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> Welcome to Hacker News. Blood in the streets doesn't spark curious conversation so let's talk about compilers! Probably for the better. Otherwise it quickly

by ngruhn 5mo ago

> Welcome to Hacker News. Blood in the streets doesn't spark curious conversation so let's talk about compilers! Probably for the better. Otherwise it quickly becomes politics all day everyday. There are plenty of other places where you can get that already.

krapp 5mo ago
>Otherwise it quickly becomes politics all day everyday. No, it doesn't. This is one of Hacker News' weird phobias but it doesn't reflect reality. I know the mods believe it too so there's no point in debating it but even Reddit isn't politics all day every day. The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality (certainly not on a forum where posting Twitter posts and Wikipedia articles is allowed,) and it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer.
- maratc 5mo ago
  > The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. It looks like the community has deployed its self-correcting mechanism in this case.
  - krapp 5mo ago
    That isn't what I meant, but I know that's the only way it can be interpreted. The culture here is so deeply self-sabotaging because it's so deeply afraid to be human. It really gets depressing sometimes. Good day.
    - noosphr 5mo ago
      Politics junkies are the least human people around.
      - Schmerika 5mo ago
        America does have basically every characteristic of fascism on every important list of fascism characteristics ever made. That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this. So, maybe consider that more than "politics junkies" might be interested in this, and that the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged (very easily done).
        Henchman21 5mo ago
        Complicit? How about “proximate cause of”?
        Schmerika 5mo ago
        Sure.
        maratc 5mo ago
        > the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged Interestingly, this "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill" argument doesn't pop quite as often in the discussions about Clovis Culture tools, Roman Empire letters, or pre-Linotype typesetting -- the fact that makes me think that maybe keeping politics out of HN is actually a good thing.
        tastyface 5mo ago
        Meanwhile, America's tech CEOs are gifting the president with gold statues and accompanying him on diplomatic trips.
        maratc 5mo ago
        I don't live in the US so this doesn't quite enrage me, especially since I'm aware that every US president gets tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in donations to their election campaigns, so a gold statue does not look like a big deal when compared to that.
  - cosmicgadget 5mo ago
    133 points, 66 comments. Maybe people want to discuss fascism.
    - maratc 5mo ago
      Most of them downvoted, including yours (and mine). This is like a poster example of posts and discussions that we want less of here, not more.
  - JKCalhoun 5mo ago
    The flagging mechanism, as it exists, feels a little… cowardly (?) to me. What if, instead of the existing mechanism, we posted in the comments, "Please Flag", and follow that with our rationale. Mods could "read the room" (so to speak) and flag the article. You might still argue as to whether an article should have been flagged but at least the receipts exist to show why the mods acted.
- tomhow 5mo ago
  > The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism As if by magic ;) > This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality... it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer These threads are bad for HN because they’re not new topics and they don’t yield new insights. The question of whether this label applies to this administration has been discussed for over a decade. What difference does it make to talk about it again? Who is going to be changing their mind or their plans now, in response to this post? Do we ever see any interesting new ideas in these threads? If we had a steady supply of articles that spawned discussions on HN that could generate new ideas about how to address the political/economic dysfunction we see all over the world, we’d happily have them on the front page every day.
JKCalhoun 5mo ago
I have not found any good places. (Perhaps that's the point though.) Politics every day, sadly, says something about the times we're living in. We probably could have blissfully ignored politics in the early days of the internet—hopefully can again some day…
Arodex 5mo ago
Except when it is political content against the EU or some European nation doing something Americans don't like. Then it is very interesting to HN, never flagged and raised to the front page.

by ngruhn 5mo ago

krapp 5mo ago

>Otherwise it quickly becomes politics all day everyday. No, it doesn't. This is one of Hacker News' weird phobias but it doesn't reflect reality. I know the mods believe it too so there's no point in debating it but even Reddit isn't politics all day every day. The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality (certainly not on a forum where posting Twitter posts and Wikipedia articles is allowed,) and it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer.

maratc 5mo ago
> The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. It looks like the community has deployed its self-correcting mechanism in this case.
- krapp 5mo ago
  That isn't what I meant, but I know that's the only way it can be interpreted. The culture here is so deeply self-sabotaging because it's so deeply afraid to be human. It really gets depressing sometimes. Good day.
  - noosphr 5mo ago
    Politics junkies are the least human people around.
    - Schmerika 5mo ago
      America does have basically every characteristic of fascism on every important list of fascism characteristics ever made. That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this. So, maybe consider that more than "politics junkies" might be interested in this, and that the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged (very easily done).
      - Henchman21 5mo ago
        Complicit? How about “proximate cause of”?
        Schmerika 5mo ago
        Sure.
      - maratc 5mo ago
        > the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged Interestingly, this "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill" argument doesn't pop quite as often in the discussions about Clovis Culture tools, Roman Empire letters, or pre-Linotype typesetting -- the fact that makes me think that maybe keeping politics out of HN is actually a good thing.
        tastyface 5mo ago
        Meanwhile, America's tech CEOs are gifting the president with gold statues and accompanying him on diplomatic trips.
        maratc 5mo ago
        I don't live in the US so this doesn't quite enrage me, especially since I'm aware that every US president gets tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in donations to their election campaigns, so a gold statue does not look like a big deal when compared to that.
- cosmicgadget 5mo ago
  133 points, 66 comments. Maybe people want to discuss fascism.
  - maratc 5mo ago
    Most of them downvoted, including yours (and mine). This is like a poster example of posts and discussions that we want less of here, not more.
- JKCalhoun 5mo ago
  The flagging mechanism, as it exists, feels a little… cowardly (?) to me. What if, instead of the existing mechanism, we posted in the comments, "Please Flag", and follow that with our rationale. Mods could "read the room" (so to speak) and flag the article. You might still argue as to whether an article should have been flagged but at least the receipts exist to show why the mods acted.
tomhow 5mo ago
> The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism As if by magic ;) > This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality... it poses literally no threat to the community, but HN still treats it like a cancer These threads are bad for HN because they’re not new topics and they don’t yield new insights. The question of whether this label applies to this administration has been discussed for over a decade. What difference does it make to talk about it again? Who is going to be changing their mind or their plans now, in response to this post? Do we ever see any interesting new ideas in these threads? If we had a steady supply of articles that spawned discussions on HN that could generate new ideas about how to address the political/economic dysfunction we see all over the world, we’d happily have them on the front page every day.

JKCalhoun 5mo ago

I have not found any good places. (Perhaps that's the point though.) Politics every day, sadly, says something about the times we're living in. We probably could have blissfully ignored politics in the early days of the internet—hopefully can again some day…

Arodex 5mo ago

Except when it is political content against the EU or some European nation doing something Americans don't like. Then it is very interesting to HN, never flagged and raised to the front page.