guildwriter

Twisted things being done in our elections goes back to Tammany Hall. If you know where to look in American history it's not hard to find credible instances of important elections having substantial amounts of fraud. Why do people believe that when the chips are down and vast amounts of money and power are at stake that people are simply going to play fair? Especially when the players are some of the most ruthless, narcissistic, and sociopathic people in America?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_Senate_elec...

The validity of the runoff election was challenged before the US Supreme Court due to allegations of election fraud, and in later years, testimony by parties involved indicated that widespread fraud occurred and that friendly political machines[3] produced the fraudulent votes needed for Johnson to have a numerical majority, in effect stealing the election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidentia...

Some, including Republican legislators and journalists, believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud from Mayor Richard Daley's powerful Chicago political machine. [12] Mayor Daley’s machine was known for "delivering whopping Democratic tallies by fair means and foul."[13] Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results at the time—as well as in ten other states.[13] Some journalists also later claimed that mobster Sam Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate "played a role" in Kennedy's victory. [13] Nixon's campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy's victory, however, Nixon gave a speech three days after the election stating that he would not contest the election.[14]

The study is linked in the article if you don't trust them.

Based on what I've seen in online dating in my own experiences and the experiences of others, this is not an effective strategy. In fact I'd say it's a counterproductive strategy. Timing and options are large contributing factors to this.

The largest problem with online dating is that there are no natural filters in place. Dating in meatspace means that oftentimes you mean people in contexts that help pre-screen them and give you an idea what you are dealing with (mutual friends, work, gym, hobby, etc.) Online dating strips that away and forces you to have to evaluate each person in person in order to have any clue if things may actually work out in a relationship. In this case, the important thing is to drive things to the first date and then take it from there.

(Technically I guess this is easier if all you're looking for is sex)

With a large pool of options it means that the entire game of "waiting for a couple of days to signal non-desperation" is a counter productive strategy. People constantly have potential people to meet. If you take too long to respond, it will signal disinterest or that you are ghosting them, and they will simply move on.

Note that none of this means "always make yourself available at all times". That will reek of desperation.

The existence of moles both within the CIA and MI6 had a little bit to do with that.

I'd love to hear a discussion of methods to solve the issues with our police and the despair of the inner city that were comprehensive. In the case of Baltimore, these are massive systemic problems that involve not just the police, but also the community as a whole and forces outside the community as well. How can you discuss the problems with police misconduct without talking about the drug war, inner city poverty, stat based policing and the poisonous incentives they create, the lack of stable homes, and so on and so on and so on.

Yes you might be able to solve police misconduct by forcing them to turn on each other and report and aggressively as possible. You probably will utterly destroy any semblance of morale and group cohesion and won't have a functioning police force at the end. Yes, we could ban guns from the population. Except that would not only require a constitutional amendment, but also solve the logistical issues of tracking down guns while simultaneously solving the problem of an armed criminal element who now has a helpless population in a massive country where response times can be 20 mins or longer. Body cams will help, but even if people trust police, how does that solve the problem where being a drug dealer is probably the best opportunity you have in the inner city? And it goes on and on.

It's a similar issue to homelessness. It's a multivariate problem that requires many different targeted approaches to deal with the entire thing. People unfortunately tend to focus on their pet issue of choice and ignore the others. Worse yet, political interests often will try to shut down each other from getting funding in order to push their own cause du jour.

The point that I'm making isn't that gang violence is bad in Chicago. I'm trying inform others why and what drives a significant portion of gang violence in Chicago and show it from the perspective of the people who drive that violence and what they're about.

The parent poster was talking about how gangs become the law and order because of the lack of trust in police. I'm saying the issue is wider and deeper than that. If you read the article, it becomes clear that one of the large driving factors for these rappers is the notoriety and fame they get from doing this is oftentimes the only way they can feel significant. It's a way for them to get money, sex, notoriety. Maybe even a record deal so they can get the hell out of the place they are in. What kind of chances and opportunities does an inner city youth really have?

This notoriety can twist back in its own ways too: "The guy having the hardest time was Blaze. He seemed to be battling depression. At one point, after a shooting on a corner, he said to me, “Man, I’m so sick of this. I feel like a prisoner in my own neighborhood. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t go to my job because I don’t know if the opps will be there to come after me.” He was wallowing in how badly he wanted to be done with the gang life. He told me he wanted to move to California, but his reality felt inescapable to him. He started using PCP at an alarming rate. It was his way of coping. He became difficult to be around. He would stutter and trip over his words. His complexion got bad. His hygiene, too."

It's one hell of a life and not one that I could begin to imagine.

Er no. It's not. I'm not saying police conduct in Chicago isn't an issue. I'm saying that the issues of inner city Chicago are much larger than just police conduct. To properly understand the issue you need to consider all the angles.

What goes on in Chicago and its gangs goes far beyond the police and the indiscretions that go on there. Case in point:

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2016/Chic...

Drill rap, the music of Chicago's gangs, is ultra violent and serves as a method of calling out other crews and taunting them into a response. Thanks to Youtube, Soundcloud, and social media the spread of this music is now easier than ever. The threats that come from this music are often followed up on.

Why do they do it? As one rapper says: “If I wasn’t doing this, would you even be down here in the low incomes? Would you even care that I exist?” “You know, white people, Mexicans, bitches, those people don’t live the life, but they love hearing about it. People want the Chiraq stuff. They want a superthug ghetto man, and I’m giving that to them. I’m just playing my role.”

There is no good database.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

This is probably the best there is that I know of and it only goes back 2-3 years. The federals don't have anything complete.

The Firewatch devs took a public stand on the Pewdiepie drama and got hit in the head as a result. It went far beyond Twitter harassment and their Steam reviews got bombarded with negative reviews. The hate campaign they got has nothing to do with their development or business practices.

Not exactly. HN is a community that is relatively small and has a strong culture. This is one of HN's greatest strengths in preventing the same sort of issues that occur in reddit. Larger subreddits show the breakdown of the upvoting system quite dramatically. Subreddits that become heavily polarized also suffer from this. You can see HN having the same problem in heavily contentious topics or flagged posts. This is where the left leaning majority demonstrates it's influence the most. Comment quality hits the skids right off the bat and never really recovers.

Inevitably it is the culture of the posting community and the adherence to that culture that allows for this kind of thoughtful posting to occur. Moderation is a fundamental requirement as well. I've seen many instances in large subreddits that experiment with relying on the upvote system that end in total failure. For a time the community policing works, and then the front page is dominated by low effort content and shit posting.

As an empirical matter, I would note that most threads (both here and on simmilar sites, such as reddit) seem to follow a predictable life-cycle. An initial wave of low quality posts gets down voted and gives way to more thoughtful discussion. In less trolly topics, the "low quality" posts are actually ok, but still give way to much higher quality posts through upvotes.

Maybe this is true on HN to some degree, but this is definitely not the case on reddit as a general rule. Here's an observation from an ex-mod of TIA:

At bigger sub sizes, unpopular opinions don't get that little bit of extra breathing time to justify themselves. Instead, the votes come in just too fast; circlejerks rise to the top immediately, while different ideas either get downvoted or simply ignored, languishing at the bottom of the comment section.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3qjsga/what...

You can see this happen on all sorts of different subreddits where people who post thoughtful opinions that go against the current "meta" of the subreddit get down voted viciously no matter how correct they are. For visibility being first and being in tune with what the community wants to hear supersedes being right or being thoughtful. That's not to say that thoughtful and well written posts don't rise to the top. That's to say that the system frequently does not work this way at all. Especially on subreddits where the community is majority polarized in a certain direction.

I think the upvote system is flawed and needs to be evolved into a better system that rewards content based on different metrics. Maybe things like time spent on the page linked, or time spent writing content, or even word count should add subtle multipliers to comments that help promote their visibility.

Low effort content that incites a reaction is a hallmark of the upvote system and currently the only thing that I've seen curtail it is human moderation.

And Tweeter. I never signed up, but from the posts and tweets I've seen, I can't imagine a worse platform for sharing ideas or views.

I firmly believe in the idea that the tools that we shape shape us in turn as we use them. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing an greater upsurge in rancor as social media becomes more entrenched in our day to day lives. If a system rewards people for doing something, you can bet that people will adapt their thought processes to maximize their gains. Nuance is going to be the first thing jettisoned in a short format that rewards instant emotional gratification.

The ideological basis and the geopolitical basis are two entirely different things.

Geopolitics and ideology have to be considered hand in hand when making decisions at the scale that Roosevelt and Eisenhower did. Before Pearl Harbor, even though the general US populace knew what the Nazis were doing to some extent, even Lend-Lease was hugely controversial. It took a surprise attack on US soil to galvanize people into action. To me, I think survival of the US is a much easier sell as being the prime ideology. Everything else such as protection of rights and freedom were good partial truths. Otherwise things like the internment of the Japanese, rationing, censorship, propaganda, and so on become harder to explain.

Again, none of these encroachments take away from the rightness. I just think it's important to acknowledge that the ugly and the good and everything else can stand together all at once.

I think it's also worth mentioning that when I'm thinking of WW2, I'm also thinking of WW2 as a whole. Not just from a purely US centric perspective.

I'm saying that political theatre is important and necessary. When it comes to everything else the UN has a really bad history of ineffectiveness.

It's a global stage for kabuki. So yes, it definitely shapes world affairs that way. I don't really consider the principles of the UN to be important when it's a paper tiger. Government without force is not government.

I'm not advocating for a specific side and it's interesting that is the conclusion you instantly went to. I'm saying WW2 wasn't about a global fight of good versus evil or even about individual rights per se. Those were definitely parts of it, but saying that's the ideological basis is untrue.

"Sorry, but you're the one who is "forcing a narrative" here. You have defined the sides, such that all "sides" have crapped on human rights."

I consider my views to be Independent, not left, right, or center. I don't think things can be boiled down to two subjects easily as there are often many more considerations that need to be made when making a decision on what to do. If I did have to advocate a side, my side would be in the interest of trying to talk about things in as complete a manner as possible. That means I generally try to resist boiling things down to dualistic evaluations.

I'm not arguing that all sides have crapped on human rights and that somehow invalidates the good actions of the USA. I'm saying that what you claim to be the ideological basis of the war is untrue. Doesn't mean that the war wasn't necessary and a good thing. If anything I'd make the argument that we really messed up the post war and betrayed a lot of people who were looking to us for help. I still consider it rather ironic how Ho Chi Minh was originally a supporter of democratic instutions and a friend of the US, until he decided the independence of his people mattered a lot more.

I think I can understand why you went to the conclusion that you did, but I don't think you're arguing against what you think you are.

Not to argue that there wasn't and still is racial inequality when it comes to drug enforcement, but how advanced was our understanding on how to treat opiate abuse even by the 1980s? To make things clear, I'm curious about the history of treatment methods involved with addiction. Not about excusing bad policy.

I don't know much about the subject but when I try to do a bunch of cursory searches, most of what I find are histories on alcoholism and the variety of treatment methods. As far as I know, before the crack cocaine epidemic, I don't think people really understood just how pernicious the problem of opiate addiction was. Doesn't excuse mass incarceration of black people, but I'm not sure people had any idea on how to actually approach the problem back then. I'm not sure we have a good approach even now.

It's also worth noting how small the problem with cocaine and other opiates was in the past. The crack cocaine epidemic was probably the first time the nation as a whole had to learn what this stuff actually was.

"Make no mistake: The ideological basis of WWII was the protection of individual human rights."

Erm, then why did we hand over Poland and other Eastern European states to the USSR? Why did we let France re-establish their colonies in French-Indochina and elsewhere?

You're dramatically oversimplifying things in order to make this some kind of cosmic fight between good and evil. Stop forcing a narrative by cutting out all the bits that get in the way.

I think one way to think about it is that there is a wide variety of ways to change the worldviews of people. After all, everyone experiences reality differently and has different preferences on what is more significant to them or not (especially when it comes to the interplay of mediums). In other words, articles only work on a limited subset of people. Other methods such as music, or art, or social setting etc. and whatever combination of these things produce the change that you're hoping.

Sometimes what seems like the most direct path (discussing the issue itself) is actually the longest path around.

Another good source for Steve Bannon's views comes somewhat ironically from Buzzfeed:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-banno...

In regards to your point about arguing in favor of the working man, here's an excerpt from a response about how to counter ethnic/racial tribalism:

"I think in Spain it’s something like 50 or 60% of the youth under 30 are underemployed. And that means the decade of their twenties, which is where you have to learn a skill, where you have to learn a craft, where you really start to get comfortable in your profession, you’re taking that away from the entire generation. That’s only going to fuel tribalism, that’s only going to fuel [unintelligible]… That’s why to me, it’s incumbent upon freedom-loving people to make sure that we sort out these governments and make sure that we sort out particularly this crony capitalism so that the benefits become more of this entrepreneurial spirit and that can flow back to working-class and middle-class people. Because if not, we’re going to pay a huge price for this. You can already start to see it."

I don't buy your distinction between Wheaton and MIT. Free speech pre-dates the scientific method and exists independently of scientific inquiry.

You can publish your research that challenges the status quo so long as Free Speech is respected. Do you think it's a coincidence that Socrates challenged the physicists in Athens? (Granted that was one of the reasons they executed him) Or Aristotle? I can't think of better examples of early science and those came up under the first place we know of that did direct democracy.

Also, at places like Wheaton and Hillsdale, politics are part-and-parcel with religion. Demanding religious belief, while allow a broad spectrum in which to express that belief, is one thing. But the divide between politics and religion at these places is tenuous at best.

Again. They're evangelical colleges. What do you really expect?

Humanities and social sciences vary by field. IDK a lot about most of them them. But the one person I know from purdue -- where Freddie is from -- is in the humanities and very conservative (and doesn't hide it or anything). Maybe Freddie should've taken a leaf out of your book and talked to more people while at Purdue -- the unimaginable was right in front of him ;-)

Yes, one person is a preponderance of evidence. Not countless articles of students and professors being harassed and attacked for their conservative views in an environment that is supposed to be about higher truth. And some of those views that are becoming less and less conservative over time.

"For years and years I have denied the idea that campus is a space that’s antagonistic to conservative students. I thought Michael Berube’s book What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? was the last word on the subject. I still reject a lot of the David Horowitz narrative. But as a member of the higher education community I just have to be real with you: the vibe on campus really has changed. I spent years teaching at a university in a conservative state recently and I was kind of shocked at how openly fellow instructors would complain about the politics of their students, how personal they go when condemning their students who espoused conventional Republican politics. I encounter professors all the time who think that it’s fine for a student to say “I’m With Her” in class but not for a student to say “Make America Great Again” — that’s hate speech, see — despite the fact that both are simply the recent campaign slogans of the two major political parties. Yet those profs recoil at the idea that they’re not accepting of conservative students.

I hear people say that they won’t permit arguments against affirmative action in their classes — hate speech, again — despite the fact that depending on how the question is asked, a majority of Americans oppose race-based affirmative action in polling, including in some polls a majority of Hispanic Americans. The number of boilerplate conservative opinions that are taken to be too offensive to be voiced in the campus space just grows and grows, and yet progressive profs I know are so offended by the idea that they could be creating a hostile atmosphere, they won’t even discuss the subject in good faith."

"The idea that we need any intellectual diversity at all invites immediate incredulous statements like, “you’re saying we should debate eugenics?!?,” as though the only positions that exist are the obviously correct and the obviously horrible. The idea that you’re supposed to read the publications of the antagonistic viewpoint has been dismissed as a relic. People call for conservative books to be pulled from library shelves; they insist that the plays of conservative David Mamet have no place in the contemporary theater;"

Sure, "more" is relative and being a minority always sucks. Still, MIT might make you feel alone. Hillsdale will just expel you.

I don't think forced resignation and expulsion are much different.

You still haven't explained what a "preponderance of evidence" looks like. You keep doing blanket refusals that the liberal threat to free speech is overblown.

This is just tautologically false. IDK what else to say about this particular quote. Re: the rest of your first paragraph, this seems like a huge double standard. Would you be happy with MIT throwing out every climate skeptic and neo-luddite if only they wrote "advancement of science and technology" into their charter?

Not really. Religion as in organized religion exists to promote a specific belief system. Science has a much different mission in it's search to describe the world accurately. A dissenting view there can potentially be the truthful path.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-key-to-s...

If MIT threw out every scientist who opposed global warming, they'd be little better than a religious college.

This is why I put special emphasis on a private secular vs. private evangelical comparison. It's fair to both sides. I'm not sure why MIT has any special obligation to allow free speech that isn't shared by Wheaton. Care to explain?

MIT has an obligation if it wants to present itself as a college that promotes education in general. Wheaton is there to teach people about a Christ filled life. MIT makes it clear they value innovation and groundbreaking ideas and discoveries. There no way to do that effectively without considering as many points as possible.

Look, secular universities just don't discriminate on the basis of political belief. Outside of a few very niche, very tiny, very not-influential departments, this just doesn't happen either explicitly or implicitly. When it comes to hiring new professors, teaching matters. Research matters. Personal political beliefs do not.

https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/theres-no-pro-campus-censo...

https://medium.com/@freddiedeboer/conservatives-are-wrong-ab...

Freddie has written a lot on this subject in general. In fact he's been routinely attacked and DDOSed for critiquing the liberal culture both on campus and in the institution. He's posted some really controversial stuff about how bad the research is in the liberal arts. It's also worth noting that he's hardly a conservative and is quite soundly a liberal.

Money quote: "And while I think conservative students can mostly get by fine on the average campus, I really can’t imagine going through life as a conservative professor, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Is that a problem? That depends on your point of view. But if it’s happening, shouldn’t we talk about the fact that it’s happening?"

"My personal experience -- and I think the evidence backs me on this -- is that liberal universities are far more welcoming to conservative viewpoints than the other way around."

I don't know how to measure the merits of explusion/suspension vs. social ostracization. I also have known a fair amount of conservative people at Berkeley due to my efforts to outreach to other point of views in my student days. I don't think "welcoming" is the word that they would use when it comes to liberals and conservative viewpoints.

2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting).

Yes. See Voat.

3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech.

Not really. I think echo chambers are good for peace of mind and general contentment. I think they also tend to accelerate extreme viewpoints and further entrench the balkanzation of the Internet. It's like watching the Tower of Babel live.

4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.

Something new can only be birthed from the meeting of two or more different things. If we value free speech and a common identity/norms, then it is required for us to be able to reconcile our differences in some manner.

I guess you could go through the case log of FIRE.

https://www.thefire.org/category/cases/free-speech/

How many instances does Evergreen rate? How many instances of self censorship do you think such an atmosphere creates? Do you think actions like this only result in one person being afraid to speak up? Does it only matter if someone is willing to go to a journalist and make themselves a target?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/06/0...

So here are two cases I've pulled up on Wheaton College:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/christi...

http://time.com/3722790/wheaton-college-lgbt-apple/

Both definitely support your point that for holding different views than the majority, people were attacked and/or suppressed. Here's the thing though: Wheaton is an evangelical college. Is it expected that an evangelical Christian college is going to be open to or supportive of a professor saying that Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Or that marriage is a union between more than just a man and a woman? I think that's kind of like going into r/The_Donald and then posting pro Hillary comments. It's not the kind of venue that is established for dissenting views. They're built for proselytization. Furthermore, association of evangelical universities and academia as a whole seems like a mismatch considering how specific their focus is.

On the other hand, one can argue that secular universities such as Berkeley and MIT have a much different expectation. It's easier to argue that as they are secular universities (and in the case of Berkeley public and home of the FSM movement), they are meant to represent a much wider set of views.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/11/the-d...

But when you see dramatic shifts in the political leanings of professors, then followed by conservatives being attacked on campuses that are dominated by liberal thought you have to wonder. I'm not sure what qualifies as a preponderance of evidence in this case according to your words.

That being said, I would also argue that there is plenty of persecution of liberals in deeply conservative areas as well. It's not really about conservative vs liberal, so much as it's about how majorities operate and deal with minorities.

My experience with online communities is that while you don't have to have fun at other people's expense, it's a large subset of what people like to do. For better or for worse a lot of people like to say or do things that push boundaries. Sometimes it's actual hate and sometimes it's not. This kind of behavior goes way back with humanity in general. Trickster heroes have existed in mythos across all cultures and while they do things that are at the expense of others, rarely is it out of malice.

More recent example:

https://livestreamfails.com/post/6039

For those who can't watch: A female streamer is playing PUBG when she is "downed" by other players. Said players then play the ISIS theme that has been played on ISIS execution videos over voice chat before shooting her character in the head. Are these players tolerating and celebrating ISIS or are they deliberately being offensive for humor? Or some other motivation?

For good reason people find this behavior objectionable, but at the same time I don't see how you're going to force people to stop doing things like this.

I think the argument is that it's a space that is accessible by everyone without any sort of gatekeeping, that makes it a public space. Whereas a forum such as somethingawful would be considered more private as there is a subscription fee for membership.