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"Except when I'm on HN" Very possible that there are people on HN that don't care as well. But because of the overwhelming amount of people who make their opin

by larrys 13y ago

"Except when I'm on HN" Very possible that there are people on HN that don't care as well. But because of the overwhelming amount of people who make their opinions known who do care, it would be karma suicide to admit otherwise except in the most delicate terms. Even if you don't need or care about karma points it generally doesn't feel good to have people load up on you. I wonder at what point any issue within a group gets so lopsided in one direction that dissent almost never materializes. It becomes viewed as "so bad" on it's face that people rarely speak in favor of it. Or you have to walk on eggshells to even discuss the other side.

krapp 13y ago
There are a few, i've seen their posts here and there, and they do seem to get downvoted pretty severely. It's unfortunate, not necessarily because I agree with them but everyone has the right to at least make their case. That seems to be one of the downsides of the karma system - when a population of high karma users tend towards a certain point of view it creates social pressure for others to reinforce the orthodoxy. It doesn't help that once you get the down arrow, you're free to simply downvote opinions you disagree with rather than engage the poster. I've wondered once or twice whether karma shouldn't be publicly visible anyway. After all, one should be able to judge a post on its own merit without having a measure of the posters' relative popularity to tell you how much you probably should agree with them or not.
- larrys 13y ago
  "without having a measure of the posters' relative popularity" I would add also that I'm sure there are people that don't realize that a high karma score can come not only from comments such as you describe but additionally simply because someone was the early poster of a story that got voted up. So in a certain karma range we don't know how many points are from that vs. from agreement with a comment. (My guess though is that as karma increases most of it comes from comments and activity that is not related to posting a popular link).
  - krapp 13y ago
    The most karma points i've ever gotten from one post are from a pun I made about Google's balloon network thing. It really does seem all but meaningless, and yet it seems as if the whole culture of this site is build around farming it and gaming it.
w_t_payne 13y ago
I am vacillating. Fundamentally, I have a great deal of sympathy for the security services, understand the difficulty of the job that they have been tasked with, and can see no other reasonable way of achieving the goals that they have been set. However, my opinion flips and flops back and forth as I read each new revelation, get caught up in the moral outrage of the crowd, write something incendiary and provocative, then sit back, think a bit, and regret (maybe) being so rash. But then again ... I understand all too well the tremendously vulnerable situation that the general population is in with respect to the state, and comprehend the risk of abuse, not so much from individual analysts or the current administration as much as from the opportunistic acts of a future administration. But then again ... It is foolish to expect answers to come easily when the questions themselves are so difficult, so it is natural to strike out in the wrong direction a few times before finding a good path. As a former member of the diplomatic community living in the US, I am (now as then) almost certain that the NSA were recording all of my telephone calls and internet browsing activity, as well as bugging the apartment in which we lived. It did not then and does not now stop me from browsing for kinky porn, having massive stand-up arguments with my wife, and emailing the Samaritans about wanting to commit suicide. (TMI, I know, sorry - but they can only hold something over your head if you want to keep it a secret). I chose not to care then, and I have to continue choosing not to care. (Not a decision one can undo easily, anyway). Living in a glass goldfish bowl or not, life goes on; and perhaps the best (or least worst) thing that can come out of all of this is that we become a little bit more honest about human imperfection and fallibility - I do not think that I am alone in being an imperfect, flawed human being. Perhaps if we stopped pretending to be perfect (or at least not-as-deranged-as-we-really-are) we would be somewhat less vulnerable to those who would seek to exploit the information imbalance. So, I guess I do not care about them invading my privacy, because that boat sailed a long time ago. I do care in principle about them invading everybody's privacy, because of hypothetical future abuses. I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them.
- klibertp 13y ago
  > I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them. I thought the same for a long time. Then I moved - ironically - to the "big city" (actually, it's getting smaller by the year, but it was second largest in my country some years ago). I thought that living in a big apartment building would give me anonymity and that I could do as I pleased, without being a subject of neighbours surveillance. I was wrong. It took them literally a week to learn that I'm not frequenting the mass in a nearby church. That meant, to them, all out war; I had lived there for a few years, but then I had to move, because I realized that damage to my mental health is just too great. I'm sure there were some normal people there and that they didn't care. OTOH there were a few old geezers who made a hobby out of bullying others. The point is that you don't care about what people know about you only until they start hurting you because of what they know. Then you wish they didn't know in the first place. You may be even correct that majority of people wouldn't care about you and your own life, but there probably will be someone who will care, and who will make your life quite miserable.

by larrys 13y ago

krapp 13y ago

There are a few, i've seen their posts here and there, and they do seem to get downvoted pretty severely. It's unfortunate, not necessarily because I agree with them but everyone has the right to at least make their case. That seems to be one of the downsides of the karma system - when a population of high karma users tend towards a certain point of view it creates social pressure for others to reinforce the orthodoxy. It doesn't help that once you get the down arrow, you're free to simply downvote opinions you disagree with rather than engage the poster. I've wondered once or twice whether karma shouldn't be publicly visible anyway. After all, one should be able to judge a post on its own merit without having a measure of the posters' relative popularity to tell you how much you probably should agree with them or not.

larrys 13y ago
"without having a measure of the posters' relative popularity" I would add also that I'm sure there are people that don't realize that a high karma score can come not only from comments such as you describe but additionally simply because someone was the early poster of a story that got voted up. So in a certain karma range we don't know how many points are from that vs. from agreement with a comment. (My guess though is that as karma increases most of it comes from comments and activity that is not related to posting a popular link).
- krapp 13y ago
  The most karma points i've ever gotten from one post are from a pun I made about Google's balloon network thing. It really does seem all but meaningless, and yet it seems as if the whole culture of this site is build around farming it and gaming it.

w_t_payne 13y ago

I am vacillating. Fundamentally, I have a great deal of sympathy for the security services, understand the difficulty of the job that they have been tasked with, and can see no other reasonable way of achieving the goals that they have been set. However, my opinion flips and flops back and forth as I read each new revelation, get caught up in the moral outrage of the crowd, write something incendiary and provocative, then sit back, think a bit, and regret (maybe) being so rash. But then again ... I understand all too well the tremendously vulnerable situation that the general population is in with respect to the state, and comprehend the risk of abuse, not so much from individual analysts or the current administration as much as from the opportunistic acts of a future administration. But then again ... It is foolish to expect answers to come easily when the questions themselves are so difficult, so it is natural to strike out in the wrong direction a few times before finding a good path. As a former member of the diplomatic community living in the US, I am (now as then) almost certain that the NSA were recording all of my telephone calls and internet browsing activity, as well as bugging the apartment in which we lived. It did not then and does not now stop me from browsing for kinky porn, having massive stand-up arguments with my wife, and emailing the Samaritans about wanting to commit suicide. (TMI, I know, sorry - but they can only hold something over your head if you want to keep it a secret). I chose not to care then, and I have to continue choosing not to care. (Not a decision one can undo easily, anyway). Living in a glass goldfish bowl or not, life goes on; and perhaps the best (or least worst) thing that can come out of all of this is that we become a little bit more honest about human imperfection and fallibility - I do not think that I am alone in being an imperfect, flawed human being. Perhaps if we stopped pretending to be perfect (or at least not-as-deranged-as-we-really-are) we would be somewhat less vulnerable to those who would seek to exploit the information imbalance. So, I guess I do not care about them invading my privacy, because that boat sailed a long time ago. I do care in principle about them invading everybody's privacy, because of hypothetical future abuses. I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them.

klibertp 13y ago
> I think that at least some of the potential for abuse can be blunted by being more open and honest with ourselves, and by coming to terms with our own failings rather than trying to hide them. I thought the same for a long time. Then I moved - ironically - to the "big city" (actually, it's getting smaller by the year, but it was second largest in my country some years ago). I thought that living in a big apartment building would give me anonymity and that I could do as I pleased, without being a subject of neighbours surveillance. I was wrong. It took them literally a week to learn that I'm not frequenting the mass in a nearby church. That meant, to them, all out war; I had lived there for a few years, but then I had to move, because I realized that damage to my mental health is just too great. I'm sure there were some normal people there and that they didn't care. OTOH there were a few old geezers who made a hobby out of bullying others. The point is that you don't care about what people know about you only until they start hurting you because of what they know. Then you wish they didn't know in the first place. You may be even correct that majority of people wouldn't care about you and your own life, but there probably will be someone who will care, and who will make your life quite miserable.