6-8 weeks, HN would have established a "new normal" and people would know that it's not a place to discuss the outrage of the week, just as it's already known it's not a place to discuss the latest celebrity-dancing-baking-show scandals. I'll reiterate that it's a very tricky problem. But I don't agree that there was conclusive evidence that the political detox "didn't work" -- it was canceled long before a steady state was reached.