Presumably, you have read through the comments of the referenced thread[1]. If so, your essay omits a perspective about politics dicussion that many HN participants have. I'll attempt to summarize that position:
1) Yes, politics is extremely important.
2) Yes, politics touches every subject.
3) Yes, HN readers perform technical work in programming and hardware that affects politics, and vice versa.
4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of emotional comments instead of insightful ones.
5) The overall net effect of political discussion on HN is negative and we'd rather not have 1 of the valuable 30 slots of the front page taken up by a political story (e.g. "Trump denies climate change.")
To reiterate the points above, it does not mean "climate change" is unimportant or that HN posters are "burying their head in the sand". That's a 1-dimensional caricature of the people who'd rather get their diet of political discourse from somewhere else besides HN.
Therefore, it's possible to simultaneously hold the view that politics is super important and they don't want it on HN. Your essay doesn't address this perspective.
You know how you have that hacker meetup, or small conference that starts off as all meaty tech topics? How great that feels to be able to learn/teach/demonstrate advanced topics knowing that everyone is on the same page. Then gradually money/business interests get involved to the point that the fundamental flavor of the group changes, and the first ones to leave are the most interesting. Five years later it's just a bunch of business/sales guys in suits giving power point presentations to each other. Of course no one would say that money, or business interests aren't important, but something has been lost here that is difficult to rebuild.
It's true that we should all consider the ethical ramifications of what we do, but opening the floodgates on politics will have the cost of reducing the utility of HN. The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the day.
After the Second World War, the part of the city the Technical University of Berlin was in came under British administration.
They quickly passed a decree mandating classes in philosophy, politics, languages, and other social sciences to be required for every student–engineers, physicist, chemists etc.
The idea was that never again should a generation grow up with the power of scientific knowledge but none of the tools to judge the ethics of using that power.
Meaning: there are times where enjoying purely the wonders of technology is a luxury you can't afford. For HN, it doesn't mean a need to debate the Paris accords. But this community has quite a few people sitting at the levers of power, and where technology and politics/policy intersect, it can make a meaningful difference for people to know that the group of peers whose judgement they may value would, for example, applaud them for walking off the job instead of handing over the iPhone encryption keys.
You know, I think you could actually swap out "tech" with "political", in your first sentence, and make everything you said equally true about politics. Because most of what actually happens in politics, starts with passionate talented people, who are creating brilliant new ways to do things better.
The more groundbreaking something new is, the more the businessmen take over. Only in politics it's the bureaucracy and career politicians rather than shareholders and MBAs (though there are more and more MBAs on the political scene as well).
I recently wrote major parts of the digitization strategy for the municipality where I work, and I participate in a lot of multi-municipality "unions" where we're working out how to digitize our future, so I may be a bit colored, but I see a lot of similarities between making politics and creating new tech.
> The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the day.
I find the opposite to be true. The most intelligent and experienced hackers are not hyper-specialized, but have wide ranging knowledge of computing, mathematics, science, and people. They have strong, well-considered opinions on many topics, including politics.
Spending time arguing about it on Hacker News, probably not, but face-to-face with people they respect, yes.
You'd really enjoy the Chaos Communications Congress. It's something like 20 years old I believe, it's among the best in its niche of security/hacking/thats-great-but-why??-projects, and you won't find a suit there.
It is, however, extremely political, with a strong anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalistic message.
>> You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have posts about the innards of Erlang
Interesting concept, but, I (and I guess I am not alone on this one) would have found this particular topic extra interesting, and would have generated a few more site-interactions this way (instead of the other way around). But I can understand the gist of it...
Besides some minor experiences start-up world is the third worldwide phenomenon that I participated in while it grew. It was really exciting, a lot of fun, a lot of stories to tell, a lot of experiences made. But there is no reason to be sad about that it's over. It will happen again. Another topic, but it will happen, and it will be just as good and for the same reasons.
Also, it wouldn't be as good if it would stagnate at some point. I am/was also part of communities that stagnated, some since long before I was born. It's not the same level of engagement, not the same glory, not the same amount of brave, smart people. So if HN stagnated on a smaller level it wouldn't have been as good either.
For me I really found the best approach is to take it like a surfer. There are good waves and bad waves, but each one will end. Ending wave just means it's time to get ready for the next.
There was a nice long essay that looked at that same phenomenon from the context of underground music that gradually shifts in tone as it gets more popular, until the particular genre now names simply a kind of pop music that isn't really what it started off as. Sadly, I can't find a link to it, so I'll be grateful if anyone can provide one.
Still, politics are probably important and if we could engage in politics with non-techs with amazing efficiency, we might be able to have our cake and eat it too - address the political issue in 5 minutes at the start of the conference, then get back to business.
> opening the floodgates on politics will have the cost of reducing the utility of HN
I'm not apolitical, far from it, but that doesn't mean I want all the spaces I use to be politicized. And when HN does veer into politics, it almost always lowers the level of both insight and courtesy several notches from discussions of other topics.
I'm relieved to see politics stay tangential, because I think the alternative is not HN gaining insight on politics but losing it on everything else.
I think that it's more about politics and investors/advertisers not really clicking. The rest I just don't see, we already opened the flood gates to stuff like discussing "another trivial update of this piece of software a bunch of us use". Most of the comments aren't technical, and it's not like anyone ever got downvoted for telling an anecdote about their child or their parents, and "X is awesome" is exactly as valuable as "X is shit". Yet one is allowed, the other isn't.
> Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home
What's the hacker angle? There isn't one. It's interesting to people who care about politics and for people with dollars in their eyes. Amazon being "in the industry" is enough. How's that interesting? Maybe it's the idea that having a lot of users or commanding a lot of investments makes something intellectually interesting, a notion that is as widespread as it is mediocre.
All in all, I often feel the best analogy to some HN subcircles is the beam breakers in Stephen King's The Dark Tower. Don't think too much about it, just do what feels good, and just avoid what scares you, nevermind how that feeds into what disfigured and forced people into settling for such a life to begin with. Gotta keep those attention spans short while pretending to be deep.
For every 10 stories about people labouring under psycho bosses for years there's one of someone standing up to them the second they violated boundaries. The opposite ratio would be a start, and people who don't do that in their life I genuinely have no business and no politics to discuss with, and I don't care for their rationalizations of their weakness and accomplicehood, either. I read and comment because different people write and read here, too.
> "political battle of the day"
That doesn't require you to not think or respond deeper than that. How many "0.001 release of the day" posts trigger people into tirades about general programming principles? How much do we learn from that? There is no consistency here, either, and if you find one interesting, why don't you find the other even more interesting?
If people understand intellectual curiosity, why don't they understand the combination of intellectual curiosity, a moral grounding, and a will? Maybe because those who don't have it can't possibly accept that they are indeed the weakest link. It's like when we assume attractive people are dumb -- we wish! Sometimes they just have and are everything we do, and then some.
The HN that had Erlang day was a lot less moderated, and people posted about politics at will. The new, heavily moderated HN is the one filled with the same bland reposts of today's stories from top 10 news sites that are on every other aggregator.
What makes HN so great is that when a topic is discussed, often someone with direct participation in the topic is somewhere in the thread, to give an inside view.
What I miss about mixing HN and politics, is that HN doesn't have politicians who can pop in and say 'oh hi guys I wrote this bill feel free to ask me some questions'.
(I'm not saying nobody on HN participates on politics, I remember reading an interesting post about someone who ran for governor(?), but those posts are rare).
For example, a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides, people who write some controversial bills, people who take part in lobbying, and even senators. This approach has really opened my eyes to the political process and I have heard many well formed counter arguments which made me reconsider some of my positions.
I cannot say I have ever experienced this on an online forum.
Personally I do not enjoy seeing politics posts in HackerNews, similarly how I don't enjoy seeing them in /. or /r/programming. Specially because they are usually US politics and I live outside that country.
I definitely enjoy my share of the circus that is happening in that space. I watch CNN usually in evenings while having dinner as a form of "light entertainment". And in the mornings I do have my share of political news reading on my preferred sources.
But when I get to a science or technology forum, I love to see science or technology news and information. Thus when suddenly the majority of items are related to politics, it turns me off.
> a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides
Planet Money is better than average on this, but is definitely in the NPR bubble from my perspective.
I think EconTalk does the best job of airing different perspectives on (at least tangentially) economics related issues. The host has his own perspective, but he's very candid that he knows he has his own cognitive biases and often invites his guests to enlighten him by challenging those biases. It's also a longer format, so there is more time to unpack issues.
...which is a really good point. I think a lot of shallow political dialogue happens because of a lack of attention and space as much as anything else. Explaining why net neutrality is a big deal in emotional terms takes some technical explanation and some narrative building, for example.
I think what the article tries to say is that everything that has at least two people is political by heart. HN is political. Giving you the option to respond and upvote and flag is political. You doing any of this is political. You are a politician, automatically just by being here and interacting with me.
That's a big issue. HN has no special insight on politics so the discussions turn into the same old canards and groupthink on Reddit or anywhere else. There's just very little informative or useful about those discussions.
It's pretty often that stuff which is factually wrong but meets emotional needs gets upvoted without a second thought. Disagreement with the notion the world is ending or Trump is literally James Harden and is gonna start the Holocaust (a popular feeling at HN 4 months ago) gets swiftly downvoted because it doesn't meet how people feel.
Every time one of those groupthinky discussions happens it makes HN less attractive to informed discussion.
I'm sitting at -12 in a thread from yesterday in which a guy responded "No offence you don't seem to have much knowledge of post ww2 history" after he was the one who made a weird historical analogy and I more or less copypastad part of a wiki article on the issue. I don't really care about being wrong or losing Internet points, but when stuff like that happens it just convinces me that even really intelligent people would rather agree with their biases over actually debating something. No thanks. It's the kind of behavior expected on r/politics.
> a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides
Great tip. The solution to so many problems is to involve challenging opposing points of view.
There is a big problem with the left in America rejecting opposing points of view. "Safe space" and "shut it down" culture, etc. Mainstream media newsrooms packed with only liberal reporters, etc.
But unfortunately everyone gravitates to places of comfort around people with like-minded views, because its too difficult to constantly be questioning your beliefs or challenging someone else.
Good examples are Fox News' Hannity and Colmes and CNN's Crossfire. Both shuttered, and just ended up with replacement shows with one point of view.
I find that more and more Trump people can make the arguments of left-wing people, but the inverse is not true.
I would love to have an open and honest (and civil) AMA from people who are writing these bills. Especially "cyber" legislation.
I personally helped create a government commission in Oakland, California that now decides on privacy topics that go to city council. We need more things like that.
I love how this article became an example exactly of what's wrong in politics in general. There is a huge group of people in every political unity, that doesn't care about general consensus, understanding problems, considering different points of view. Yet, these people tend to turn on their political flak cannons from time to time and march into the political landscape like elephants into a porcelain shop (thinking about a funny picture with Trump here).
Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self-responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't even see that it exists.
So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable to them, no matter what the results for the group are.
I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just ignore them because they are so many.
Oh dear. I couldn't disagree more with the assessment of this story's position on Hacker News.
There is a difference between sticking your head in the sand politically and having a forum where people with differing political opinions can come together and discuss ideas in other areas than politics. You can both be politically active AND participate in a forum that avoids politics. Hacker News policy and avoidance of most political issues is precisely right in this regard. I know I come here to listen to stories dealing with computer technology and expert/practitioner commentary on those stories and business people engaged in the business of technology, particularly start-ups. At those times public policy has direct bearing to these subjects, such as patent law or net neutrality, I do expect to see discussion here.
Some here have been saying this has to do with US/Paris Accords. I agree with those topics being purged from this forum. I mean, really! How many readers of Hacker News do you think are on the fence about this subject: probably not zero, but my money says pretty damn close. I would wager that most here not only have already formed opinions on the subject, but strongly held opinions on the subject. If that's the case what possible value is yet another place to shout how right you are and wrong the other guy is at the top of your lungs given the number of other venues for such virtue signaling? I doubt you move the needle in one direction or the other on such terms.
So, what can you possibly achieve by being political in all venues and discussion forums? I suppose you can further entrench the move to ideological purity in all endeavors, further degrade any ability to find common ground with people that don't otherwise agree with you, further degrade the political discourse, and achieve a flourishing sense of tribalism in a large, complex society.
Is politics important? Sure it is. But so is time and place.
Right. But are you comfortable with the fact that not all hackers will be on the same political side?
I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra-libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse?
Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction of change.
I am a lobbyist and I work in Washington, so I'm surrounded by politics every day. I think what makes HN great is that it avoids politics, for the most part, and true intellectual stories and debate is able to take place. Politics is extremely polarized, and permeates every aspect of our society to the point of extreme. I prefer an HN sans politics, without incendiary articles and commentary, because I learn a lot more about the world and society that way.
One of the more interesting lines of political inquiry that I think has arisen lately outside of HN, is the question of the actual true affect "hacking" (and I don't just mean in the Security sense -- I mean in the Hacker News "Comp Sci" sense as well) actually had on recent elections around the world. In what way, technically speaking and regardless of your personal political affiliations or beliefs, could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical means? Maybe there are some good links to technical resources that others could direct me to?
I think the rest of the world desperately needs the Hacker News viewpoint on this, in detailed, non-partisan technical manner. I believe there is some deeper, non-polarized, apolitical (think, "highest bidder") aspect to what is actually happening right now around the world.
I agree with everything you've said. There's enough politics in everything else; I come here to be a nerd and learn about nerdy things.
Also I've noticed that even though HN tends to promote discussion pretty well on technical subjects, even here political discussions tend to devolve into flame wars.
The irony in this entire thread is that sufficiently broad technical leadership is indistinguishable from organizational politics. It's all about talking stakeholders into doing "the right thing".
I would love to just be able to solve Big Problems by hacking on them, but the more experience I get, the more I find that the biggest roadblocks involve changing minds, not changing code.
Is organizational politics inevitable once you reach a certain size? Any ideas or lessons in avoiding politics in favor of solving problems – short of a mind meld?
TL;DR: I think the appropriate thing to do is talking about ETHICS here as that's universal and some times it will involve politics, but not just politics for the sake of it.
From an opposite point of view to this article, politics vary greatly around the world and I'm guessing that by politics the article mainly refers to USA politics. For instance I ignore my country's politics talk since it's too old fashion and USA politics talk since it feels quite pointless arguing/bashing for the sake of it most of the times. I do enjoy a meaningful politics discussion from time to time, normally in person and with someone I trust already.
While I do agree on the big picture--USA is one of the most influential countries, politics there affect all the world--this article seems to be setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter (metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became quite unbearable at points TBH.
So I would say that the things we should continue doing is talking about ethics (especially when it is related with hacker ethics). My short list of rules for HN topics are (the more the better):
- It is about hackers/startup/programmers/IT/privacy/etc.
> this article seems to be setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter (metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became quite unbearable at points TBH.
I didn't get that from the article at all, just that we should be discussing politics when it's intertwined with the technology we build and care about.
I am not certain ethics are universal. I think "The Righteous Mind", by Jonathan Haidt, does a fairly good job showing that there are different aspects or flavors to ethics, and that not everyone can agree on which aspects 'count'.
Your comment is political. It adds a point of view to the discussion about politics in HN. It also tries to achieve something (talking about ETHICS). This is politics. No need to talk how US government politics is different from Russian government politics. We can just talk about our politics here.
From my point of view, discussing politics is a waste of time. We don't make progress by discussing the daily musings of the people who appear to wield power in the world.
I'm more interested in the technology that will eventually render their power useless: counter economics.
For me the goal isn't to find the right people at the right time to seat the power of nation-states, but to make it impossible for them to wield any meaningful power at all.
I am deeply interested in politics, governance, and the way humans interact at scale, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in what bills get passed, who gets elected, or what Trump said in a tweet. While these small blips in history do have an impact, I think technologies such as bitcoin, uber, etc., have a much bigger impact on the world because they usurp political power.
Lets all waste time virtue-signalling about things we have no experience or expertise in, that are dominated by charismatic dummies we can barely communicate with, and that we'll have no measurable impact on!
Or we can keep doing what we can do well and has actually, fundamentally changed the world for the better and made us rich.
I'm not sure if I agree with the author. Hackers do care about political issues. My question is whether political discussions over short form text do more harm than good to a community.
To me, HN detoxing politics seems more like the librarian enforcing a rule of silence rather than encouraging ostriching. And polarizing topics like politics, especially over short form text, to me, seems like it would destroy that ideal of HN.
That being said, the Internet sure could use a proper forum for political discussions.
I don't think one must devote themselves to politics. However, this thoughtful essay by regular contributor here should be UNFLAGGED. It is piercing, but measured and in line with the ideals here on this site AND the reasonable discussion.
If dang or another moderator could weigh in; this is not how I believed flags were meant to be used. We defend free speech here unless we have a strong reason.
It's tedious bullshit that makes a bunch of mistakes - some of which have already debunked.
In particular it mostakes the reason for the detox. This was only ever about stopping tedious pathological arseholes making the same boring hyperbolic bullshit flamebait arguments that a not particulary bright 16 year old would make.
HN thinks of itself as smart but the political discussion here is normally embarrassingly weak.
<personalOpinion>
The problem with political or religious discussion is that much of it is irrationally about 'tribes' and self image.
Some positions cannot be easily influenced with mere 'facts' because you're arguing against people's feelings and cognitive dissonance is very powerful.
Bringing politics up on Hacker News will rarely positively influence anyone's opinion but will almost always be divisive and distracting.
</personalOpinion>
Sometimes the goal isn't to "convert" people to your political or religious views. There is immense utility in reinforcing that there are intelligent and congenial people (who deserve the benefit of the doubt) that disagree with you on important issues.
I think pushing "controversial" discussions to the edges of polite society has been shown to make us more culturally ignorant.
I'm sad the posts about USA withdrawing from the Paris deal all got purged fro the front page yesterday. Yes, some political issues aren't relevant on HN, but this I think was.
Edit: Kinda ironic that this post is now having the title [FLAGGED] and being dropped from the fp as well. Edit2: Still flagged but back up, interesting
No HN only allow political ideologies or narratives they agree with. The moderator team do not hide that they are SJW's.
As another example, currently HN's narrative of choice is how Uber is literally the worst thing since Hitler and you can't go a week without seeing 3 or 4 top-voted links bitching about Uber. Perhaps some people like being able to conveniently travel from point A to B without caring about what some whiny keyboard warrior hates about Uber this week.
I'm interested in politics, I follow it closely and I am a member of a political party. But I don't want to see it here, I don't think HN is a good venue for it.
That's a shame, because the things we discuss here have political consequences, and it's irresponsible to ignore them.
I wouldn't want to see posts strictly about politics on the front page, but I think discussion of political topics that relate to technology and our industry is not only interesting, but necessary.
One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by computerising everything.
This may or may not be true. In the meantime, computer programmers all over the world are working on computerising subjects that are traditionally used to having political power/influence involved. Pulling the humans out and replacing them with shell scripts, in this scenario, is of course a source of contention.
Fundamentally, governments and politics are broken. Computers can be used to fix them. However, this is one of the most controversial areas of computerisation and - like politics itself, along with governance - a cause of never-ending social strife.
Its almost like something, "ethical", is missing in the equation.
There are two different types of politics and we often conflate both. The type that many people hate is "politics the art of manipulating people".
The second meaning refers to actual policies and their effect on people's quality of life. I don't think anyone would have trouble discussing that - that is, if it were somehow magically separated from the manipulation. But often its not.
If you look at the first meaning, things like "detox week" make a lot of sense - its about getting rid of the manipulation so that your brain can process information better again. "Squelching political debate" means stopping discussion that attempts to manipulate, and so on.
Since the tools used for manipulation are currently better than ever before, and we don't like manipulation, I suppose the best approach would be to work on things that expose manipulation and/or defend people from it.
edit: exercise - try to replace the word "politics" with "manipulation" in the article and re-read it. The point that we shouldn't burry our head in the sand still stands, but the reasons why that happens become much clearer.
Politics, from my Norwegian social studies textbook, is defined as "the subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society". Nothing to do with manipulation there. The same definition can be used for office politics.
Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't carry them.
I would argue that politics have infiltrated tech too much already.
Don't believe me, try being a open, vocal Trump supporter or conservative at a major tech company in Silicon valley. You will be labeled a hateful, racist (fill in your favorite derogatory term) based on your political beliefs irregardless of your actual actions both at work or even in your personal life. Most people who are conservative are afraid to talk about their political beliefs due to the very real threat of losing their job.
Look at Larry Garfield with Drupal. In the course of things stuff went as far as people in the Drupal association actively trying to ban conservatives among other things.
The ruby community is just as bad. Rails Girls, Rails Bridge and later on tech404.io banned a woman because she was conservative https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-editor-172e93ecc.... Then there was Opalgate where a community diversity leader tried to get a key contributor banned over his personal conservative beliefs.
At this years Lambdaconf a black, first time speaker and military veteran, who grew up dirt poor in the projects, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps was blasted by a group of people because in his personal life he believes in the red pill, specifically, in his own words seeking the truth, not being anti-woman.
As a moderate I really don't need to be concerned about someone's personal beliefs work with people or to even have a friendship with them. People are messy imperfect beings and there are many shades of grey with people and beliefs even when they hold views that I'm against. The only time that becomes an issue is if someone acts on it. IE: they steal from the company or murder someone etc. but that is not what I am talking about here. In all of the cases I mentioned here, these people did not act inappropriately in a professional setting. They didn't harass people, try to convince people about their personal beliefs, make sexist statements etc..
People who dedicate their lives to parsing out complex political/moral issues have a tough time doing it. If I go to a tech event I'm there to talk about tech not a political conference. The irony is that if people on all sides of the political issues have a place where they came come together and see someone as a human it also may be more effective than the division that the politicization of tech has been creating. Could that open us up to some bad, maybe, but politics being combined with tech are causing a lot of damage to the industry and people already. More importantly its not working.
---Rant over--
[+] [-] jasode|8 years ago|reply
Presumably, you have read through the comments of the referenced thread[1]. If so, your essay omits a perspective about politics dicussion that many HN participants have. I'll attempt to summarize that position:
1) Yes, politics is extremely important.
2) Yes, politics touches every subject.
3) Yes, HN readers perform technical work in programming and hardware that affects politics, and vice versa.
4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of emotional comments instead of insightful ones.
5) The overall net effect of political discussion on HN is negative and we'd rather not have 1 of the valuable 30 slots of the front page taken up by a political story (e.g. "Trump denies climate change.")
To reiterate the points above, it does not mean "climate change" is unimportant or that HN posters are "burying their head in the sand". That's a 1-dimensional caricature of the people who'd rather get their diet of political discourse from somewhere else besides HN.
Therefore, it's possible to simultaneously hold the view that politics is super important and they don't want it on HN. Your essay doesn't address this perspective.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404
[+] [-] johngalt|8 years ago|reply
It's true that we should all consider the ethical ramifications of what we do, but opening the floodgates on politics will have the cost of reducing the utility of HN. The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the day.
I miss Erlang day.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
They quickly passed a decree mandating classes in philosophy, politics, languages, and other social sciences to be required for every student–engineers, physicist, chemists etc.
The idea was that never again should a generation grow up with the power of scientific knowledge but none of the tools to judge the ethics of using that power.
Meaning: there are times where enjoying purely the wonders of technology is a luxury you can't afford. For HN, it doesn't mean a need to debate the Paris accords. But this community has quite a few people sitting at the levers of power, and where technology and politics/policy intersect, it can make a meaningful difference for people to know that the group of peers whose judgement they may value would, for example, applaud them for walking off the job instead of handing over the iPhone encryption keys.
[+] [-] eksemplar|8 years ago|reply
The more groundbreaking something new is, the more the businessmen take over. Only in politics it's the bureaucracy and career politicians rather than shareholders and MBAs (though there are more and more MBAs on the political scene as well).
I recently wrote major parts of the digitization strategy for the municipality where I work, and I participate in a lot of multi-municipality "unions" where we're working out how to digitize our future, so I may be a bit colored, but I see a lot of similarities between making politics and creating new tech.
[+] [-] xapata|8 years ago|reply
I find the opposite to be true. The most intelligent and experienced hackers are not hyper-specialized, but have wide ranging knowledge of computing, mathematics, science, and people. They have strong, well-considered opinions on many topics, including politics.
Spending time arguing about it on Hacker News, probably not, but face-to-face with people they respect, yes.
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
It is, however, extremely political, with a strong anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalistic message.
[+] [-] maze-le|8 years ago|reply
Interesting concept, but, I (and I guess I am not alone on this one) would have found this particular topic extra interesting, and would have generated a few more site-interactions this way (instead of the other way around). But I can understand the gist of it...
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
Also, it wouldn't be as good if it would stagnate at some point. I am/was also part of communities that stagnated, some since long before I was born. It's not the same level of engagement, not the same glory, not the same amount of brave, smart people. So if HN stagnated on a smaller level it wouldn't have been as good either.
For me I really found the best approach is to take it like a surfer. There are good waves and bad waves, but each one will end. Ending wave just means it's time to get ready for the next.
[+] [-] Asooka|8 years ago|reply
Still, politics are probably important and if we could engage in politics with non-techs with amazing efficiency, we might be able to have our cake and eat it too - address the political issue in 5 minutes at the start of the conference, then get back to business.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|8 years ago|reply
I'm not apolitical, far from it, but that doesn't mean I want all the spaces I use to be politicized. And when HN does veer into politics, it almost always lowers the level of both insight and courtesy several notches from discussions of other topics.
I'm relieved to see politics stay tangential, because I think the alternative is not HN gaining insight on politics but losing it on everything else.
[+] [-] wordupmaking|8 years ago|reply
> Wal-Mart will pay employees to deliver packages on their way home
What's the hacker angle? There isn't one. It's interesting to people who care about politics and for people with dollars in their eyes. Amazon being "in the industry" is enough. How's that interesting? Maybe it's the idea that having a lot of users or commanding a lot of investments makes something intellectually interesting, a notion that is as widespread as it is mediocre.
All in all, I often feel the best analogy to some HN subcircles is the beam breakers in Stephen King's The Dark Tower. Don't think too much about it, just do what feels good, and just avoid what scares you, nevermind how that feeds into what disfigured and forced people into settling for such a life to begin with. Gotta keep those attention spans short while pretending to be deep.
For every 10 stories about people labouring under psycho bosses for years there's one of someone standing up to them the second they violated boundaries. The opposite ratio would be a start, and people who don't do that in their life I genuinely have no business and no politics to discuss with, and I don't care for their rationalizations of their weakness and accomplicehood, either. I read and comment because different people write and read here, too.
> "political battle of the day"
That doesn't require you to not think or respond deeper than that. How many "0.001 release of the day" posts trigger people into tirades about general programming principles? How much do we learn from that? There is no consistency here, either, and if you find one interesting, why don't you find the other even more interesting?
If people understand intellectual curiosity, why don't they understand the combination of intellectual curiosity, a moral grounding, and a will? Maybe because those who don't have it can't possibly accept that they are indeed the weakest link. It's like when we assume attractive people are dumb -- we wish! Sometimes they just have and are everything we do, and then some.
[+] [-] pessimizer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xcoffee|8 years ago|reply
What I miss about mixing HN and politics, is that HN doesn't have politicians who can pop in and say 'oh hi guys I wrote this bill feel free to ask me some questions'.
(I'm not saying nobody on HN participates on politics, I remember reading an interesting post about someone who ran for governor(?), but those posts are rare).
For example, a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides, people who write some controversial bills, people who take part in lobbying, and even senators. This approach has really opened my eyes to the political process and I have heard many well formed counter arguments which made me reconsider some of my positions.
I cannot say I have ever experienced this on an online forum.
[+] [-] xtracto|8 years ago|reply
I definitely enjoy my share of the circus that is happening in that space. I watch CNN usually in evenings while having dinner as a form of "light entertainment". And in the mornings I do have my share of political news reading on my preferred sources.
But when I get to a science or technology forum, I love to see science or technology news and information. Thus when suddenly the majority of items are related to politics, it turns me off.
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
Planet Money is better than average on this, but is definitely in the NPR bubble from my perspective.
I think EconTalk does the best job of airing different perspectives on (at least tangentially) economics related issues. The host has his own perspective, but he's very candid that he knows he has his own cognitive biases and often invites his guests to enlighten him by challenging those biases. It's also a longer format, so there is more time to unpack issues.
...which is a really good point. I think a lot of shallow political dialogue happens because of a lack of attention and space as much as anything else. Explaining why net neutrality is a big deal in emotional terms takes some technical explanation and some narrative building, for example.
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron-lebo|8 years ago|reply
It's pretty often that stuff which is factually wrong but meets emotional needs gets upvoted without a second thought. Disagreement with the notion the world is ending or Trump is literally James Harden and is gonna start the Holocaust (a popular feeling at HN 4 months ago) gets swiftly downvoted because it doesn't meet how people feel.
Every time one of those groupthinky discussions happens it makes HN less attractive to informed discussion.
I'm sitting at -12 in a thread from yesterday in which a guy responded "No offence you don't seem to have much knowledge of post ww2 history" after he was the one who made a weird historical analogy and I more or less copypastad part of a wiki article on the issue. I don't really care about being wrong or losing Internet points, but when stuff like that happens it just convinces me that even really intelligent people would rather agree with their biases over actually debating something. No thanks. It's the kind of behavior expected on r/politics.
[+] [-] masondixon|8 years ago|reply
Great tip. The solution to so many problems is to involve challenging opposing points of view.
There is a big problem with the left in America rejecting opposing points of view. "Safe space" and "shut it down" culture, etc. Mainstream media newsrooms packed with only liberal reporters, etc.
But unfortunately everyone gravitates to places of comfort around people with like-minded views, because its too difficult to constantly be questioning your beliefs or challenging someone else.
Good examples are Fox News' Hannity and Colmes and CNN's Crossfire. Both shuttered, and just ended up with replacement shows with one point of view.
I find that more and more Trump people can make the arguments of left-wing people, but the inverse is not true.
[+] [-] aestetix|8 years ago|reply
I personally helped create a government commission in Oakland, California that now decides on privacy topics that go to city council. We need more things like that.
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self-responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't even see that it exists.
So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable to them, no matter what the results for the group are.
I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just ignore them because they are so many.
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|8 years ago|reply
There is a difference between sticking your head in the sand politically and having a forum where people with differing political opinions can come together and discuss ideas in other areas than politics. You can both be politically active AND participate in a forum that avoids politics. Hacker News policy and avoidance of most political issues is precisely right in this regard. I know I come here to listen to stories dealing with computer technology and expert/practitioner commentary on those stories and business people engaged in the business of technology, particularly start-ups. At those times public policy has direct bearing to these subjects, such as patent law or net neutrality, I do expect to see discussion here.
Some here have been saying this has to do with US/Paris Accords. I agree with those topics being purged from this forum. I mean, really! How many readers of Hacker News do you think are on the fence about this subject: probably not zero, but my money says pretty damn close. I would wager that most here not only have already formed opinions on the subject, but strongly held opinions on the subject. If that's the case what possible value is yet another place to shout how right you are and wrong the other guy is at the top of your lungs given the number of other venues for such virtue signaling? I doubt you move the needle in one direction or the other on such terms.
So, what can you possibly achieve by being political in all venues and discussion forums? I suppose you can further entrench the move to ideological purity in all endeavors, further degrade any ability to find common ground with people that don't otherwise agree with you, further degrade the political discourse, and achieve a flourishing sense of tribalism in a large, complex society.
Is politics important? Sure it is. But so is time and place.
[+] [-] atemerev|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra-libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse?
Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction of change.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drvdevd|8 years ago|reply
I think the rest of the world desperately needs the Hacker News viewpoint on this, in detailed, non-partisan technical manner. I believe there is some deeper, non-polarized, apolitical (think, "highest bidder") aspect to what is actually happening right now around the world.
[+] [-] bluesroo|8 years ago|reply
Also I've noticed that even though HN tends to promote discussion pretty well on technical subjects, even here political discussions tend to devolve into flame wars.
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
I would love to just be able to solve Big Problems by hacking on them, but the more experience I get, the more I find that the biggest roadblocks involve changing minds, not changing code.
[+] [-] kaiku|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] franciscop|8 years ago|reply
From an opposite point of view to this article, politics vary greatly around the world and I'm guessing that by politics the article mainly refers to USA politics. For instance I ignore my country's politics talk since it's too old fashion and USA politics talk since it feels quite pointless arguing/bashing for the sake of it most of the times. I do enjoy a meaningful politics discussion from time to time, normally in person and with someone I trust already.
While I do agree on the big picture--USA is one of the most influential countries, politics there affect all the world--this article seems to be setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter (metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became quite unbearable at points TBH.
So I would say that the things we should continue doing is talking about ethics (especially when it is related with hacker ethics). My short list of rules for HN topics are (the more the better):
- It is about hackers/startup/programmers/IT/privacy/etc.
- It is interesting for a global audience.
- It is something new or happening right now.
- It is noteworthy or at least interesting/geek.
[+] [-] kelnos|8 years ago|reply
I didn't get that from the article at all, just that we should be discussing politics when it's intertwined with the technology we build and care about.
[+] [-] thescribe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qudat|8 years ago|reply
I'm more interested in the technology that will eventually render their power useless: counter economics.
For me the goal isn't to find the right people at the right time to seat the power of nation-states, but to make it impossible for them to wield any meaningful power at all.
I am deeply interested in politics, governance, and the way humans interact at scale, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in what bills get passed, who gets elected, or what Trump said in a tweet. While these small blips in history do have an impact, I think technologies such as bitcoin, uber, etc., have a much bigger impact on the world because they usurp political power.
[+] [-] justin_vanw|8 years ago|reply
Or we can keep doing what we can do well and has actually, fundamentally changed the world for the better and made us rich.
[+] [-] eternal_intern|8 years ago|reply
That being said, the Internet sure could use a proper forum for political discussions.
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wand3r|8 years ago|reply
If dang or another moderator could weigh in; this is not how I believed flags were meant to be used. We defend free speech here unless we have a strong reason.
[+] [-] DanBC|8 years ago|reply
In particular it mostakes the reason for the detox. This was only ever about stopping tedious pathological arseholes making the same boring hyperbolic bullshit flamebait arguments that a not particulary bright 16 year old would make.
HN thinks of itself as smart but the political discussion here is normally embarrassingly weak.
[+] [-] Lio|8 years ago|reply
Some positions cannot be easily influenced with mere 'facts' because you're arguing against people's feelings and cognitive dissonance is very powerful.
Bringing politics up on Hacker News will rarely positively influence anyone's opinion but will almost always be divisive and distracting. </personalOpinion>
[+] [-] humanrebar|8 years ago|reply
I think pushing "controversial" discussions to the edges of polite society has been shown to make us more culturally ignorant.
[+] [-] maaaats|8 years ago|reply
Edit: Kinda ironic that this post is now having the title [FLAGGED] and being dropped from the fp as well. Edit2: Still flagged but back up, interesting
[+] [-] 3131s|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloydjatkinson|8 years ago|reply
As another example, currently HN's narrative of choice is how Uber is literally the worst thing since Hitler and you can't go a week without seeing 3 or 4 top-voted links bitching about Uber. Perhaps some people like being able to conveniently travel from point A to B without caring about what some whiny keyboard warrior hates about Uber this week.
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|8 years ago|reply
I wouldn't want to see posts strictly about politics on the front page, but I think discussion of political topics that relate to technology and our industry is not only interesting, but necessary.
[+] [-] mmjaa|8 years ago|reply
This may or may not be true. In the meantime, computer programmers all over the world are working on computerising subjects that are traditionally used to having political power/influence involved. Pulling the humans out and replacing them with shell scripts, in this scenario, is of course a source of contention.
Fundamentally, governments and politics are broken. Computers can be used to fix them. However, this is one of the most controversial areas of computerisation and - like politics itself, along with governance - a cause of never-ending social strife.
Its almost like something, "ethical", is missing in the equation.
[+] [-] hawski|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samdoidge|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spion|8 years ago|reply
The second meaning refers to actual policies and their effect on people's quality of life. I don't think anyone would have trouble discussing that - that is, if it were somehow magically separated from the manipulation. But often its not.
If you look at the first meaning, things like "detox week" make a lot of sense - its about getting rid of the manipulation so that your brain can process information better again. "Squelching political debate" means stopping discussion that attempts to manipulate, and so on.
Since the tools used for manipulation are currently better than ever before, and we don't like manipulation, I suppose the best approach would be to work on things that expose manipulation and/or defend people from it.
edit: exercise - try to replace the word "politics" with "manipulation" in the article and re-read it. The point that we shouldn't burry our head in the sand still stands, but the reasons why that happens become much clearer.
[+] [-] marvin|8 years ago|reply
Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't carry them.
[+] [-] lgleason|8 years ago|reply
I would argue that politics have infiltrated tech too much already.
Don't believe me, try being a open, vocal Trump supporter or conservative at a major tech company in Silicon valley. You will be labeled a hateful, racist (fill in your favorite derogatory term) based on your political beliefs irregardless of your actual actions both at work or even in your personal life. Most people who are conservative are afraid to talk about their political beliefs due to the very real threat of losing their job.
Look at Larry Garfield with Drupal. In the course of things stuff went as far as people in the Drupal association actively trying to ban conservatives among other things.
The ruby community is just as bad. Rails Girls, Rails Bridge and later on tech404.io banned a woman because she was conservative https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-editor-172e93ecc.... Then there was Opalgate where a community diversity leader tried to get a key contributor banned over his personal conservative beliefs.
At this years Lambdaconf a black, first time speaker and military veteran, who grew up dirt poor in the projects, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps was blasted by a group of people because in his personal life he believes in the red pill, specifically, in his own words seeking the truth, not being anti-woman.
As a moderate I really don't need to be concerned about someone's personal beliefs work with people or to even have a friendship with them. People are messy imperfect beings and there are many shades of grey with people and beliefs even when they hold views that I'm against. The only time that becomes an issue is if someone acts on it. IE: they steal from the company or murder someone etc. but that is not what I am talking about here. In all of the cases I mentioned here, these people did not act inappropriately in a professional setting. They didn't harass people, try to convince people about their personal beliefs, make sexist statements etc..
People who dedicate their lives to parsing out complex political/moral issues have a tough time doing it. If I go to a tech event I'm there to talk about tech not a political conference. The irony is that if people on all sides of the political issues have a place where they came come together and see someone as a human it also may be more effective than the division that the politicization of tech has been creating. Could that open us up to some bad, maybe, but politics being combined with tech are causing a lot of damage to the industry and people already. More importantly its not working. ---Rant over--