Your comment is a classic phase-2 voter-upper, which was sitting at the top of the thread until I marked it off topic. Apologies for quoting myself, but: After that first wave of comments, we frequently see a second wave of comments objecting in a reflexive way to the first wave. Although they take the opposing position—defending the article and criticizing the comments—it's the same contrarian dynamic, the same mechanism, driving them. Usually the second wave gets upvoted the most, leading to the paradox of the top comment in a thread expressing how bad the thread is, or the most popular comment expressing how wrong the populace is.
Once this subthread was marked off topic, which lowers it on the page, one sees that the top subthreads are all pretty thoughtful. In other words, once you account for the contrarian dynamic (first wave of dismissive objections, second angry wave dismissing the dismissals and getting voted to the top), HN is doing reasonably well in this case. The contrarian dynamic happens in general; it has nothing to do specifically with climate, any more than with race (which was the context in the thread I just linked to).
Lot's of low effort contrarianism in just about every thread is what's happening.
Genuinely, I think HN is now worse than reddit, only reddit has some actual funny/entertaining comments while HN is just... I don't know low effort tedium pretending to be insight?
Are you serious?? There's no way HN is worse than reddit...the front page of reddit for me has about 1/3 twitter posts, 1/3 memes, and 1/3 teenage-culture references. This is not funny or entertaining...there are maybe 5-10% of posts MAX that I find enjoyable...only if I head to r/aww will I find genuinely worthwhile content.
The worst comments are of the "just asking questions!" type. The asker will preface it with an apology about them being "genuinely curious", and then continue by stating their "concerns" about how the established and agreed upon consensus was reached, and say they "couldn't help but notice" how the "other side" gets "suppressed/censored".
This type of concern-trolling is straight out of grassroots propaganda rulebook (which the asker is either consciously following, or has been a target and victim of themselves), and it's quite depressing how many posters here fall for it and engage the asker in good faith.
I recently learned that some people call these comments and posts "JAQing off"; such a term isn't going to change anyone's mind, but at least there's something to sadly smirk about when I see the same bad-faith questions posted for the umpteenth time.
That doesn't even accurately reflect this current thread. It's just that you're more likely to notice what you dislike.
What's going on here is the afterimage effect. People's general impressions of HN are an afterimage of the things they saw and disliked, which burn deeper into the retina.
Skepticism is healthy and is the essential posture of the Scientific Mind, and is not remotely the same as denial. The cherry picked time series used by the Met are clearly 'bad science' in the name of something 'ostensibly good'. FYI the intellectual authoritarians are much scarier than the skeptics, usually, in the long run. I wonder if this discussion should be more about communications strategies than material science.
"Climate change denialism" is a very broad stroke.
This term is always includes not only actual deniers of climate change (rising average surface temperatures), but a lot of other adjacent things, like "why", and "with what effect", and "effective solutions."
To the casual observer it it looks a "science cult." You either believe and abide by it and all its tenants or you're branded a denier, an unbeliever, a heretic.
Not a healthy way to look at science, especially when inevitabley some one thing is later shown to be incorrect and your faith comes crashing down.
Yes imagine we finally get rid of fossil fuel and live in a future with cleaner air and renewable energy everywhere and it turns out that global warming would have killed only one third of the ecosphere instead of the majority. Would be terrible.
The costs seem to be on the order of single digit percentages of global gdp for twenty or thirty years. That doesn't seem too expensive even if you only give a small chance to the IPCC being remotely right.
Exactly right. There are prophets, child saviors, required beliefs that are not to be questioned. Of course it looks like a religion from the outside! It's almost like this was done on purpose to become a wedge issue for one political side. Not a healthy way to look at science at all!
God forbid someone should say "I don't agree that we have enough information to establish a global tax policy given the inaccuracy of previous economic models" - they must be a denier!
It takes away from the real hard work people do when a Swedish teenager is paraded around with a scowl and a waving finger that points at everyone but China. I think it's a mistake and sets the whole work back, but what do I know!?
When it's really about science and not taxes/power, I think more people will accept the ideas.
They really are hyper triggered by Greta. Remarkable.
You know she's one voice out of literally millions arguing that we should do something about climate change? Technically Peta throwing paint at people and ecoterrorists are "in our camp," does that all detract from the facts of climate change?
If it's only about the science, and the science has been settled for a decade, why do we seem to be getting nowhere? Might there be more than science involved?
> Seems some people simply reject that because the commonly proposed next steps go against their ideology.
It may seem that way, and to some degree it almost certainly is, but what if that isn't an accurate characterization of how it actually is? Might it be worthwhile to consider applying the same intellectual rigor that climate scientists use to the public psychology/discourse aspect of this problem, or is that somehow denialist, or something else? The suggestion always receives downvotes, I'd love to know why.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it repeatedly and we ban accounts that do that. Also, no personal attacks please.
It is only superficially the same argument, which is to say, if you ignore the qualitative content of the two matters; the fact that they both reduce to opinion is irrelevant, since society is built upon general consensus on particular opinions rather than general principles everywhere. Just as not every action is alike (and we prohibit the expression of some actions), not all speech is alike (and, just as with action, we may decide to prohibit its expression).
I think it's worth discussing this comment instead of downvoting it.
There was a lot of controversy around the copyright expiration of Mein Kampf in Germany a few years ago. The Bavarian government owned the copyright and refused to allow it to be printed. When the copyright expired, annotated versions were released, putting the book in context. There are certain disadvantages that not printing had: making the book more mysterious and taboo, and leaving the text to stand on its own when it was acquired (thus having no space for rebuttals, historical comments, etc.).
Personally I lean toward keeping these kinds of things but annotating them and providing ample context - the equivalent of a study on history or a museum exhibit. Maybe we as a species can learn from our mistakes. It's not like forgetting these texts will prevent the same conditions that created the rise of fascism and genocide.
Mein Kampf is a unique example in the sense that far, far more harmful books, by any objective measure, have remained freely available. As such it cannot be used as a general template on how to handle such material.
I think Germany is no good role model when it comes to content restrictions, since too many measures are based on fear or shame, while adherence to arbitrary content rules isn't examined critically.
That is one factor why I believe Germany to be more likely to succumb to fascism again compared to the US for example. Luckily, the 21st century doesn't allow for much content control anymore.
Mein Kampf can reasonably fail on itself. There is need for context, of course, that education can and has to provide.
If you allow people to use their own judgement, perhaps that would have served as an incentive to use it in times of dire need.
The current idea that fascism rose because of too few content control is a grave mistake.
> That is one factor why I believe Germany to be more likely to succumb to fascism again compared to the US for example.
Citation needed? From the view of my filter bubble it looks like white supremacy and it's racist ideologies seem to be on an alarming rise in both countries regardless of their approach on free speech.
Unfortunately freedom of information has come under attack in the US as well lately, so yes, the rise of some circles is no surprise or contradiction. Unfortunately that aligns fascist groups with people that see value in these freedoms. Although to those it is mostly no secret that fascists are just temporary passengers with other ambitions.
Fascism needs the antagonist, it is an essential piece of the puzzle. Only through that people are able to strip their conscience, elevate themselves above others and commit atrocities against people they see as threats. It is their personal victim role.
"White supremacy" was a laughing stock 10 years ago. And I mean really a laughing stock. Their last hope was to sweep up some anime weaboos that didn't really buy into it in any significant number, but it was their goto strategy to groom these groups in hope someone a litte too full of himself would randomly condemn them as the root of evil or just plainly associate them with facsism.
You can fight fascism with giving people more freedoms and more access to information. That collapses their victim narrative and has the positive side effect from the measures itself. Censoring a book, banning people perceived to align with fascism, or pointing out moral imperatives doesn't achieve anything. On the contrary and I believe this behavior to be a main factor to current developments.
But since the US has basic and fundamental protections to freedom of speech and against overreaching government, it is in a far better state compared to Germany, which is partly on the road to make the same mistakes again.
Rant: Racist idealogies wouldn't be on the rise if it were easy to Google actual arguments against racism, but despite trying various search terms Google keeps failing. >:(
I think it's worth discussing this comment instead of downvoting it.
Fortunately, we can do both. Despite being nearly white, you can read the comment by highlighting it and it is still high the page, so it can be discussed. Seems like a model of how strongly oppositions should be treated.
I never understood the big deal about Mein Kampf. It's incredibly dull. If the premise is you're worried about people becoming Nazis, then his speeches are what you ought to be worried about. He rose to popularity through his speeches, not writing.
The propaganda was incredibly successful. To this day "Triumph of the Will" continues to be used as a reference point for the mental construct of the Nazi regime. The modern understanding of the Nazis is deeply informed by a propaganda film produced by the Nazis for the explicit purpose of creating that mental construct. "Triumph of the Will"'s endless lines of soldiers marching in formation is exactly the image they wanted you to think of when you thought of them.
Not just that. There's a long sequence on life in the young men's camp. The feeling is a lot like Woodstock. Or maybe a mix of summer camp and an idyllic version of basic training.
And the light show! Camp fires and torchlight! Huge insignia, and huge billowing banners. Very moving.
I'm curious which specific paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto is it you consider authoritarian? It's a very short text, and only chapter 2 really makes any argument of what Marx and Engels saw as the goal of communist movements, so I presume it must be something in chapter 2 you consider authoritarian.
There are certainly plenty of things in there that implies too much concentration in the power of the state (e.g. monopoly on communication and banking) for someone of more liberal or libertarian (whether left or right) bent if one considers a modern interpretation of the state. Which is why even many Marxists, especially libertarians, look to works like Marx writings on the Paris Commune for more specific details.
As it's still utilized to justify mass genocide by the state of its own citizens, and has happened multiple times and in greater numbers, let's just count this as the more dangerous book.
And people completely forget history... there were several popular variants of totalitarian socialism in europe. Russia in particular had civil-war like conflicts between the main 3 factions (iirc, red, green, white) and facism was definitely in the mix, but after WWII fell out and for some weird reason no longer considered socialist.
After WWII, there were definite anti-communist movements, though McCarthyism took things way too far. You cannot combat ideas with censorship, they'll fester.
Fascism was pretty much never considered socialist by much of anyone outside of the Nazi flavor trying to coopt the label, and the American Right engaging in revisionism in the last couple decades.
Hasn't most of the "American Right" distanced themselves from the white-nationalist/neo-nazi organizations as well as the Left? It bugs me that the associations are constantly made, but the groups themselves don't actually align with, get support from, or considered part of the American Right outside of straw-man narratives putting them together.
> Hasn't most of the "American Right" distanced themselves from the white-nationalist/neo-nazi organizations as well as the Left?
Maybe, but I was referencing that the notion of a substantive association between Nazis/fascists and socialism (or the left more generally) was never taken seriously by any significant group until the last couple of years, where the American Right decided that their existing pejorative labels were losing their sting and they needed to label everything they disagreed with “fascism” and seriously try to sell the connections; Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism was a notable point in this trend.
Notably the NSDAP originally was early on a total hodgepodge of ideological strands mostly united by nationalism. Some of those included left-wing economic views. Hitler systematically targeted those groups, and most were excluded or left long before the NSDAP got any influence.
Hitler eventually had the last remaining "left wing" faction of the NSDAP (the Strasserists) arrested and/or murdered - this purge was a large part of the purpose of the Night of the Long Knives. But even the Strasserists, despite wanting to borrow some left wing economic policies were staunchly ultranationalist and anti-socialist.
Well, it's "socialist" in the sense that the society (OK, the state, but whatever) matters far more than the individual. But I do agree that they used the term to confuse people.
Amusing factoid: Hitler honed his public speaking skills while working as a government mole in the socialist party.
Corporatism actually refers to the government, businesses, unions, church, and other institutions (the exact institutions included varying between forms of corporatism) working together as parts of a body; it is not derived from the use of “corporation” for a business entity.
> It's currently in-vogue to be scared of and hate nazi's. For some reason though that sentiment never took root against communists.
Er, what now?
It really took root against communists (and socialists), even those of both of the those groups that weren't Leninists, in the US almost immediately after the Russian Revolution and only started to fade a bit after the fall of the Soviet Union 70+ years later, and even now a full century later it has significant, though less, pull in the US.
> It's currently in-vogue to be scared of and hate nazi's. For some reason though that sentiment never took root against communists.
It did, there was plenty of paranoia and hatred of communists during the Cold War days, we just never fought an actual war against communists (edit: except in Vietnam and Korea, I forgot that for some reason...) Of course, a lot of that Red Scare stuff was just a thin coat of patriotic paint over anti-semitism and anti-gay bigotry, but I digress.
Also, it's not in-vogue to hate Nazis. Everyone other than Nazis has hated Nazis consistently ever since Nazis were a thing.
What is in-vogue, however, is to be a nazi (little n, colloquial meaning, because I know sometimes people like to be pedantic) amongst the American right and alt-right, as the current American President's election has coincided with a revival of right-wing populism and white supremacist identity politics. No, I am not calling Trump a nazi nor am I calling all Trump supporters nazis so they can stop clutching their pearls ... that white supremacists decided to turn the populist movement that brought him into power into a narrative of racial identity and purity has been well documented, and it actually depends little whether Trump has sympathy for them, or is just their dark horse.
And that is why America is currently concerned about nazis (little n) and not communists. Because the nazis (little n) managed to meme a President into office, and the communists did not.
>It's almost like that type of political ideology took root in american institutions thus paving the way for this new narrative to take hold that communism is good and facism is bad.
There is no such "new narrative." Communism has never been trusted in the US, and fascism has always been "bad."
> What is in-vogue, however, is to be a nazi (little n, colloquial meaning, because I know sometimes people like to be pedantic) amongst the American right and alt-right, as the current American President's election has coincided with a revival of right-wing populism and white supremacist identity politics.
Can I offer a different perspective?
A vocal minority on the left likes to assert that everyone on the right is a bunch of nazis but that doesn't make it true nor does it make it "in-vogue". If you move past that broad group ("the right") and just consider the more vocal/visible/strident right-wing activists, they are almost all promoting western civ cultural values, which is not the same thing as "white-supremacy" but irks the multi-cultural crowd quite a bit as it requires making value judgements on other cultures and ideologies (which is not the same thing as making a value judgement on other races or people with particular skin colors). I think the visibility/growth of this group is more of a reaction to the identity politics, multi-culturalism, and intersectionality ideas of the left than to Trump's election.
And if you move past both of those groups to the remaining folks who are indeed advocating for some sort of race or blood based supremacy theory you are talking about a insignificantly small group that has no support anywhere, certainly isn't in-vogue, isn't being "revived" in any substantial way, and mainly serves as the bogeyman that the left uses to smear anyone who disagrees with them.
As an european, seeing the american far right make a hold-up on so-called "western civ" is deeply unsettling.
The thing they promote as rooted in "western civ" and say is shared among "westerners" is not related to anything I know here. It is also surprising to hear about the opposition to "multi-culturalism" when Europe has never had one single culture.
So please if you want to promote that thing of yours, stop calling it "western". Call it american, or what you want that doesn't represent it as rooted in some thing we'd share in your imagination.
You aren't clear in what things you claim the "far right" is advocating but I'm guessing it isn't the things that I think the right is advocating like:
* individual rights
* equality for women
* limited government (especially at the national level)
* free market economics
* personal responsibility
* separation of church and state
You are probably right that there are some things that are more American than European (expansive free speech rights, gun ownership), but I was trying to keep things simple by saying "western civ". The right wants to welcome people who support these ideas and shun people who don't support these ideas.
As for multiculturalism, your comments suggest that your use of that term is not the same as mine. Multiculturalism from the left is not about assimilating people from disparate cultures but instead is about insisting that the ideas I listed above aren't to be valued and instead all cultures and ideologies are to be accepted as is, leading to balkanization, discord, and the devaluation of the ideas that have made the "West" and America successful.
Half of the the things you cite are not core components of european societies. France has historically implemented colbertism, Germany is ordoliberal, both things which are at odds with free markets. Limited govt has never been a thing in Europe, e.g. most european countries have a government-run social system including healthcare. Personal responsibility is a major rift between american liberals (in its actual meaning) and european liberals, since europe mostly defends a positive enforcement of liberties, while the US goes the other way.
Promoting your ideas as "western civ" in order to give them polish is an unfounded appeal to authority. The fact that Europe succeeded despite not sharing your views shows why this appeal is wrong.
Please keep your internal politics at home, and don't get us involved.
I'm pretty surprised at the hostility you have in your comments and your effort to convince me that there is little in common between the ideas I listed and your understanding of European sensibilities in these areas. You almost go as far as too say that there is nothing in common.
I'm not willing to accept your pushback on its face, but it certainly has me thinking a bit more about my own assumptions about what we share with Europe.
I'm still in the dark about what has made you hostile to whatever you think the American "far-right" is advocating. If it is some of the ideas I listed that would be good to know. If it is some mistaken understanding about what the "far right" is in America, that would also be good to know but I can't really tell from your comments.
Well... yeah... but now we have a Commissioner for the "European way of life". Last time I checked that same person ought to be the commissioner for immigration.
> I’ve heard jordan peterson and steven pinker called neo-nazis.
It still isn’t clear to me what this brings to a discussion. It seems like such a strange question.
Are any of us under the impression that label misapplication somehow means a label is no longer used? Of course not. After 30 years in the same house, my partners mother still calls the tree in her front yard an oak tree despite the fact it has always been and will remain a maple. Her misapplication of the label doesn’t mean oak trees no longer exist. Tree experts, dendrologists and arborists aren’t throwing their arms up and declaring their entire fields deprecated because a random person, in a casual setting, uses the wrong term.
My father still calls disk storage, RAM.
My partner still calls the serrano peppers she grows, jalapeños.
I regularly see politicians who lean to the right call obvious capitalist liberals, commies.
I still sometimes call giant ships, boats.
None of these misapplications matter, there are still an awful lot of people who rely on what words actually describe, despite a random old lady calling a maple tree an oak.
As always, casual conversations with casual people will at some point lead to casual use of words. It will continue to happen, for as long as we’re a species.
> After 30 years in the same house, my partners mother still calls the tree in her front yard an oak tree despite the fact it has always been and will remain a maple. Her misapplication of the label doesn’t mean oak trees no longer exist.
What if your partners mothers mom was put in charge of a maple tree conservation arboretum, and decided to cull all the oak trees, but she kept confusing maples for oak trees?
I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.
> What if your partners mothers mom was put in charge of a maple tree conservation arboretum, and decided to cull all the oak trees, but she kept confusing maples for oak trees?
> I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.
She’s not in charge of any arboretum, that’s the point I’m attempting to get across.
We have reached a point where the collective We are treating random people having random casual conversations as if these random casuals have the same weight as experts in their fields. We have collectively started to treat what used to be completely understood as casual forum discussions and casual opinion pieces as if these hold the same weight as an authority in their field publishing a well documented, far more rigorous, and well cited paper. We’ve allowed a fogging in the ability to distinguish between casual people and rigorous experts and this is the outcome. An intelligent collective should never hold these two opinions at the same weight.
My idiot cousin by marriage, who has a very real lack of critical thinking, who has a degree in “google research” from “the school of hard knocks” however, she does have a knack for writing in such a way which absolutely resonates with uneducated mothers. She writes as if she’s an authority in child vaccinations, she regularly goes into her closed facebook group and convinces other mothers why they should ignore their doctors and not vaccinate their children. Her words have more weight than medical research and medical professionals.
She seems to pull the card which almost always seems to work on a certain segment of the population – the “narrative” card. The target of this “narrative” charge is for some reason automatically assumed to be nefarious and the person who spotted this so-called “narrative”, their words now hold more weight than the actual expert in their field who had a “narrative.
We need to get back to a point where my words regarding the best methods to pick coffee beans mean little when compared to an actual coffee bean farmer, because my field of expertise lies elsewhere. I can read an article or three on coffee beans, but there is no rational universe where my words should hold the same weight as actual experts in coffee bean farming.
Until the collective We are able to say, “I don’t know.” or “I can give you my opinion, but you’d be far better off listening to Jill, she has far more knowledge on the subject.” until we get back to a rational discourse, we’re going to continue to find someone who is outraged because some idiot on a forum or some idiot made a video, used the wrong term and falsely labeled someone.
We need to get back to a point where the smartest people in the room are the people who say “I’m not sure. I’m not an expert. I don’t know. I don’t know the nuances of that vast field. I don’t know.”
The problem comes when the terms spread enough that miscommunication happens. When someone says "Bob is a neo-nazi" meaning "right wing", but the person they are talking to hears "wants to kill jews and blacks and gays". And then Bob gets lynched/ostracized/fired.
When the meaning of a word isn't likely to have a big impact on people's lives we can be a bit more forgiving (though personally I still want to move towards a clearer thinking population).
I've never understood why people make this argument, or what they think it proves.
Yes, the term "neo-nazi" is sometimes misapplied. That misapplication doesn't mean that neo-nazis don't exist, or that the term has no meaning. If the term didn't have an established, commonly agreed upon meaning that referred to a specific ideology and movement in the real world, then there would be no reason to quibble about its misuse, because calling someone a neo-nazi would be as meaningless as calling them a flarndingle.
But people aren't usually quibbling about it's misuse. They are objecting to unjust censorship, regardless of whether someone is called a neo-nazi or a flarndingle.
If someone was being harassed and censored because they were accused of being a flarndingle, I would have a problem with that. If corporate America were calling for mass censorship of "flarndingle" literature, I would be opposed to that.
I would not like being called a flarndingle if I knew it would mean that I would be censored. It does not matter that flarndingle is a meaningless word.
The term neo-nazi is actually quite abstract. For many younger people and activists, it has just become a synonym for "person I do not agree with".
It has become a catch-all insult that can be applied to anyone. There is nobody who that insult won't stick to. You can be a Jewish academic with controversial opinions about society and have "anti-fascist" activists target you for being a neo-nazi.
So, obviously we can't ban anyone that is called a neo-nazi.
In case of Germany, it's anti-science anti-nuclear "environmentalists" that are destroying it. Energy is needed regardless of the economic structure of society. Now which kind of energy will it be? Germany chose coal and now they're reaping the consequences.
> Germany chose coal and now they're reaping the consequences.
Heh, nope, everyone does reap the consequences... That said, nuclear power is no viable long term solution and if we imported uranium from Russia, everybody would start to cry again.
Being anti-nuclear isn't necessarily anti-scientific. It is a risk assessment. While I tend to have favored nuclear power, especially towards the current energy setup, I don't think it was a catastrophic decision.
Nuclear was always less than 15% of Germany's primary power consumption. Renewables something like 5%. We need to get to 100% carbon neutral. Whether we have to replace 80 or 100% with wind and solar shouldn't make that much of a difference.
I think you need to qualify that first statement with a timeframe. Otherwise, it is clearly untrue. 100% supply is realistically possible with only renewable energy -- within a few years by investing in storage, local wind power in South Germany where the main demand is etc.
Build enough batteries and hydro to last for a few hours to a few days and use power-to-gas for longer periods of low generation (e.g. winter and no wind). There is already infrastructure in place for strategic gas reserves. We just need to build additional gas plants to meet demand when wind and solar are at production minimums.
But batteries and hydro are extremely expensive at grid-scale. How economically uncompetitive are you willing to make Germany in exchange for not using nuclear?
Nuclear is also extremely expensive. Personally I see opportunities in being an early adopter of technologies that have to become quite popular over the next few years if we want to prevent catastrophic climate change, but I'm not enough of an economist to have a strong opinion.
I would also be okay with building some nuclear, put nuclear and renewables don't go very well together, and I believe it's much harder to build enough nuclear plants quickly enough to replace all fossil energy consumption than it is to build enough wind turbines.
All of those, plus "smart grid" stuff to get better control over demand, plus Power to Gas (electricity to methane) and gas turbines (very inefficient, but existing infrastructure can store huge amounts of energy, and efficiency isn't the primary concern for the exceptional case).
Being anti-nuclear (fission as we use it today) is not per se anti-science. If you do some research on how humanity has dealt with nuclear waste in the past and how it is still dealing with it, you may come to a different conclusion.
Socialism has destroyed quite a bit of nature. (look at the Aral sea, for example). What exactly would you is it about capitalism that supposedly destroys the planet?
And how would you propose to remedy the problem?
I mean by starving a couple of million people, as it is wont to do, Socialism could help curb the consumption of resources. I give you that.
And again, lols for the downvotes. You are ridiculous.
Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting here? They ask you not to use this site for ideological battle, nor to post in the flamewar style. Downvotes of such comments are correct on HN.
Yes, someone else started it, but users here are asked to follow the guidelines whether someone else is or not.
Sorry I don't understand your criticism. Is it not allowed to discuss capitalism or socialism, it is automatically an "ideological battle"? That doesn't make sense imo.
It's not allowed to foment generic ideological tangents with indignant rhetoric.
"Socialism starved a couple million people" is a classic example. All of that has been repeated countless times. It is predictable, therefore it does not gratify curiosity, therefore it's not what HN is for, and that means it's off topic.
If you have something genuinely new to say, that might be ok—but then an internet forum is not a good medium for that; you should write a book or a scholarly essay instead, and maybe link to it here.
It seems to be news for the person blaming capitalism for the woes of the world, though. So discussion is not welcome? Why can't people just ignore threads they are not interested in?
Afaik a lot of stories repeat on HN, so the "newsworthiness" criterion seems a bit arbitrary. Also, shouldn't it make a difference if it is a top level thread? I wouldn't submit a story about "socialism starving millions of people".
I know, your "new" policies have been in place for a while, but I think you really kind of destroyed Hacker News. I don't understand why you worry about curbing discussions in deeply nested threads, as they would be easy to ignore by people who don't care. I don't think you worry about SEO or anything like that, so really, what is your incentive?
Also, there are lots of "boring" and repetitive threads on HN (like on global warming), I think you may actually single out "capitalism vs socialism" for ideological reasons. I don't believe you that nobody is curious about capitalism vs socialism anymore. On the contrary, the "battle" is more relevant than ever, with socialist having a real shot at the US elections. It is a question that affects most of us a lot more than most topics would.
That's like saying a gardener shouldn't worry about weeds because those who don't like them needn't look at them. The trouble is that if one allows such discussion, it spreads and takes over. It doesn't just stay static. Worse, it has feedback effects. For example it drives away users who find such rhetoric boring and lame, and attracts users who enjoy heated repetition. We want the first group here more than the second, because the first makes HN more interesting (higher signal) while the second makes it less interesting (higher noise).
We can't be passive about such effects. They can quickly develop into a vicious circle that destroys the site. HN will only survive as an interesting place for thoughtful people if it avoids that, so this is an existential issue and why I (we) moderate that way. I'm sad you think I've destroyed Hacker News, but would submit that if moderation doesn't evolve as a community grows, one ends up with the default dynamic of internet forums: decay followed by heat death. HN was actually started as an experiment in avoiding that dynamic [1], so in my view we're aligned with its original spirit when we do this. "Our hypothesis is that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." [2]
You're right that the threads about global warming are almost as repetitive. The same logic applies to those.
I still don't quite see the issue you have with my comment. I personally find it a good argument against Socialism, or at least a good reminder that Socialism is not an automatic solution to the world's problems. And is it really common knowledge how the Russians destroyed the Aral sea? I know it wasn't always known to me, and I haven't read about it that often. If it is common knowledge, why do people propose Socialism as a solution to environmental problems?
What would be a good comment on Socialism, in your opinion?
I know you have a policy against politics, or used to have it. It doesn't seem to be strictly enforced, though (see global warming, feminism and so on).
I know why you have your policies, but I am not convinced that they are optimal. Have you ever even tested them against alternatives?
I've been on HN since it was called Startup News. I actually almost hate it now, because of some of the policies. Sure, maybe you don't want people like me on the site. Your call. I know several oldtimers feel the same, though.
You have actually found some ways to make users hate you, which is an achievement in itself. For starters, how about a warning that you are beyond your posting limit BEFORE people spend time and effort to write comments?
And it feels very one sided now, so not as interesting as it used to be (is it really the quality of my comment, or just criticism of Socialism that is the issue?). Still, I keep coming back, admittedly. But grudgingly so.
Edit: looking through the policies again, I still don't see how my comment is supposed to break the rules: "Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads.". It's not a crap link, and it is not rude or dumb. Imo, of course. That the same argument has been made before can hardly be a deciding factor, because then you'd have to shut down the site right now.
Can you give a citation? Where does this happen? Is it really just capitalist unwillingness to deliver food, or are these people in the hands of dictators, and it is capitalist unwillingness to sacrifice soldiers to topple them? And do capitalists start wars, or governments?
That’s quite the Malthusian viewpoint. Alternatively: “Malthus theory, which holds that since the world’s resources are more or less fixed, population growth must be restricted or all of us will descend into bottomless misery.
Malthusianism is scientifically bankrupt — all predictions made upon it have been wrong, because human beings are not mere consumers of resources. Rather, we create resources by the development of new technologies that find use for them. The more people, the faster the rate of innovation. This is why (contrary to Malthus) as the world’s population has increased, the standard of living has increased, and at an accelerating rate.“
Also, from your linked article from random space cadets: "Unless people can see broad vistas of unused resources in front of them, the belief in limited resources tends to follow as a matter of course."
Sorry, but O(2^n) is going to grow faster than O(n^3), which is the fundamental limitation of the speed of light for a space-faring civilization expanding in a shell from its origin.
*At the cost of catastrophic ecological destruction.
This specific strawman comes up so often that it ought to have its own name. Just because one guy underestimated the carrying capacity of the Earth a long time ago, and failed to predict farming practices that would eventually wreak havoc on the environment, doesn't make the population variable off-limits for discussion. Is it any more realistic to expect billions of people to voluntarily revert to an ascetic lifestyle?
Really the two are in feedback loops that may correlate and require certain strategization and working smarter instead of harder. Improved agricultural yields produce surplus food per person which allows a shift to industrialization which enables more secondary tertiary areas of specialization which can boost yields and give other benefits.
This dates back to the bronze age even and technically stone age in mesoamerican and neighboring southern native american cultures.
Capitalism saved the planet if not the people on it and has will continue to improve the lives of everyone it touches?
why, because it an economic system based on private ownership over means of production and profit. by that reasoning it implies your right to your own person is guaranteed.
how is that important, well the easiest way to understand it is that anywhere in the world where private and personal property rights are not respected by the government the people are put at risk. go look where the greatest tragedies of our current world are and you will see that.
can capitalism lead to some bad outcomes, yes, but overall it is the basis for many forms of governments with good outcomes. it has reduced death by starvation and disease simply by the abundances created.
when you respect the rights of your people it is far easier to respect the rights of the Earth you live on.
Chrome uses its own Blink and V8 now, and there are many cases where developers only design for Chrome and small differences in implementation can be a huge pain in Firefox/Safari.
No professional developer targets a browser when developing a web site unless its a captured audience with no choice. Professional developers follow the specification. Those who do otherwise are only mentioned in reddit headlines and other hobbyist sites.
You're missing my point. Assuming that all browsers correctly implement the specification is naive. I don't have an issues with standards themselves existing.
I have used inheritance in a way to make accessing code more seamless and easier for development. But without inheritance, I end up with a lot of boilerplate code, imports, etc...
Doesn't duplication go against the DRY principle? I know you are saying "wrong inheritance", but some people are saying all inheritance is wrong...
