5 ms·

What if it's just an interesting historical fact? Does everything have to be jammed into the culturewar narrative?

jrs95 9y ago
I highly doubt that, it was an explicitly political and racial article. It could basically be summarized like: Yacob is the real creator of enlightenment ideas, and he’s morally pure unlike those evil racist white guys who just said a less good version of what he did.
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please stop using HN for ideological battle? This kind of argument is always predictable: people trading the same grievances and counter-grievances over and over. The culture wars and all that crap are beyond tedious, it's all off topic here, and the vast majority of HN users have zero interest in it. People shouldn't have to wade through sludge every time anything distantly related shows up. If you don't find this article interesting, that's fine, but please don't trash the thread for those who do. Alan Kay famously said that a new point of view is worth 80 IQ points. An ideology is worth -80.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    I apologize, I didn’t intend to pull the thread off topic. Clearly I was interpreting the article differently than most people were. I had only responded so strongly because it initially struck me as being ideological content.
    - dang 9y ago
      Thanks for such a neutral reply. I appreciate it, especially since my comment was on the harsh side. The article struck other people that way too, and I can see why. But this is precisely where HN commenters need to exercise a little self-discipline. If a comment is picking up on the obvious, hottest, most generic point that someone could make about the article, that's a different game than HN is supposed to be for. That's the hot public argument game. We're trying for something quite different here—call it the obscure curiosity game. We're looking for non-obvious insights, something unpredictable. The other game is more or less always the same, and is driven by very different emotions than curiosity. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that it doesn't belong here. It's off topic and it destroys what's on topic. This is most important when an article has enough material to support either kind of discussion, which I'd say was definitely the case here. I'd love to get better at explaining this, because I feel like if we could put it into just the right words, most HN users would see that it's in their interests to play the intended game and resist playing the unintended one.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It could be, but that would be an inaccurate and tendentious. I have the impression you didn't even read it all the way through.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    I didn’t just now so I may not be remembering it in full, but this was the impression I got when I read it before.

I highly doubt that, it was an explicitly political and racial article. It could basically be summarized like: Yacob is the real creator of enlightenment ideas, and he’s morally pure unlike those evil racist white guys who just said a less good version of what he did.

dang 9y ago
Would you please stop using HN for ideological battle? This kind of argument is always predictable: people trading the same grievances and counter-grievances over and over. The culture wars and all that crap are beyond tedious, it's all off topic here, and the vast majority of HN users have zero interest in it. People shouldn't have to wade through sludge every time anything distantly related shows up. If you don't find this article interesting, that's fine, but please don't trash the thread for those who do. Alan Kay famously said that a new point of view is worth 80 IQ points. An ideology is worth -80.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I apologize, I didn’t intend to pull the thread off topic. Clearly I was interpreting the article differently than most people were. I had only responded so strongly because it initially struck me as being ideological content.
  - dang 9y ago
    Thanks for such a neutral reply. I appreciate it, especially since my comment was on the harsh side. The article struck other people that way too, and I can see why. But this is precisely where HN commenters need to exercise a little self-discipline. If a comment is picking up on the obvious, hottest, most generic point that someone could make about the article, that's a different game than HN is supposed to be for. That's the hot public argument game. We're trying for something quite different here—call it the obscure curiosity game. We're looking for non-obvious insights, something unpredictable. The other game is more or less always the same, and is driven by very different emotions than curiosity. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that it doesn't belong here. It's off topic and it destroys what's on topic. This is most important when an article has enough material to support either kind of discussion, which I'd say was definitely the case here. I'd love to get better at explaining this, because I feel like if we could put it into just the right words, most HN users would see that it's in their interests to play the intended game and resist playing the unintended one.
anigbrowl 9y ago
It could be, but that would be an inaccurate and tendentious. I have the impression you didn't even read it all the way through.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I didn’t just now so I may not be remembering it in full, but this was the impression I got when I read it before.