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“What to submit. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” I don’t see what the issue i

“What to submit. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” I don’t see what the issue is.

dang 5y ago
Obviously, intellectual curiosity can take an interest in almost anything, if not literally anything. But the odds that a communist party leader's speech is going to lead to an intellectually curious discussion from the front page of Hacker News are statistically zero. What we're sure to get is just another tedious ideological and nationalistic flamewar. Curiosity—as the site guidelines point out (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) will just get trampled. I'm sure it would be possible to write a super interesting analysis of a document like this - for example, how it differs from speeches in previous periods, how it fits into the history of political propaganda, one could go on - but a large, anonymous internet forum is unfortunately not the medium for that. Any interesting and original commentary will be quickly be drowned out by flames, and indeed get set on fire in its own right by the numerous population who are interested only in loudly repeating what they already think and feel. To get a curious conversation about something like this would require barriers to entry that, for better or worse, HN doesn't have.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I'm sure it would be possible to write a super interesting analysis of a document like this Which would be a much better thing than the text itself for HN. Though, given past experience with the topic, still likely to devolve into nationalistic flamewar.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  > But the odds that a communist party leader's speech is going to lead to an intellectually curious discussion from the front page of Hacker News are statistically zero That's a very reductive and oriented political statement. This happens to be a speech by the leader of one of the major powers on this planet. It is also full of historical and cultural references. At the very least an attempt to understand his and China's point of view should be intellectually interesting and may lead to a better understanding among people of different cultures. I agree with your point that any attempt to discuss this would lead to flame wars and drown any interesting comments. This is unfortunately the state of things on HN. Nonetheless, I feel that dismissing the submission on the basis that it is from a "communist party leader" lacks intellectual curiosity and is, as said, a political and preconceived opinion.
  - dang 5y ago
    I don't care that it's by a communist party leader. The point is that it will just trigger the more triggerable internet people. Speeches by leaders of major powers are generally off topic on HN. They all make them all the time. It takes a subtle and experienced eye to read anything interesting in them. More importantly, this is not a geopolitics site. A 100th anniversary speech is arguably a little less garden-variety, but then again, arguably not - there's always some historical event at hand to tie the latest speech to, and the latest speech is always about the geopolitics of the present. I don't see how this is in any way a controversial call. Biden speeches and Putin speeches aren't on topic here either, barring something super unusual.
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      > I don't care that it's by a communist party leader. Then don't make a specific point of it, because your previous statement makes it sound like you do care. "Speeches by leaders of major powers are generally off topic on HN" would have done the job.

“What to submit. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” I don’t see what the issue is.

dang 5y ago

Obviously, intellectual curiosity can take an interest in almost anything, if not literally anything. But the odds that a communist party leader's speech is going to lead to an intellectually curious discussion from the front page of Hacker News are statistically zero. What we're sure to get is just another tedious ideological and nationalistic flamewar. Curiosity—as the site guidelines point out (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) will just get trampled. I'm sure it would be possible to write a super interesting analysis of a document like this - for example, how it differs from speeches in previous periods, how it fits into the history of political propaganda, one could go on - but a large, anonymous internet forum is unfortunately not the medium for that. Any interesting and original commentary will be quickly be drowned out by flames, and indeed get set on fire in its own right by the numerous population who are interested only in loudly repeating what they already think and feel. To get a curious conversation about something like this would require barriers to entry that, for better or worse, HN doesn't have.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I'm sure it would be possible to write a super interesting analysis of a document like this Which would be a much better thing than the text itself for HN. Though, given past experience with the topic, still likely to devolve into nationalistic flamewar.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
> But the odds that a communist party leader's speech is going to lead to an intellectually curious discussion from the front page of Hacker News are statistically zero That's a very reductive and oriented political statement. This happens to be a speech by the leader of one of the major powers on this planet. It is also full of historical and cultural references. At the very least an attempt to understand his and China's point of view should be intellectually interesting and may lead to a better understanding among people of different cultures. I agree with your point that any attempt to discuss this would lead to flame wars and drown any interesting comments. This is unfortunately the state of things on HN. Nonetheless, I feel that dismissing the submission on the basis that it is from a "communist party leader" lacks intellectual curiosity and is, as said, a political and preconceived opinion.
- dang 5y ago
  I don't care that it's by a communist party leader. The point is that it will just trigger the more triggerable internet people. Speeches by leaders of major powers are generally off topic on HN. They all make them all the time. It takes a subtle and experienced eye to read anything interesting in them. More importantly, this is not a geopolitics site. A 100th anniversary speech is arguably a little less garden-variety, but then again, arguably not - there's always some historical event at hand to tie the latest speech to, and the latest speech is always about the geopolitics of the present. I don't see how this is in any way a controversial call. Biden speeches and Putin speeches aren't on topic here either, barring something super unusual.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    > I don't care that it's by a communist party leader. Then don't make a specific point of it, because your previous statement makes it sound like you do care. "Speeches by leaders of major powers are generally off topic on HN" would have done the job.