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Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy (2019) by Bill Gertz is an excellent starting point: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/

Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy (2019) by Bill Gertz is an excellent starting point: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50927537-deceiving-the-sky https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50927537-deceiving-the-s...

prox 6y ago
I wonder why you’re being downvoted. Is it because it’s so accurate that it hurts or because it’s not?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - prox 6y ago
    Ah sorry dang! Will take heed in future.
    - dang 6y ago
      Actually I think I read the second sentence as a snarky political jab, when on a closer look it seems to have been a neutral question, or at least that's a plausible interpretation. "So accurate that it hurts" is the sort of thing that political trolls say, and it probably triggered the pattern matching machine in my head—which sometimes misses things, especially at speed. Sorry!
      - prox 6y ago
        Yes it was meant as an inquiry, but I could have phrased it differently, looking back and after your moderation comments.
  - loceng 6y ago
    Honestly though, don't you think that's a valid question - asking for qualitative responses? Notice how the user responded to you, as an authority, I hope you're aware of that power dynamic as well. I've also thought I'd love to see a Netflix style documentary of "a day in dang's life" to help us get to know you, to humanize you more + would be good marketing for HN and YCombinator. You're often very poetic in your responses, I think a documentary focused on you could be quite good.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Perhaps you may enjoy https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th....
      - loceng 6y ago
        Thanks! Actually I had read part of it but never got back to it. Now on my to-do.
      - loufe 6y ago
        Well written article, I learned a lot. I wasn't a huge fan of how little they espoused the actual positive side of the site, what continues to bring me and many of you back. The flaming and dramatic views of some are noise to me, the great insight and lively polite debate is what I see.
    - Razengan 6y ago
      > Notice how the user responded to you, as an authority, I hope you're aware of that power dynamic as well. Dang is the Benevolent Leader. How dare someone insinuate that there could be any problems in a utopia run by such a perfect mind. Everything is Working as Intended. Move along.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
    Dang, I honestly think it's a fair question. And it crossed my mind, too, when I read the post it refers to.
    - dang 6y ago
      Actually I think I misread the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849052.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Razengan 6y ago
    How appropriate, people being told to shut up on a post about people being made to shut up. Dammit dang, downvote abuse is a real issue. The very fact that people keep bringing this up should clue you in. Once or twice, okay maybe it's the complainer's perception that's wrong, but again and again, for over a year? Then your damn system has a problem. The least you could do to address it is not let downvotes instantly affect a comment's visibility. Fucking delay it for a few hours to allow everyone at least a chance to be seen. Why is that so painfully hard for you to do? Did you lose the source code or can't find another Malbolge maintainer to take over?
    - crististm 6y ago
      This is not a one year problem. And it will stay that way because, as you know, HN is a corporation. Not a public forum. Maintaining these rules allow dang@co to maintain the position of control over what happen in HN. The corollary is that changing them will dilute their control. They found a local maximum of discourse level and they keep it that way. The justification that the discourse on HN is maintained at a high level by not talking about the rules is at least condescending to the participants. It doesn't matter to them if they lose you on these grounds since talking about the rules appears only on extremes which are shallow in a normal distribution. They will lose the few participants that care enough about that while maintaining those in the middle. (Of course, cutting of the extremes will grow newer ones in the empty space but I digress...). What happens with time is that people adjust their discourse to the middle ground making it void of any new or interesting information. Thus, HN becomes an echo chamber of mainstream ideas and people will leave when they got bored enough of the same thing. We're already there and @dang is more vocal now because he knows it.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
        I only partly agree with your view. It might be so, but there is a genuine reason behind not discussing the rules: they're always off-topic. For people like me who come to HN to read an interesting discussion about tech issues, anything mentioning downvoting is almost automatically useless in the sense that it doesn't bring any new information, it's not interesting, it doesn't affect me in any way. Yes, if I were in charge of HN I would solve certain issues differently, and so would you, but it's a private forum run by someone else, so we have to obey in order to participate, whether we like it or not. The very fact that we're even having this discussion now means we prefer this place to any other in this moment. So you can't say these rules don't work.
  - foolinaround 6y ago
    Dang, should there be a single meta-thread - monthly or quarterly -- where you hold a grand durbar and folks can vent their grievances, and you get some feedback from different segments?
    - dang 6y ago
      People aren't shy about posting their grievances. Having a dedicated thread for that would just breed more of them.
      - foolinaround 6y ago
        thanks for replying! If we were to have a seperate thread, then folks should absolutely not post these things in regular threads, thus leaving them cleaner and with a better tone. they are free to reference this incident on the grievance thread. There, different downvote rules should apply of course. There might be others who feel the same way, and therefore might upvote it. So, this way, you can get a sense of how many/deeply feel about a particular issue, and then address it suitably. Once this particular case is addressed, then we create a link of sorts, and the next month someone brings this up, we just point to it. I am thinking - maybe once a quarter -- to start with, and vary frequency as needed.
        dang 6y ago
        I understand the appeal, but users wouldn't abide by such a restriction on normal threads. The more one tried to force it, the more energy one would provoke to get around it or overcome it. It would be a lost cause because it goes against human nature. People feel what they feel when they feel it; you can't stop them from expressing it, and trying to stop them would only multiply it.
        foolinaround 6y ago
        ok, got it.
- dagw 6y ago
  Bill Gertz (the Author) is a very divisive figure in US politics, with a long history of anti China bias. His writings are much more polemic screeds and less balanced academic analysis. He sees the US-China situation very much as battle between good and evil (with the Democrats being complicit on the side of evil), has zero nuance and very little sourcing in his books. All of this makes his books rather controversial. All that being said. None of this is evidence for his books actually being wrong.

prox 6y ago

I wonder why you’re being downvoted. Is it because it’s so accurate that it hurts or because it’s not?

dang 6y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- prox 6y ago
  Ah sorry dang! Will take heed in future.
  - dang 6y ago
    Actually I think I read the second sentence as a snarky political jab, when on a closer look it seems to have been a neutral question, or at least that's a plausible interpretation. "So accurate that it hurts" is the sort of thing that political trolls say, and it probably triggered the pattern matching machine in my head—which sometimes misses things, especially at speed. Sorry!
    - prox 6y ago
      Yes it was meant as an inquiry, but I could have phrased it differently, looking back and after your moderation comments.
- loceng 6y ago
  Honestly though, don't you think that's a valid question - asking for qualitative responses? Notice how the user responded to you, as an authority, I hope you're aware of that power dynamic as well. I've also thought I'd love to see a Netflix style documentary of "a day in dang's life" to help us get to know you, to humanize you more + would be good marketing for HN and YCombinator. You're often very poetic in your responses, I think a documentary focused on you could be quite good.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Perhaps you may enjoy https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th....
    - loceng 6y ago
      Thanks! Actually I had read part of it but never got back to it. Now on my to-do.
    - loufe 6y ago
      Well written article, I learned a lot. I wasn't a huge fan of how little they espoused the actual positive side of the site, what continues to bring me and many of you back. The flaming and dramatic views of some are noise to me, the great insight and lively polite debate is what I see.
  - Razengan 6y ago
    > Notice how the user responded to you, as an authority, I hope you're aware of that power dynamic as well. Dang is the Benevolent Leader. How dare someone insinuate that there could be any problems in a utopia run by such a perfect mind. Everything is Working as Intended. Move along.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
  Dang, I honestly think it's a fair question. And it crossed my mind, too, when I read the post it refers to.
  - dang 6y ago
    Actually I think I misread the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849052.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Razengan 6y ago
  How appropriate, people being told to shut up on a post about people being made to shut up. Dammit dang, downvote abuse is a real issue. The very fact that people keep bringing this up should clue you in. Once or twice, okay maybe it's the complainer's perception that's wrong, but again and again, for over a year? Then your damn system has a problem. The least you could do to address it is not let downvotes instantly affect a comment's visibility. Fucking delay it for a few hours to allow everyone at least a chance to be seen. Why is that so painfully hard for you to do? Did you lose the source code or can't find another Malbolge maintainer to take over?
  - crististm 6y ago
    This is not a one year problem. And it will stay that way because, as you know, HN is a corporation. Not a public forum. Maintaining these rules allow dang@co to maintain the position of control over what happen in HN. The corollary is that changing them will dilute their control. They found a local maximum of discourse level and they keep it that way. The justification that the discourse on HN is maintained at a high level by not talking about the rules is at least condescending to the participants. It doesn't matter to them if they lose you on these grounds since talking about the rules appears only on extremes which are shallow in a normal distribution. They will lose the few participants that care enough about that while maintaining those in the middle. (Of course, cutting of the extremes will grow newer ones in the empty space but I digress...). What happens with time is that people adjust their discourse to the middle ground making it void of any new or interesting information. Thus, HN becomes an echo chamber of mainstream ideas and people will leave when they got bored enough of the same thing. We're already there and @dang is more vocal now because he knows it.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
      I only partly agree with your view. It might be so, but there is a genuine reason behind not discussing the rules: they're always off-topic. For people like me who come to HN to read an interesting discussion about tech issues, anything mentioning downvoting is almost automatically useless in the sense that it doesn't bring any new information, it's not interesting, it doesn't affect me in any way. Yes, if I were in charge of HN I would solve certain issues differently, and so would you, but it's a private forum run by someone else, so we have to obey in order to participate, whether we like it or not. The very fact that we're even having this discussion now means we prefer this place to any other in this moment. So you can't say these rules don't work.
- foolinaround 6y ago
  Dang, should there be a single meta-thread - monthly or quarterly -- where you hold a grand durbar and folks can vent their grievances, and you get some feedback from different segments?
  - dang 6y ago
    People aren't shy about posting their grievances. Having a dedicated thread for that would just breed more of them.
    - foolinaround 6y ago
      thanks for replying! If we were to have a seperate thread, then folks should absolutely not post these things in regular threads, thus leaving them cleaner and with a better tone. they are free to reference this incident on the grievance thread. There, different downvote rules should apply of course. There might be others who feel the same way, and therefore might upvote it. So, this way, you can get a sense of how many/deeply feel about a particular issue, and then address it suitably. Once this particular case is addressed, then we create a link of sorts, and the next month someone brings this up, we just point to it. I am thinking - maybe once a quarter -- to start with, and vary frequency as needed.
      - dang 6y ago
        I understand the appeal, but users wouldn't abide by such a restriction on normal threads. The more one tried to force it, the more energy one would provoke to get around it or overcome it. It would be a lost cause because it goes against human nature. People feel what they feel when they feel it; you can't stop them from expressing it, and trying to stop them would only multiply it.
        foolinaround 6y ago
        ok, got it.
dagw 6y ago
Bill Gertz (the Author) is a very divisive figure in US politics, with a long history of anti China bias. His writings are much more polemic screeds and less balanced academic analysis. He sees the US-China situation very much as battle between good and evil (with the Democrats being complicit on the side of evil), has zero nuance and very little sourcing in his books. All of this makes his books rather controversial. All that being said. None of this is evidence for his books actually being wrong.