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I flag both sides of these because Hacker News has no unique perspective to add to any of these conversations. There's a million places to have these conversati

by jerf 2y ago

I flag both sides of these because Hacker News has no unique perspective to add to any of these conversations. There's a million places to have these conversations. If anything, dodging them is the challenge. Basically, if the resulting HN news discussion is indistinguishable from an X thread except that the post size limit is larger, there's no reason for it to be here. And my pre-emptive response to pretty much every "but" is you've already got millions of places to have this conversation. Nobody's getting squelched, no solution is being missed because nobody here has the solution, no unique insight is being missed.

loceng 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jerf 2y ago
  I consider your post a prime example of what I'm talking about rather than an astonishing refutation. A bog standard, off-the-shelf "how dare you not turn every single conversation on the internet to this important issue" reply. I could have written that in my sleep, and about any number of issues. How dare you try to turn the conversation away from whatever my opinion is about the Ukraine to distract us with this Israel stuff? I can reel off a dozen issues that I could copy and paste your message about with just a bit of string replacement. There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this. Such value as the HN community offers is precisely when it is not discussing the same things as everyone else.
  - ignoramous 2y ago
    > A bog standard, off-the-shelf "how dare you not turn every single conversation on the internet to this important issue" reply. Claims of genocide isn't "every single conversation on the internet" and it most certainly isn't unimportant. You're constructing a strawman?
    - loceng 2y ago
      And otherwise their counter-argument is that HN is above putting their intellect on the topic of genocide, eh?
      - jerf 2y ago
        "HN has nothing unique to add to this conversation" is the opposite of any sort of claim of HN exceptionalism. It is you who are insisting that there must be some sort of amazing special unique perspective that means we must discuss on HN despite it generally being off topic. The rhetoric and general level of insulting insinuation and personal attacks being deployed in this thread continues to demonstrate my claims that there is nothing special HN has to offer, not even so much as "a generally higher level of respect" or anything like that. There's no difference to a conversation here than anywhere else, which means you may as well have that conversation in the thousands or millions of other places to have it. Also, I'm out. I've made my point here. Feel free to continue lobbing accusations and insinuations at me to continue proving my point.
        ignoramous 2y ago
        One reason this topic on HN is not out of place is because the role of tech and its leaders, if nothing else.
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Then post articles about the role of tech and its leaders in this conflict, rather than every update on the conflict as a whole.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Genocide charges are not in involved in the ICC prosecutors request for arrest warrants; no such charges are in the request.
  - loceng 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 2y ago
      That's not an ad hominem, and your initial reply to his comment was extraordinarily rude.
      - loceng 2y ago
        It's ad hominem while him being egotistical at the same time - him claiming it's low effort-value, etc. He also didn't counter any arguments of mine specifically. What exactly was rude with it? I'm shocked to see these quick comments by you. Cite specifically what was rude that I said. His ad hominem was certainly "rude" - but I'm curious what you think I said was rude, or if in fact you're coddling him who willingly engaged - and claimed what I said was lazy-so easy that he could do it in his sleep; he's claiming he can crank out what I said as if it's nothing, so what does or could that insinuate in your eyes? I look forward to seeing what language you consider rude.
  - runarberg 2y ago
    > There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this. The HN community is a very nerdy bunch. There are lawyers among us, experts or knowledgeable enthusiasts in International Humanitarian Law. I mean I don’t think it is unlikely that someone here works (or has worked) for a firm or an institution which was consulted before this warrant was recommended. The ongoing genocide is also highly relevant to the HN as much of the tech use in our job or hobbies, and even contribute to, is being used as a weapon in the ongoing genocide. There has also been news of tech workers being specifically targeted in the ongoing genocide, our industrial comrades who may no longer be with us, some of which no doubt had HN accounts. When this news was submitted, it too was flagged (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39738469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39738469)
    - loceng 2y ago
      The censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is still powerful and distributed, and will continue to try to move the narrative to support the beliefs they've been deeply engrained with over multiple generations. The war for free speech and countering suppression is arguably only just beginning. And as Jordan Peterson said in his Beyond Order book - "intelligent ideologues are the most dangerous because they've really convinced themselves they're right." Most of the mainstream platforms have been captured and heavily influenced due to outweighed power that only a handful of users can apply to manipulate how much exposure certain content and comments get; Twitter-X being in Elon Musk's hands at least have stopped fascists governments from the world in at least an incognito fashion censoring-suppression certain narratives of truth they don't want the population becoming the wiser on.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    It also has a false premise; the prosecutor has not, per the announcement, sought genocide charges (under Article 6 of the Rome Statute) against any of the named individuals, but instead Article 7 (crimes against humanity) and Article 8 (war crimes) charges.
- tptacek 2y ago
  You couldn't have made his point better.
  - loceng 2y ago
    You're usually not lazy in your replies - maybe you're projecting and actually proved his point but are on his side? It's him and commenters like you who are doing being lazy and feeling impulsive to post immature flamewar level comments. Do you care his responses included ad hominem, straw mans, and don't actually counter my arguments but talk around them? I wonder how biased you are around the topic. And care to actually respond to support your claim by referencing his unsupported claims, and pull in the specifics from my comment that somehow support his claims? Don't think you can.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  From the site guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." Larger than that: HN is for curious, thoughtful discussion. This topic is not going to give rise to a curious, thoughtful conversation. So, no matter how much you want to discuss it, this isn't the place.
  - pylua 2y ago
    Thank you for this post. I feel like this is the correct answer.
fjdjshsh 2y ago
I disagree: for many of these topics, hackernews is, to me, a source of more level headed discussion and an opportunity to see both sides in a reasonable way. Yes, the quality does go down a lot, but it's still better than in the other sites I read.
- dang 2y ago
  Unfortunately this dynamic is unstable: the more it happens, the less it can continue. It's only because these threads are fairly rare that it works at all—if it does work at all. Having just had to post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627 in a thread from 2 weeks ago, I'm not so sure. Since HN is an open system with respect to the rest of the internet, the sad truth is that there's a cap on how good it can ever get. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22cap%20on%20how%20good%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
jeroenhd 2y ago
There's very little HN has a unique perspective to add to. Tech, science, and startup topics can be discussed just as easily on Reddit or lobsters. While I generally don't like political discourse here, I do think that there are differences in the way the discussions generally go. There are clear biases from the kind of people who are attracted to HN that are different from other forums.
kelnos 2y ago
I agree with your "no unique perspective" point, but I don't think that's, well, the point. I would rather have a discussion about nearly any topic on HN than in most/all other places. I think the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than most/all other places. Your reference to X/Twitter is in a way the point for me: I never really enjoyed Twitter when it was Twitter, and since the Musk acquisition I actively avoid it like the plague (I've deleted the app off my phone, and have signed out on the web to raise the barrier for me). I don't want to have conversations there, ever, really. I don't agree that resulting HN discussion on a topic like this would be indistinguishable from a discussion on X; I still believe the quality here will be higher. I do agree that HN isn't for every single topic under the sun. But I hope we can both agree that there's no absolute arbiter of what should and shouldn't be here. It's ultimately a matter of subjective opinion, and even the people who run the site aren't going to be absolutist about it in most cases. I think in general there's a decent balance struck: while an article like this might not be completely on topic for HN, it's not completely off topic either, as long as articles about this topic don't dominate the front page, and we mostly only see articles with new information, and not just re-hashes of stuff that's already been reported on (and discussed here) for days/weeks/months.

by jerf 2y ago

loceng 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jerf 2y ago
I consider your post a prime example of what I'm talking about rather than an astonishing refutation. A bog standard, off-the-shelf "how dare you not turn every single conversation on the internet to this important issue" reply. I could have written that in my sleep, and about any number of issues. How dare you try to turn the conversation away from whatever my opinion is about the Ukraine to distract us with this Israel stuff? I can reel off a dozen issues that I could copy and paste your message about with just a bit of string replacement. There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this. Such value as the HN community offers is precisely when it is not discussing the same things as everyone else.
- ignoramous 2y ago
  > A bog standard, off-the-shelf "how dare you not turn every single conversation on the internet to this important issue" reply. Claims of genocide isn't "every single conversation on the internet" and it most certainly isn't unimportant. You're constructing a strawman?
  - loceng 2y ago
    And otherwise their counter-argument is that HN is above putting their intellect on the topic of genocide, eh?
    - jerf 2y ago
      "HN has nothing unique to add to this conversation" is the opposite of any sort of claim of HN exceptionalism. It is you who are insisting that there must be some sort of amazing special unique perspective that means we must discuss on HN despite it generally being off topic. The rhetoric and general level of insulting insinuation and personal attacks being deployed in this thread continues to demonstrate my claims that there is nothing special HN has to offer, not even so much as "a generally higher level of respect" or anything like that. There's no difference to a conversation here than anywhere else, which means you may as well have that conversation in the thousands or millions of other places to have it. Also, I'm out. I've made my point here. Feel free to continue lobbing accusations and insinuations at me to continue proving my point.
      - ignoramous 2y ago
        One reason this topic on HN is not out of place is because the role of tech and its leaders, if nothing else.
        BobaFloutist 2y ago
        Then post articles about the role of tech and its leaders in this conflict, rather than every update on the conflict as a whole.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Genocide charges are not in involved in the ICC prosecutors request for arrest warrants; no such charges are in the request.
- loceng 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 2y ago
    That's not an ad hominem, and your initial reply to his comment was extraordinarily rude.
    - loceng 2y ago
      It's ad hominem while him being egotistical at the same time - him claiming it's low effort-value, etc. He also didn't counter any arguments of mine specifically. What exactly was rude with it? I'm shocked to see these quick comments by you. Cite specifically what was rude that I said. His ad hominem was certainly "rude" - but I'm curious what you think I said was rude, or if in fact you're coddling him who willingly engaged - and claimed what I said was lazy-so easy that he could do it in his sleep; he's claiming he can crank out what I said as if it's nothing, so what does or could that insinuate in your eyes? I look forward to seeing what language you consider rude.
- runarberg 2y ago
  > There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this. The HN community is a very nerdy bunch. There are lawyers among us, experts or knowledgeable enthusiasts in International Humanitarian Law. I mean I don’t think it is unlikely that someone here works (or has worked) for a firm or an institution which was consulted before this warrant was recommended. The ongoing genocide is also highly relevant to the HN as much of the tech use in our job or hobbies, and even contribute to, is being used as a weapon in the ongoing genocide. There has also been news of tech workers being specifically targeted in the ongoing genocide, our industrial comrades who may no longer be with us, some of which no doubt had HN accounts. When this news was submitted, it too was flagged (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39738469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39738469)
  - loceng 2y ago
    The censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is still powerful and distributed, and will continue to try to move the narrative to support the beliefs they've been deeply engrained with over multiple generations. The war for free speech and countering suppression is arguably only just beginning. And as Jordan Peterson said in his Beyond Order book - "intelligent ideologues are the most dangerous because they've really convinced themselves they're right." Most of the mainstream platforms have been captured and heavily influenced due to outweighed power that only a handful of users can apply to manipulate how much exposure certain content and comments get; Twitter-X being in Elon Musk's hands at least have stopped fascists governments from the world in at least an incognito fashion censoring-suppression certain narratives of truth they don't want the population becoming the wiser on.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  It also has a false premise; the prosecutor has not, per the announcement, sought genocide charges (under Article 6 of the Rome Statute) against any of the named individuals, but instead Article 7 (crimes against humanity) and Article 8 (war crimes) charges.
tptacek 2y ago
You couldn't have made his point better.
- loceng 2y ago
  You're usually not lazy in your replies - maybe you're projecting and actually proved his point but are on his side? It's him and commenters like you who are doing being lazy and feeling impulsive to post immature flamewar level comments. Do you care his responses included ad hominem, straw mans, and don't actually counter my arguments but talk around them? I wonder how biased you are around the topic. And care to actually respond to support your claim by referencing his unsupported claims, and pull in the specifics from my comment that somehow support his claims? Don't think you can.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
From the site guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." Larger than that: HN is for curious, thoughtful discussion. This topic is not going to give rise to a curious, thoughtful conversation. So, no matter how much you want to discuss it, this isn't the place.
- pylua 2y ago
  Thank you for this post. I feel like this is the correct answer.

fjdjshsh 2y ago

I disagree: for many of these topics, hackernews is, to me, a source of more level headed discussion and an opportunity to see both sides in a reasonable way. Yes, the quality does go down a lot, but it's still better than in the other sites I read.

dang 2y ago
Unfortunately this dynamic is unstable: the more it happens, the less it can continue. It's only because these threads are fairly rare that it works at all—if it does work at all. Having just had to post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418627 in a thread from 2 weeks ago, I'm not so sure. Since HN is an open system with respect to the rest of the internet, the sad truth is that there's a cap on how good it can ever get. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22cap%20on%20how%20good%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

jeroenhd 2y ago

There's very little HN has a unique perspective to add to. Tech, science, and startup topics can be discussed just as easily on Reddit or lobsters. While I generally don't like political discourse here, I do think that there are differences in the way the discussions generally go. There are clear biases from the kind of people who are attracted to HN that are different from other forums.

kelnos 2y ago

I agree with your "no unique perspective" point, but I don't think that's, well, the point. I would rather have a discussion about nearly any topic on HN than in most/all other places. I think the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than most/all other places. Your reference to X/Twitter is in a way the point for me: I never really enjoyed Twitter when it was Twitter, and since the Musk acquisition I actively avoid it like the plague (I've deleted the app off my phone, and have signed out on the web to raise the barrier for me). I don't want to have conversations there, ever, really. I don't agree that resulting HN discussion on a topic like this would be indistinguishable from a discussion on X; I still believe the quality here will be higher. I do agree that HN isn't for every single topic under the sun. But I hope we can both agree that there's no absolute arbiter of what should and shouldn't be here. It's ultimately a matter of subjective opinion, and even the people who run the site aren't going to be absolutist about it in most cases. I think in general there's a decent balance struck: while an article like this might not be completely on topic for HN, it's not completely off topic either, as long as articles about this topic don't dominate the front page, and we mostly only see articles with new information, and not just re-hashes of stuff that's already been reported on (and discussed here) for days/weeks/months.