4 ms·

I think they should definitely choose what should go viral though. You can Google ALM to your heart's content on an iPhone, they just don't facilitate it throug

I think they should definitely choose what should go viral though. You can Google ALM to your heart's content on an iPhone, they just don't facilitate it through the lower-resistance modes of querying.

malandrew 6y ago
Imagine google coming of age at different times in American history. It's merely a coincidence that what google is preferring aligns with your sensibilities. What if google were making these editorial decisions during WWII? Would you be redirected away from things supportive Japanese Americans that were place in internment camps? How about during the red scare? Would you be directed to Hollywood blacklists? How about during the civil rights era? Would you be directed to content arguing in favor of segregation? Contrary to popular liberal belief, the Black community in America is not a borg with one hive mind. There's a lot of diversity of thought within that community and people that dissent from the very narrow viewpoint that many gatekeepers who lean left are promoting. There's a lot more thoughtfulness and nuance in discussion than promoting one-sided activism would suggest. In fact, this active filtering robs that community (and other communities that are filtered) of their agency. Here's a list of people from the black community with dissenting opinions that I can name quickly off the top of my head and I'm sure there are many many more: Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Thomas Sowell, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Roland G. Fryer Jr. Anthony Mackey, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Larry Sharpe, Pastor Corey Brooks, Eric July
- pjkundert 6y ago
  It astonishes me how greedily people embrace extinguishing the liberties of others (and externalizing their costs to them), while they feel their echo-chamber forms the majority. It’s almost like they can’t imagine a scenario where they are the minority, and might wish to pursue their own beliefs in peace... Especially shameful here on HN, which claims to be an especially intellectually open-minded community! For shame, that you present an accurate, supported analysis of risks that doesn’t support the current dogma! ;)
  - malandrew 6y ago
    What's crazy is that for most of HN's history ending about 3-4 years ago, both of our comments would have been met with upvotes. I wish I had access to the information dang does to see the average age of accounts downvoting comments such as ours. The last few years definitely have had a feeling of eternal september and of all the eternal septembers I've experienced in my 26 years on the Internet, this is by far the worst and most toxic to open, thoughtful and nuanced discussion. My general observation is that those that best recognize the importance of such liberties also possess the greatest faculties in abstraction (a fundamental skill for success in engineering, especially software engineering). For it is only through abstraction that someone is able to back out from the concrete issue at hand and see generalizable principles and how they might apply to other issues under other circumstances. My suspicion is that as HN and tech in general has caught the attention of a broader audience, that the median capacity to abstract has dropped and a plurality lacks the comparable capacity to reason abstractly as once existed on HN. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-...
    - pjkundert 6y ago
      There’s a solution: k-means clustering. This would aggregate people for whom downvote means “I don’t agree”, and separately those whose downvote means “that’s an inflammatory/ unsupported/ insane position”. Soon, those open to reasoned debate would see comments by others known for reasoned debate — regardless of their political/ideological stripe. The trolls would be relegated each to their own echo-chamber. Everybody wins!
      - malandrew 6y ago
        You should share this with dang as an optional feature that can be enabled like "showdead"

malandrew 6y ago

Imagine google coming of age at different times in American history. It's merely a coincidence that what google is preferring aligns with your sensibilities. What if google were making these editorial decisions during WWII? Would you be redirected away from things supportive Japanese Americans that were place in internment camps? How about during the red scare? Would you be directed to Hollywood blacklists? How about during the civil rights era? Would you be directed to content arguing in favor of segregation? Contrary to popular liberal belief, the Black community in America is not a borg with one hive mind. There's a lot of diversity of thought within that community and people that dissent from the very narrow viewpoint that many gatekeepers who lean left are promoting. There's a lot more thoughtfulness and nuance in discussion than promoting one-sided activism would suggest. In fact, this active filtering robs that community (and other communities that are filtered) of their agency. Here's a list of people from the black community with dissenting opinions that I can name quickly off the top of my head and I'm sure there are many many more: Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Thomas Sowell, Coleman Hughes, Kmele Foster, Roland G. Fryer Jr. Anthony Mackey, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Larry Sharpe, Pastor Corey Brooks, Eric July

pjkundert 6y ago
It astonishes me how greedily people embrace extinguishing the liberties of others (and externalizing their costs to them), while they feel their echo-chamber forms the majority. It’s almost like they can’t imagine a scenario where they are the minority, and might wish to pursue their own beliefs in peace... Especially shameful here on HN, which claims to be an especially intellectually open-minded community! For shame, that you present an accurate, supported analysis of risks that doesn’t support the current dogma! ;)
- malandrew 6y ago
  What's crazy is that for most of HN's history ending about 3-4 years ago, both of our comments would have been met with upvotes. I wish I had access to the information dang does to see the average age of accounts downvoting comments such as ours. The last few years definitely have had a feeling of eternal september and of all the eternal septembers I've experienced in my 26 years on the Internet, this is by far the worst and most toxic to open, thoughtful and nuanced discussion. My general observation is that those that best recognize the importance of such liberties also possess the greatest faculties in abstraction (a fundamental skill for success in engineering, especially software engineering). For it is only through abstraction that someone is able to back out from the concrete issue at hand and see generalizable principles and how they might apply to other issues under other circumstances. My suspicion is that as HN and tech in general has caught the attention of a broader audience, that the median capacity to abstract has dropped and a plurality lacks the comparable capacity to reason abstractly as once existed on HN. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-...
  - pjkundert 6y ago
    There’s a solution: k-means clustering. This would aggregate people for whom downvote means “I don’t agree”, and separately those whose downvote means “that’s an inflammatory/ unsupported/ insane position”. Soon, those open to reasoned debate would see comments by others known for reasoned debate — regardless of their political/ideological stripe. The trolls would be relegated each to their own echo-chamber. Everybody wins!
    - malandrew 6y ago
      You should share this with dang as an optional feature that can be enabled like "showdead"