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HN does strike a good balance between civility and diversity of opinion. Or at least they get a lot of one controlling for the other. I tend to post from a ri

by swatow 12y ago

HN does strike a good balance between civility and diversity of opinion. Or at least they get a lot of one controlling for the other. I tend to post from a right wing perspective but only had one comment flag killed (where I pointed out that it was hypocritical of French Americans to say that France needs to preserve its culture, while at the same time saying that the US has no culture, and anyone who says it does is a racist). The one thing that bothers me is the flood of social justice themed articles, including one that was flag killed but revived by the mods. I guess the mods felt that they were reacting against over-zealous flaggers. But I think in practice they are overriding the opinion of the community who are sick of articles about issues like sexism in tech.

cbd1984 12y ago
> the US has no culture How anyone can believe this is beyond me. It is like saying a given atom has no protons, or that a given region of a country has no area. It's such a gross misunderstanding of basic concepts it should mark anyone who says it as someone who has no basis for continuing the discussion.
- beobab 12y ago
  I've always understood the statement "The US has no culture" as meaning that the speaker thought the citizens of the US weren't "posh enough" in some manner or other. I imagined it was probably something terribly elegant and refined like eating breadsticks with a knife and fork.
  - Ntrails 12y ago
    I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? I'm not sure how true it is (I've never been) - but I have certainly observed anecdotally that some states are more keenly independant than others?
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      > I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? By that token, no country has a culture, because every country (except, maybe, postage stamps like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein) has regions with a distinctive cultural heritage which they don't entirely share with other regions. So, put that way, it's trivially true that the US doesn't have one culture, but then neither does France, or the UK, or China, or Russia, or Italy. Culture is everything which is passed down from generation to generation which isn't encoded in the genes. For example, my dark hair isn't in my culture, even though I got it from both of my parents; my language, however, most certainly is part of my culture. So's most of my taste in food and drink. Do I share all of my culture with the people I live close to? No, but I share a lot of things, some of necessity (language, clothing) and some because it was just how I was raised and what I see around me (hair style, meal times). Here's an interesting website on the culture a large percentage of Americans more-or-less shares: http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html There's similar pages for Canadians, Russians, Chinese, etc all linked off that page.
Steko 12y ago
You are abusing flagging by using it because you are "sick of articles about X". The flag is not a downvote button and the "opinion of the community" is measured with upvotes. For someone who starts off lauding "diversity of opinion" I'm not sure how you reconcile that with a mentality where everyone flag kills what they don't like.

by swatow 12y ago

cbd1984 12y ago

> the US has no culture How anyone can believe this is beyond me. It is like saying a given atom has no protons, or that a given region of a country has no area. It's such a gross misunderstanding of basic concepts it should mark anyone who says it as someone who has no basis for continuing the discussion.

beobab 12y ago
I've always understood the statement "The US has no culture" as meaning that the speaker thought the citizens of the US weren't "posh enough" in some manner or other. I imagined it was probably something terribly elegant and refined like eating breadsticks with a knife and fork.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? I'm not sure how true it is (I've never been) - but I have certainly observed anecdotally that some states are more keenly independant than others?
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? By that token, no country has a culture, because every country (except, maybe, postage stamps like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein) has regions with a distinctive cultural heritage which they don't entirely share with other regions. So, put that way, it's trivially true that the US doesn't have one culture, but then neither does France, or the UK, or China, or Russia, or Italy. Culture is everything which is passed down from generation to generation which isn't encoded in the genes. For example, my dark hair isn't in my culture, even though I got it from both of my parents; my language, however, most certainly is part of my culture. So's most of my taste in food and drink. Do I share all of my culture with the people I live close to? No, but I share a lot of things, some of necessity (language, clothing) and some because it was just how I was raised and what I see around me (hair style, meal times). Here's an interesting website on the culture a large percentage of Americans more-or-less shares: http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html There's similar pages for Canadians, Russians, Chinese, etc all linked off that page.

Steko 12y ago

You are abusing flagging by using it because you are "sick of articles about X". The flag is not a downvote button and the "opinion of the community" is measured with upvotes. For someone who starts off lauding "diversity of opinion" I'm not sure how you reconcile that with a mentality where everyone flag kills what they don't like.