5 ms·

> he actually WAS an bad actor in the past, so it's still hard to trust somebody If you don't forgive/forget, there is no incentive for the person to behave di

by bkor 9y ago

> he actually WAS an bad actor in the past, so it's still hard to trust somebody If you don't forgive/forget, there is no incentive for the person to behave differently. E.g. if someone once was involved with the police and as a result cannot get any proper job anymore, how would this individual ever change? Some countries seem to focused on punishing people for the rest of their lives. This sometimes under the assumption that people actually consider the impact of their actions before do it. Further, if a person is considered to be/treated as a criminal all the time then eventually they'll just behave as one.

AlgorithmicTime 9y ago
You forgive, you don't forget. You can't have a society where we just sweep people's past history under the rug. The only clues we have to future actions and intents are past actions.
spacehunt 9y ago
Since when did forget become acceptable? Do we just remove eg. the holocaust from history books now?
- neolefty 9y ago
  Yes, forgetting is sometimes inappropriate, but not every crime is the Holocaust. It's the norm in cases involving childhood offenses, for example—expunging one's juvenile record—and it's the reason for statutes of limitations.
merb 9y ago
> If you don't forgive/forget, there is no incentive for the person to behave differently. E.g. if someone once was involved with the police and as a result cannot get any proper job anymore, how would this individual ever change? Forgetting the past is bad. However if the person really changed!!! than it could be easy to get positive news and trust, no matter how your past was/is. You can't change the past, so maybe it's better to get remembered at the past and be better than you were. I did bad at my past as well. Should I forget it? Hell, no. Currently I changed a lot of myself to be a better person / harder worker, etc. I did not try to dismiss my past.
- maxmax 9y ago
  Is a mugshot of your DUI arrest (but no conviction) 20 years ago the first result of a google search for your name? No one is saying we should completely forget the past, but there needs to be recourse for people who are being treated unfairly.
  - 794CD01 9y ago
    Is a mugshot of your DUI arrest (but no conviction) 20 years ago the only remotely notable thing you've ever done in your life? If so, why shouldn't it be the first result of a search for your name? If not, why is it the first result?
    - chmod775 9y ago
      > If not, why is it the first result? Because google search rankings for any niche search strings are pretty meh. Basically anything with your full name in the URL / main body of the page will show up at the top. I filled the first two pages of results for my name with random stuff I control simply by creating profiles on carefully-chosen sites with my full name, as well as registering a bunch of domains that contain my full name. That was much easier than contacting the hundreds of news outlets who published my full name in a negative context to correct their lackluster or ambiguous journalism. There was a few notable exceptions where journalists (who all like to copy stories from each other, then copy that again) had distorted the story so far that they actually managed to confuse me with the perpetrator. In those cases I had the search results removed under the "right to be forgotten". Honestly I'd rather have the right to be forgotten in a world where bad journalism is the norm, and where trash like the Daily Mail, yellow press, and some kid with a smear campaign have so much power to destroy a persons reputation. Basically you shouldn't have to know what "SEO" means in order to fend off a smear campaign or simply bad journalism.
      - ygaf 9y ago
        I feel for you, out of curiosity did you create your profiles and sites purely to displace the bad results or did you also try to engineer your content to refute them?
jaclaz 9y ago
I often cite this (lesser known) G.K.Chesterton's essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641608

by bkor 9y ago

AlgorithmicTime 9y ago

You forgive, you don't forget. You can't have a society where we just sweep people's past history under the rug. The only clues we have to future actions and intents are past actions.

spacehunt 9y ago

Since when did forget become acceptable? Do we just remove eg. the holocaust from history books now?

neolefty 9y ago
Yes, forgetting is sometimes inappropriate, but not every crime is the Holocaust. It's the norm in cases involving childhood offenses, for example—expunging one's juvenile record—and it's the reason for statutes of limitations.

merb 9y ago

> If you don't forgive/forget, there is no incentive for the person to behave differently. E.g. if someone once was involved with the police and as a result cannot get any proper job anymore, how would this individual ever change? Forgetting the past is bad. However if the person really changed!!! than it could be easy to get positive news and trust, no matter how your past was/is. You can't change the past, so maybe it's better to get remembered at the past and be better than you were. I did bad at my past as well. Should I forget it? Hell, no. Currently I changed a lot of myself to be a better person / harder worker, etc. I did not try to dismiss my past.

maxmax 9y ago
Is a mugshot of your DUI arrest (but no conviction) 20 years ago the first result of a google search for your name? No one is saying we should completely forget the past, but there needs to be recourse for people who are being treated unfairly.
- 794CD01 9y ago
  Is a mugshot of your DUI arrest (but no conviction) 20 years ago the only remotely notable thing you've ever done in your life? If so, why shouldn't it be the first result of a search for your name? If not, why is it the first result?
  - chmod775 9y ago
    > If not, why is it the first result? Because google search rankings for any niche search strings are pretty meh. Basically anything with your full name in the URL / main body of the page will show up at the top. I filled the first two pages of results for my name with random stuff I control simply by creating profiles on carefully-chosen sites with my full name, as well as registering a bunch of domains that contain my full name. That was much easier than contacting the hundreds of news outlets who published my full name in a negative context to correct their lackluster or ambiguous journalism. There was a few notable exceptions where journalists (who all like to copy stories from each other, then copy that again) had distorted the story so far that they actually managed to confuse me with the perpetrator. In those cases I had the search results removed under the "right to be forgotten". Honestly I'd rather have the right to be forgotten in a world where bad journalism is the norm, and where trash like the Daily Mail, yellow press, and some kid with a smear campaign have so much power to destroy a persons reputation. Basically you shouldn't have to know what "SEO" means in order to fend off a smear campaign or simply bad journalism.
    - ygaf 9y ago
      I feel for you, out of curiosity did you create your profiles and sites purely to displace the bad results or did you also try to engineer your content to refute them?

jaclaz 9y ago

I often cite this (lesser known) G.K.Chesterton's essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641608