5 ms·

> Can we save ourselves a really long, pointless political argument? Did you reach that conclusion based on personal experience? Because you were quite vocal a

by meritt 9y ago

> Can we save ourselves a really long, pointless political argument? Did you reach that conclusion based on personal experience? Because you were quite vocal and unfortunately prescient about it 395 days ago [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733024

sp332 9y ago
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- chrischen 9y ago
  You could say his incompetence is even greater than his ignorance.
- meritt 9y ago
  There's a lot I could point to but the most meaningful one that is that people were overwhelmingly complacent based on the assumption that Trump couldn't possibly win. This comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735404
  - fleitz 9y ago
    The delicious irony of seeing the losers not accept the results of the election was icing on a big stats cake. It was so obvious he was going to win if you looked at the raw polling data. Edit: I love how I still get downvoted a year later for stating the obvious. It’s funny how upset people get at those who tell the truth.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Ok yeah, that makes sense.
eighthnate 9y ago
"Paul Graham compared him to Stalin. Both Altman and Graham believe, like I do, that Trump is an existential threat to our democracy." Good god. It's crazy how politically driven people immediately demand nobody talk about politics as soon as they get their way. The guy was ranting and raving about end of democracy. Now that thiel is out, he wants everyone to be silent. Truly an "unhacker" type of mindset which has gained such a prominent foothold on HN. Censorship truly gives power to the people who shouldn't have it.
- meritt 9y ago
  Any sort of forum that enforces rampant censorship, mods personally scold users for looking into another users post history, and flags/deletes/bans any comments touching taboo topics (politics is the big one here) makes it very difficult to have a decent conversation. Couple that with the anonymity and rampant upvote/downvote based on disagreements (My comments on this thread rapidly oscillate between -5 and +5 -- it's crazy how enormous the pro-Trump population on HN actually is and how blissfully Silicon Valley pretends they don't exist) in an attempt to silence ideas you don't like.. Yeah it's really fucked up. We need a new discussion forum format, that isn't so easily manipulated like HN and Reddit due to vote manipulation.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    From past experience talking to people "on the other side" here on Hacker News, I agree with the mods that is better to stifle posts/threads that might become too controversial. There's plenty of places on the internet to have that kind of conversation, HN doesn't need to be everything to everyone.
    - meritt 9y ago
      HN is just as bad on language/technology wars though, and that doesn't get censored. Rampant vote manipulation on comments and story visibility in general leads to very pigeonholed ways of viewing things and leads to echo chambers that effectively shut down any conversation on topics which are viewed competitive to those that happen to be popular (or intentionally manipulated to be made popular) at the moment. Some examples of over the past decade: MongoDB, NodeJS, Docker, React, Tensorflow, Blockchain Regardless of the quality of the technologies listed above, anything negative about those topics (during their prime anyway -- it's acceptable to shit on MongoDB once again) would get downvoted/flagged to the point of not existing. My issue isn't particularly on removal of off-topic threads (e.g. no politics in HN), that's totally acceptable. What I don't agree with is removal (either by mods or by massive swarms of downvoting "users") of unpopular thoughts/ideas.
  - wfo 9y ago

by meritt 9y ago

sp332 9y ago

chrischen 9y ago
You could say his incompetence is even greater than his ignorance.
meritt 9y ago
There's a lot I could point to but the most meaningful one that is that people were overwhelmingly complacent based on the assumption that Trump couldn't possibly win. This comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12735404
- fleitz 9y ago
  The delicious irony of seeing the losers not accept the results of the election was icing on a big stats cake. It was so obvious he was going to win if you looked at the raw polling data. Edit: I love how I still get downvoted a year later for stating the obvious. It’s funny how upset people get at those who tell the truth.
- sp332 9y ago
  Ok yeah, that makes sense.

eighthnate 9y ago

"Paul Graham compared him to Stalin. Both Altman and Graham believe, like I do, that Trump is an existential threat to our democracy." Good god. It's crazy how politically driven people immediately demand nobody talk about politics as soon as they get their way. The guy was ranting and raving about end of democracy. Now that thiel is out, he wants everyone to be silent. Truly an "unhacker" type of mindset which has gained such a prominent foothold on HN. Censorship truly gives power to the people who shouldn't have it.

meritt 9y ago
Any sort of forum that enforces rampant censorship, mods personally scold users for looking into another users post history, and flags/deletes/bans any comments touching taboo topics (politics is the big one here) makes it very difficult to have a decent conversation. Couple that with the anonymity and rampant upvote/downvote based on disagreements (My comments on this thread rapidly oscillate between -5 and +5 -- it's crazy how enormous the pro-Trump population on HN actually is and how blissfully Silicon Valley pretends they don't exist) in an attempt to silence ideas you don't like.. Yeah it's really fucked up. We need a new discussion forum format, that isn't so easily manipulated like HN and Reddit due to vote manipulation.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  From past experience talking to people "on the other side" here on Hacker News, I agree with the mods that is better to stifle posts/threads that might become too controversial. There's plenty of places on the internet to have that kind of conversation, HN doesn't need to be everything to everyone.
  - meritt 9y ago
    HN is just as bad on language/technology wars though, and that doesn't get censored. Rampant vote manipulation on comments and story visibility in general leads to very pigeonholed ways of viewing things and leads to echo chambers that effectively shut down any conversation on topics which are viewed competitive to those that happen to be popular (or intentionally manipulated to be made popular) at the moment. Some examples of over the past decade: MongoDB, NodeJS, Docker, React, Tensorflow, Blockchain Regardless of the quality of the technologies listed above, anything negative about those topics (during their prime anyway -- it's acceptable to shit on MongoDB once again) would get downvoted/flagged to the point of not existing. My issue isn't particularly on removal of off-topic threads (e.g. no politics in HN), that's totally acceptable. What I don't agree with is removal (either by mods or by massive swarms of downvoting "users") of unpopular thoughts/ideas.
- wfo 9y ago