That's completely untrue—actually it's a combo pack of false statements. I've been doing the moderation thing for years now yet still wince when I see such things delivered with such snark.
We don't moderate HN that way. Nor is there a 'generally accepted' view in the community about any divisive topic, for the simple reason that the community is too large. The views here reflect the divisions in society as a whole, just as any sufficiently large sample would. (Edit: really I should say 'societies', because there are deep divisions across geographical and cultural lines as well. Those are largely invisible and have a stronger influence than most people realize.)
What does commonly happen is that people with strongly opposing views imagine that the HN community and/or mods are stacked against them. This perception is in the eye of the beholder (a.k.a. a cognitive bias), because all sides make the same claim and in both intensity and direction it always corresponds to the perceiver's own political commitment.
In my experience political posts get [Dead]ed pretty fast, but this guy's articles always stay at the top for hours because of his association with HN/YC.
In my ecperience, lots of political posts stay up for quite a long time without getting [Dead]; articles that are on classic flamewar topics or which are fairly shallow posts on the partisan controversy of the day tend not to.
> The only thing I can think of is fully funded group homes that are mandatory to live in -- basically prisons with nice amenities and educational programs that you can graduate out of based on demonstrating a track record of being able to provide for yourself
Sounds like a great premise for a dystopian short story
By slowly withdrawing from the internet entirely. Cancelled my facebook and twitter accounts; the variety of websites I visit has dwindled to just a handful; I use a blackberry and will likely go to a flip-phone when I can find a decent cheap one (recommendations welcome). I read more books now.
"filter bubbles, walled gardens, emotional manipulation" are things I no longer think about
Not disagreeing with you, but something about large corporations buying government officials to enact their preferred legislation doesn't sit right with me.
Folks always make this argument which this kind of thing comes up. Just because you as a private entity can limit free speech, doesn't mean you should. Censorship is generally a bad idea, and I as a private entity can be upset at Harvard for doing it.
The Internet has shown all of us that simple restrictions on speech go a long way towards creating a welcoming and friendly atmosphere. Attacking basic civility and hate speech restrictions on speech is putting principles before reality. You don't want to make any laws restricting truly public speech, but censuring private entities for that is counter-productive.
Cutting down on trolling, perhaps. But there appears to be an encroaching ideologically-driven purge in some areas against people expressing "incorrect" speech. Most of the complaints seem to be focused on youtube, twitter, and facebook (e.g. pewdiepie; also H3H3 productions appears to be having trouble; the site-wide purge of alt-right accounts on twitter and the banning of Milo; instapundit and james o'keefe were temporarily banned; I think nobody would be surprised if someone like Steven Crowder got in trouble someday soon; etc.).
> Attacking basic civility and hate speech restrictions on speech is putting principles before reality.
Now this is quite the 180° turn from how things really work. Setting in place "rules" because they might or might not "offend" someone isn't putting principles before reality how, exactly? It is, of course that's exactly what it is, but I'm curious to how you'd rationalize the opposite.
Apparently, you have never been the target of hate speech. I mean as an organization or platform, hate speech is gonna cause serious damage. You can't just tell individuals in your community or organization to ignore it. For example, in my country Myanmar,we just got free speech. But now we are dealing with hate speech which actually lead to hate crimes. The spread of religious hate speech causes one community of people to set fire/ kill another community of people. You can't just ignore hate speech.
Target the violence, not the speech. Perhaps it is a cultural thing. Being an American, we have a bit of a libertarian underpinning to our culture, so maybe it is different.
You use the term "hate speech" as if it is a definite thing, but the phrase is nebulous and can very easily be used to target expressions of an undesired ideology in the case that the authorities have an agenda to push (e.g. certain religious authorities may target another religion's evangelization efforts as hate speech; communists might target people trying to spread Western values of free enterprise; etc.).
While it is within Harvard's right as a private institution to dictate which speech it finds acceptable, it is perhaps still a bad idea. In today's culture, those in positions with the authority to moderate speech (e.g. online forums such as Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, etc.) are doing so liberally. I would prefer prestigious institutions of higher learning to specifically allow these kinds of offensive and hateful speech because they are shocking and uncomfortable, and the more ideas to which students are exposed the sharper their minds become.
Not to mention that filth like this serves as a kind of canary in the coalmine - if one can make jokes about violence against minorities without fear of repercussions, then that bodes well for ideas actually intended to be taken seriously.
Vasco and his humanist priest had their Catholic theology all wrong, and their heresy had disastrous consequences. There is a tendency within Catholic circles to view oneself only as an irredeemable sinner. This fills one with shame and causes a sort of false humility that convinces oneself to reject all good things ("his professional success was at odds with how he thought of himself; he felt he didn’t deserve it"). One further effect of focusing excessively on one's sinfulness, rather than on the love of God, is that quitting sin is much harder. The priest's belief that man is inherently good is also heresy at odds with scripture.
The truth as the Church would describe it is that man is intrinsically sinful but has been redeemed through Christ, and that should fill one's heart with joy and gratitude. No, man does not deserve any good thing, but when good things happen they should be appreciated as gifts, not rejected out of shame. This is true humility.
Some claim that self esteem should instead be replaced with self-compassion. This is a good idea that is in line with Church teaching, since to see yourself as God sees you (with unconditional love in spite of one's faults) is to adopt a perception which is based in truth, rather than the self-esteem movement which is based on convincing yourself of the lie that you are unconditionally good.
1) Good - states' actions are how the constitution was framed
2) Weird - the governors appear to be taking action unilaterally by executive decree, which is how the Paris accord was originally agreed to (Obama) and reversed (Trump)
This might be the best of all worlds. Blue states can join the alliance, and red states can stay out. Everyone's happy and the economic effects can play out as they will.
*Except when Sam Altman feels like talking about it