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Something that people around here seem to assume is that there's no malice in the things people post here. I think it's their inability to recognize politics w
by zedshaw 16y ago
Something that people around here seem to assume is that there's no malice in the things people post here. I think it's their inability to recognize politics when they see it. To me, if I know that Dave intentionally named an entire software project just to say "Fuck You" then his opinions don't matter.
But, everyone else will take what he says at face value, which is wrong. He has an agenda, and has had one for years. Unless people know that they can't form their own opinions.
Additionally, I already said the tests were crap in the original blog post. Not only is his opinion already biased, but he obviously didn't read the whole post. My reply was simply reconfirming what I already said, "Yes, you're right but I don't care since I wasn't testing that."
And frankly, I don't mind comments like this. They're easy to knock down and point out the flaws in their own logic. My only problem is with this community's continual belief that everything every person says has equal merit and validity, when it's obvious (as in Dave's case), it doesn't.
- abstractbill 16y agoSomething that people around here seem to assume is that there's no malice in the things people post here. Yes! Absolutely true, and one of the best things about HN. Comments are generally judged for their content, rather than by who posted them. I think it's their inability to recognize politics when they see it. I'm able to recognize politics when I'm looking for it. But again, I enjoy participating in a community where I generally don't have to care about politics. There's generally very little drama on HN. Honestly, I think the experiments you're doing with poll/epoll are really quite interesting and I enjoy reading about them. But the associated drama/agenda/conspiracy-theory stuff? I could do without having to trawl through that.
- zedshaw 16y agoThis is how people take advantage of you I'm afraid. There's a class of member of every community that knows you try to take each comment and person at their face value, and then uses that against you to shape your opinion. I know this, because I also did it for years, and sometimes even professionally. If you aren't careful and check what people say or check on who they are, you can get conned into believing something that's not true. So, fact check what people say, even me. Don't believe things I say just because you see my articles on here all the time. The actual quality of the person and their hidden agendas and biases matter much more than what they actually say.
- abstractbill 16y agoHonestly, I find I'm a lot happier if I act like there's no politics, even if I know deep down there probably is some of that happening. You've alluded in other comments to being the kind of person who enjoys the game of politics. I'm just not like that myself - I find that kind of thing really quite dull. If HN ever became more about the personalities than the content, I wouldn't bother "checking up on who people are" or seeing if what they say is shaped by some weird agenda. I'd just leave.
- tptacek 16y agoTo me, if I know that Dave intentionally named an entire software project just to say "Fuck You" then his opinions don't matter. Sorry, Zed, but that's simply not true.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]