6 ms·

Admittedly, I don't have a deep grasp of what Potemkin Villages are, so my comments below may reinforce what you said, I'm not sure. I'm not saying that conver

Admittedly, I don't have a deep grasp of what Potemkin Villages are, so my comments below may reinforce what you said, I'm not sure. I'm not saying that conversation about election interference shouldn't happen, I guess I'm trying to test the strength and legitimacy of one stated claim, that of privatization, before maybe moving to others. I also think that even when discussing voter suppression, gutting the institution from the inside as that's easier than legislating it out, or even trying to capitalize on the sale of public assets, one can assume that people want those behaviors not of bad faith, but because they believe they will help the most people, or at least their people.

emodendroket 6y ago
Let's get rid of the Potemkin village; the point is that the offered rationales are just meant to be a maze everybody wastes their time arguing in when what's going on is obvious. Kind of like a Gish gallop for the media, if you will (if you're not familiar with the term, Wikipedia explains it this way: "During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the 'Gish galloper' takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place").
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  Ah, I had never heard of that term Gish gallop, but I've definitely heard people using that strategy, so thanks for the highlight on that. It actually reminds me of a goal of disinformation and even differential privacy—make it more expensive (e.g., time, money, energy) to investigate the truth. I'd like to think that this conversation on HN hasn't been that way—at times I felt lost in the weeds and yet I feel pretty confident in how I see it now. That there are two main questions: 1) Should the USPS be significantly changed (e.g., privatized, more efficient, restructured, etc.)? 2) Should the USPS be significantly changed now? After these comments, I'm much more concerned with the second question, because I can imagine there will be a lot of people who want it drastically changed but still can't explain why now is the time to do it, as I haven't seen many arguments here that convince me that the change is urgent and unrelated to the election.
  - rectang 6y ago
    It's like we're standing in line at a convenience store when some guy jumps the counter, bludgeons the cashier, empties the register into his backpack, and you're all, "Excuse me, do you work here?" We cannot have a good faith debate about changing the USPS right now — the only sane response is to resist this attempt to sabotage our electoral machinery with all our strength. Engaging in farcical "debate" on the subject lends legitimacy to the sabotage and contributes to the harm. (But you can't say stuff like that on Hacker News. The forum is fragile; it can't hold such conversations without fracturing.)
    - jimkleiber 6y ago
      I mean, if it were as clear to all bystanders and people outside of the store and across the country that there were someone bludgeoning a cashier, unprovoked, and stealing the money, then I'd agree that with that much consensus, what's the point of talking about it. I have many friends and family who I'm quite certain see actions by the administration as either innocuous or exciting—to privatize—or righteous and brave—to take on the "fraud that will be perpetuated through mail-in voting." The people who believe the latter won't be convinced through much debate, but the people in the former may, because they may believe strongly that it should be privatized and yet disagree that it should happen now. I can't speak for others, but I learned a lot in this short, 1-2 day dialogue. I want to learn how to have conversations with people who disagree with me to try to bring us closer to resolution. Oddly enough, I took a hostage negotiation training last year and want to strive to get better at resolving conflict as they do. That being said, asking a question like you posed at the beginning could confuse the guy and disarm him a bit, setting him up for further conversation and maybe resolving the conflict. In conclusion, I deeply appreciated this thread and what you contributed to it as well, because I feel more prepared for the conversations I'll inevitably have around this. And I think HN seems to have been handling it well, but I still kinda feel like an outsider here, so I don't know if I'm playing by the rules lol.

emodendroket 6y ago

Let's get rid of the Potemkin village; the point is that the offered rationales are just meant to be a maze everybody wastes their time arguing in when what's going on is obvious. Kind of like a Gish gallop for the media, if you will (if you're not familiar with the term, Wikipedia explains it this way: "During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. In practice, each point raised by the 'Gish galloper' takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place").

jimkleiber 6y ago
Ah, I had never heard of that term Gish gallop, but I've definitely heard people using that strategy, so thanks for the highlight on that. It actually reminds me of a goal of disinformation and even differential privacy—make it more expensive (e.g., time, money, energy) to investigate the truth. I'd like to think that this conversation on HN hasn't been that way—at times I felt lost in the weeds and yet I feel pretty confident in how I see it now. That there are two main questions: 1) Should the USPS be significantly changed (e.g., privatized, more efficient, restructured, etc.)? 2) Should the USPS be significantly changed now? After these comments, I'm much more concerned with the second question, because I can imagine there will be a lot of people who want it drastically changed but still can't explain why now is the time to do it, as I haven't seen many arguments here that convince me that the change is urgent and unrelated to the election.
- rectang 6y ago
  It's like we're standing in line at a convenience store when some guy jumps the counter, bludgeons the cashier, empties the register into his backpack, and you're all, "Excuse me, do you work here?" We cannot have a good faith debate about changing the USPS right now — the only sane response is to resist this attempt to sabotage our electoral machinery with all our strength. Engaging in farcical "debate" on the subject lends legitimacy to the sabotage and contributes to the harm. (But you can't say stuff like that on Hacker News. The forum is fragile; it can't hold such conversations without fracturing.)
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    I mean, if it were as clear to all bystanders and people outside of the store and across the country that there were someone bludgeoning a cashier, unprovoked, and stealing the money, then I'd agree that with that much consensus, what's the point of talking about it. I have many friends and family who I'm quite certain see actions by the administration as either innocuous or exciting—to privatize—or righteous and brave—to take on the "fraud that will be perpetuated through mail-in voting." The people who believe the latter won't be convinced through much debate, but the people in the former may, because they may believe strongly that it should be privatized and yet disagree that it should happen now. I can't speak for others, but I learned a lot in this short, 1-2 day dialogue. I want to learn how to have conversations with people who disagree with me to try to bring us closer to resolution. Oddly enough, I took a hostage negotiation training last year and want to strive to get better at resolving conflict as they do. That being said, asking a question like you posed at the beginning could confuse the guy and disarm him a bit, setting him up for further conversation and maybe resolving the conflict. In conclusion, I deeply appreciated this thread and what you contributed to it as well, because I feel more prepared for the conversations I'll inevitably have around this. And I think HN seems to have been handling it well, but I still kinda feel like an outsider here, so I don't know if I'm playing by the rules lol.