HN user
more often than not their position is more nuanced than “kill all the Jews.” Isn’t that a good thing?
Which by definition makes it a view they allow a reply to. refer to my original, now flagged comment. If they actually respond to your arguments and questions, that's not what I'm talking about, and it's more than you had the grace to offer.
then you can show that person is an idiot when they have to defend that position.
And then what? Then they change their mind?
If someone in the street calls you a frog murderer, and you ask why they think you are one, and they say they can see it in the distance between your eyes, and keep trailing you and scream frog murderer, interrupting every other conversation you want to have for the rest of your life, where would you draw the line. And would you offer video evidence of everything you ever did to placate them? What if they just scoffed and said everybody knows frog murderers know how to fake video?
When you say "views", you simply don't understand the distinction I'm making. I have spent so much time discussing with bigots of all stripes in the last 1.5 decades. I don't regret it, it's never totally wasted, especially when it's not just trading insults -- but misunderstandings and ignorance are not the cause, that only applies to those on the fringe, not at the core of something like Nazism. "Show that person is an idiot" is referring to someone who would be phased by that, because their opinions come from their own person and thoughts, because they actually are opinions. (By the way, such a person often has their views challenged by at least one person anyway, themselves)
I know and have dealt with those, but have you dealt with those where that isn't the case? Where the espoused belief is not a belief, but a cover for more, and endless abyss, and where the offered arguments hardly register with the person enumerating them? For you it may register when you say something and someone else refutes it. But for some it doesn't, they just register amusedly that you actually spend time and energy on what they can produce without end and at zero cost to them.
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy all the others.
-- Hannah Arendt
Another way to look at it would be the differentation between an individual person speaking, and a person channeling a mob. It doesn't have to be a racist mob, it can also be a "politically correct" mob, you know?
I remember when a girl strolled into the Myspace forums and said "hi guys, I'm a fascist, let's discuss". I was intrigued, then a bit shocked by her views, but I had to respect the person for being honest about them and open for discussion. But IIRC most people were just assholes to her, she was an asshole back, and got banned shortly after, no idea why. But I remember thinking it sucked, that is was a very poor performance on behalf of "the" group. In that case, the "right-minded people" were kind of acting as a mob, and she was a person speaking as a person.
I'm not arguing for any government banning something here, and unless I'm mistaken, neither is Mozilla. But even as private individuals, we simply should pay more attention and not just lump everything together as "something someone else doesn't like" and all that. Mob psychology and politics are no joke, neither are alienation and lack of perspective, shortening attention spans, inability to form coherent sequential toughts. Networks that datamine people and then influence them for maximum bit-sized engagement, that's no joke. People funneling themselves into "communities" where they play meme bingo, that's no joke.
Being downvoted and shadowbanned on HN for comments people can't refute, now that is a genuine joke, and oh look, my comment got flagged already. Because replying to it is not enough, one simply has to assume I haven't thought about what I said, and punish me for one's assumption. And of course, your reply is kind of the least charitable interpretation of my comment possible, as if I never argued with someone who had opinions they didn't like, without even attempting to understand what I was hinting at, and as such against the guidelines, but hey.
As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.
-- Hannah Arendt
Sounds silly, right? Who dat ho anyway, huh? Well, this is not an intellectual climate to seriously elaborate on serious things, so I'll have to just leave it at the suggestion to not judge icebergs by tips while preaching about letting others speak. Thanks for the demonstration of hypocrisy, bye. People so weak and dishonest I genuinely prefer as enemies rather than allies.
He's talking about views. Hate speech is chanting "Kill all Jews". A view I would despise would be a well thought out argument why all Jews should be killed, expressed in a way that allows response.
If it can save 40k lives per year it’s in any case a no-brainer.
Just saying that doesn't absolve you from making an actual argument.
Ask all the millions of people that have a relative killed by a car if they would care at all.
How motherfucking dare you! My father did die in a car crash when I was a kid. But I also live in a country where totalitarianism actually happened. You should wash your mouth, and then you should sit down and make the argument.
Because to reply to all of it, including
"If you are Black, gay or any number of other things, are you cool with giving up such control in an openly hostile social climate?"
with
"If it can save 40k lives per year it’s in any case a no-brainer."
is absolutely not good enough. Would you be okay with that being quoted "out of context" like that (it wouldn't really be, it's the degree of seriousness you decided to muster) like that on billboards with your real name attached to it?
The point would be the same even if nobody used the client except to start it up for measuring bloat.
It is quite possible -- overwhelmingly probable, one might guess -- that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology.
-- Noam Chomsky
"waiting" isn't an actual action. You either read something, or think, or look around while thinking, and so on, but nobody just "waits". Being aware is an action. Thinking is an action. If people around you gossip, tell them that gossip is lame and shift the conversation.
And what does it even mean to say something is subjective? Contrary to what? And what does judgemental mean? That you can be whatever you want, and think of yourself however you want, but others may not see you how they see you? What's wrong with judgement?
I'm not talking to nations. I'm talking to persons.
Not if you the data loss is caused by an error or virus in the software, and you use that same software to access your "backup".
https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/ma...
American diplomats in Germany were well aware of the Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents. Yet the US government respected Germany’s right to govern its own citizens and was hesitant to aid those being targeted.
Throughout spring 1933, tens of thousands of Americans signed petitions protesting the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. Hundreds of petitions were sent to the State Department, but the US government made no official statement against the German regime.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17644657
The Uighurs see themselves as a minority facing cultural, religious and economic discrimination. When Xinjiang was incorporated into the People's Republic of China in 1949, they comprised roughly 80 percent of the region's population. Controlled migration to Xinjiang of Han Chinese has reduced this share to 45 percent
[..]
Anyone with a potentially suspicious data trail can be detained. The government has built up a grid of hundreds of re-education camps. Tens of thousands of people have disappeared into them in recent months. Zenz estimates the number to be closer to hundreds of thousands. More precise figures are difficult to obtain. Censorship in Xinjiang is the strictest in China and its authorities the most inscrutable.
[..]
Normal journalistic research in Kashgar is inconceivable. No one wants to talk. A Uighur human rights activist who met up with us four years ago didn't respond to a single one of our text messages. His phone number is no longer listed. As we later learned, he disappeared months ago. But whether he was thrown into a re-education camp or prison is unknown.
[..]
Every family begins with 100 points, one person affected by the system tells us. But anyone with contacts or relatives abroad, especially in Islamic countries like Turkey, Egypt or Malaysia, is punished by losing points. A person with fewer than 60 points is in danger. One wrong word, a prayer or one telephone call too many and they could be sent to "school" in no time.
Bring "stability" to the Middle East?
What the US did and does in the Middle East is not something any other nation can solve for them; bring those who waged wars of aggression to justice, show genuine good will towards those you mistreated, that's something any nation owes either way (it's not like many European nations don't have a lot to make up for, for example). You're responsible for not making it worse, and owning your shit. That's not just what "number one" must do, even the smallest must do it. Others are responsible for sorting out their mess. You don't have to bring peace to the Middle East, just not more war. You don't have to bring democracy to China, just don't look the other way or even help rationalize and justify it.
Attempted reframing? What are you trying to insinuate on my behalf? That slang is putting someone's name inside ((( and ))), not saying "the ((())) issue". It doesn't really work without anything in the brackets. I can't believe this even needs to be said, and if you are talking about something other than
[2016-08-23 04:46:27] <WikiLeaks> But he’s jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue.
then please provide a source to that other thing, who you are referring to with "he", and maybe a reason for not making what you are referring to more clear as well.
It's also very nice that because of the barrage of downvotes, or maybe moderator action, I can't respond 13 minutes after you posted your comment when I actually had finished this reply, but have to keep the tab open and submit later... so I'll respond to another comment here as well:
Do you consider referring to racism to be the same as being racist?
No I don't, which was my point. Saying "$someone is Jewish and engaged with the ((())) issue" isn't using that dog whistle, but referring to it. Without context it's really hard to judge why the Jewishness is mentioned; I don't know what the ((())) issue refers to in that specific context, what "engaged with" means, nothing. Could easily be bad, could be benign, but the claim was they "used" ((())), and that's false. Even if they're actually antisemites, they did not use the brackets in that tweet from 2016-08-23 04:46:27. Fact.
I mean, calling him also a "rat" kind of makes it moot in a way, that's not good, antisemitism or not. But if they are antisemitic, I want more than hearsay and being sloppy about something like "referring to X" and "using X". This is not acceptable. For one because it would be important in light of WL, but even more importantly because of antisemitism.
Generally, that some antisemites might like WL would never surprise me. With almost anything that criticizes society and the powerful in it, you often can find antisemites who are superficially interested in the subject so they can re-route it to Jews being the root of all problems. So in a vacuum, tweets "at" WL that seem antisemitic are to be expected -- the question is how WL deals with them, and what they themselves put out. I do not consider that question settled, mind you, but those who raise it, and those who approach it, have no right to be this sloppy.
Remember when that Google guy was fired and people said he "posted a memo to the internet"? He posted a memo in an internal discussion group devoted to the issue he posted about, and others leaked it on the net. Yet the lie is still out there in people's heads. And that wouldn't be acceptable even if he was a total red pill chauvinist. When it was cool to be dishonest about Jews, to exclude them inevitably leading to violence against them, some people did that. Now it's cool to be dishonest about and violent to Jews in some milieus, sexists, racists or antisemites in others -- as if the methods don't matter at all, just who wins, as if using certain methods doesn't make you something, too. Or to put a very sharp point on it, as if putting racists into concentration camps would actually end once you killed all racists, as if it could.
Do you typically use neo-Nazi slang in your everyday conversation to refer to people with a Jewish origin?
No, but one might refer to such slang, you just did it yourself, and nothing more can be seen in those particular tweets.
The full sentence is "But he’s jewish and engaged with the ((()))) issue." -- without further context, this says nothing, and those brackets weren't "used" anymore than you or I just did.
That is, unless you're referring to something else, but with accusations as serious as this, and antisemitism being as sadly pervasive and serious as it is, I would like to see a source. If you actually are referring to the DM's on that page, just no, and wtf, since it's only time "(((" appears in all of it, the only other time Jewishness is mentioned seems not to be by Wikileaks.
So, where's the meat?
Congress investigated these practices and in 1983 Bob Crandall, president of American, was the most vocal supporter of the systems. "The preferential display of our flights, and the corresponding increase in our market share, is the competitive raison d'être for having created the system in the first place," he told them
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems. The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/
[..]
Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine. But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results. For example, we noticed a major search engine would not return a large airline's homepage when the airline's name was given as a query. It so happened that the airline had placed an expensive ad, linked to the query that was its name. A better search engine would not have required this ad, and possibly resulted in the loss of the revenue from the airline to the search engine. In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.
-- Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine"
From that (lip service) to the ElsaGate autoplay fiasco in under 2 decades, and of course using public resources to get the foot in the door. Par of the course.
For quality of education and quality of reputation.
Probably, but you can't put a modern PC into an Amiga. I mean, if you already have one, being able to still upgrade it is just.... so cool <3
Agreed. I don't know exactly between what poles this valley is, but I know this is the uncanny area of it.
Imagine someone asks what graphics editors are available on the C64, and people suggest using Photoshop at low resolution because that's what they are interested in, and because hey, it could be that that person hasn't heard about Photoshop yet. "About your question, that's a good question, but let me answer a better question."
I feel like I'm being obvious, but, totalitarianism? That is, if "world" is to refer to more than the physical planet, or the mere existence of ecosystems in it, but also things like human thought and creativity. As human agency gets restricted and channeled in infantilized or even outright violently abusive ways, human thought evaporates along with it. Too many people can't already stick with issues they identified with the world for 5 minutes, not to mention the required decades. What's in store for the future is not being able to express it anymore, at all, not even clumsily, to not even be able to form a solid internal representation, never having been in contact with any of the tools and concepts required for that other than to mock and other them. This can already be seen in some people, but the "fun" really begins when that is true for everybody.
That's the worst case scenario for me. Compared to (!) that, this is how I feel about climate change and nuclear war:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/there-will-come-soft-rai...
the solution to people's fears about commercialism interfering with the real world
That's just a completely arbitrary rephrasing to fit your supposed punch line, but describes nobody and nothing real.
rather than use some self control
Oh. This one, again.
Ultimate driver? How does that work?
By a 1000$ being 1000$ to many people regardless of how the person offering it came by it, money destroys information that way. Because many decisions are excused as making "business sense", as opposed to making sense.
Offer a dud product or service and see how that goes down!
Usually, a dud is something that's not successful, not something that sucks. Because financial success determines the quality of something for many. If people want to drink Coca-Cola because they made a judgement to be influenced by short erotic films, then that's that, and Coca-Cola is objectively the best subjective choice for most people.
The incentive then becomes that of giving up or meeting the customer's needs.
Yeah, because if you don't like Apple, you can use Microsoft, and that keeps both of them just so in line. Because we don't constantly jump through new hoops designed to game our attention and empty our wallets just a bit more by all sorts of companies. Computing, gaming, entertainment, it's all working out really well and just keeps getting better. Remember how YouTube made it easier to find and filter the content of channels you subscribed to, how they just flat out stopped fucking around with video makers and their viewers? Remember how Facebook stopped second-guessing what their users want to see because of that whole backlash about manipulating them? That emperor is rocking some mighty fine threads, pity the fools that can't see them.
Almost nobody sees or reads corrections.
Unless they're "big enough".
At least on social media if the correction is big enough it'll be brought to people's attention.
And if it's not, it wasn't big enough, or if it was big, but people didn't like it enough because it doesn't suit them, then it still doesn't get spread. Doesn't make it less of a correction though, does it? If you apply something super vague as "big enough" to one, apply it to the other as well.
Have you really never seen a correction posted on reddit?
Same here: have you really never seen a correction in a newspaper? Or letters by readers taking issue with previous articles, for that matter?
Every other day there's some news article that has as the first comment a correction of the article, because the article is wrong or leaving something out.
That says nothing without looking at the volume of falsehoods that are uncontested, or at the instances where the article is correct, and then the comments contain falsehoods about the subject.
It's extremely reckless to leave out what the general practice to make things likely to break because of some super cheapo part and not be easily repairable does to us and our environment in the long run. You're not even trying to weigh one against the other, you completely ignore a major part of the equation, and the incentive you create to make things needlessly complex or expensive to repair (special or very soft screws in other with mundane widgets being the lightest form of that I guess), if need be by obfuscation. How much damage would be cased by "reckless repairs", and how much damage is currently being caused by fleeced customers?
The Amiga came with schematics... that seems like a parallel universe now... and then I realize that was what some kind of golden age of openness to me, probably seems very closed and uptight to what computer scientists in the 60s or so did and experienced. And hey, isn't Linux incredibly complex? What if someone tinkers with the sourcecode, breaks it completely, and ends up exposing very private email someone else send to them to them? What if someone uses a Raspberry Pi to automate their garage door, instead of buying a "professional product", and another person gets harmed or even killed? Those things can happen, and then that person is liable for what they did.. isn't that enough? Or at least enough in most cases?
If people repairing cars leads to a lot of accidents, then it's the job of lawmakers to study, recognize and deal with that. It's a farce for all sorts of products being hard to repair because people repairing their stuff is less profitable than them buying more, and then to justify that with safety. If it's about safety, then you have to hand over responsibility. If you find out a new food you invented can carry a new disease if not stored properly, inform the authorities so they can make rules for everyone, instead of doing your own little thing and not telling anyone. Some companies probably don't want that because proper laws would deal with it in respects to how dangerous something is, how much expertise is needed, and so on... not just solely "how much additional money can we squeeze out of it".
So it's not about safety (that's not in reference to your comment which I believe is sincere, but in reference to what many companies are doing), that simply doesn't mesh, it's about the desire to control and exploit, to channel people into what companies need/want instead of channeling companies into what people need/want. Being exploited and manipulated in this fashion is a net decrease of safety. That just about everybody who exploits is in turn the exploited pet of others in other areas, that everybody who presumes to be a magician to the plebs is in turn a pleb in the sight of another magician, that doesn't make it better or more fair, it makes it a maelstrom. Our tools get faster and bigger, but we become consumers instead of makers, parrots instead of sources. We hop from raft to raft on a windy river, rather than building and expanding and improving our world. That is just so boring and also dangerous, besides sorely lacking dignity. Anyone who works to change that, no matter in what capacity, I support without ifs and buts.
Generally speaking and kind of a tangent, but how much damage is done to the mind by making the world and the objects we use to function and socialize more opaque, so that we become to resigned to either consume or watch? That's hardly on our radar, but I would count on it.
Very much looks like it's true, but I don't know when that trick first was discovered:
DJ Scotch Egg is a Japanese fella who doesn't mind crowdsurfing even when there is hardly anyone there. Even if the music isn't your cup of tea (it isn't really mine), just the person himself is worth checking out.
Was it DJ Scotch Egg by any chance?
They may be dumb or an asshole or wrong about X, but they're still your brother/sister. I don't mean Trump, I mean Americans, being a subset of humanity. At the very least, they're people you're better off working with in whatever common ground you have, than fighting endless and unwinnable battles about someone being stupid or ugly as a distraction from how badly things are, and how muddy and muddled the road forward is... it's really incredibly sad to see that nation so torn up. Not over nothing, but also not over anything that warrants this, and the way it's treated. Just like Brexit, I get no joy from it. It just sucks, and instead of a growing opportunity, it's just used for more wounds. As if people really want it to get even worse; because whatever the lips say, that's what the hands are doing says.
How much has been achieved by the eye rolling and talking about "the other side" (no matter by whom and at what "side") since Trump was elected? What has been rationally been recognized as a problem, and what steps have been taken towards solutions? Where have people made an effort to hear others, instead of their bubble? I'm sure there are people outside the limelight who actually did do these things, but from what I see being surfaced most of the time, it's kind of a shit show.
I'm sure it's a scene in a movie or ten, where parents have a real bad fight, but then realize that screaming at each other is something their kid should not see, because regardless of who is right, or who wins, or whatever, seeing them sink so low can do a whole other set of damage. This feels like that movie for me, for too long now. Be wary of things that are hard or impossible to come back from.
I'm not one who gives a crap about badges or offices, but even I feel uneasy how the office of the President of the US is being damaged by this. I say by this, not just "by Trump". You have to think of the future, too. And by this I do not mean "no criticism", that is 100% not my point. Adults do have discussions, and they fight, but being demeaning about it is orthogonal to that and not good ever, in no context. And also no matter how wrong or dumb or how much of an asshole someone is. Actually: The more they are, the more you should "win", and the more important it is for that to be clean and fair, and for that to allow them a route to "join the win" by actually coming around from their own volition and voluntary insight.
I'm not American, I never was in America and there has been no president during my lifetime I really liked. I could not care, but I do. Because "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind" as John Donne wrote, and this can't go on. You are better than this, all of you. Roughly speaking, "you" invented being better at this, ffs. So take care, of yourself and each other, and as in actually do that. Please.
Sorry for it being so jumbled, not sorry for ranting... I adamantly believe in the importance of this thing I don't know how to put well.
Negative? I'd rather say it's part of the stuff that's normalizing totalitarianism by being too polite about it.
Truly, I live in dark times! / An artless word is foolish. A smooth forehead / Points to insensitivity. / He who laughs / Has not yet received / The terrible news.
What times are these, in which / A conversation about trees is almost a crime / For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing! / And he who walks quietly across the street, / Passes out of the reach of his friends / Who are in danger?
-- Berthold Brecht, ‘To Those Who Follow in Our Wake’
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows.
-- George Orwell, "Why I Write"
Why would you on the other hand not pay attention? Because you or nobody you love has been put in a camp, for example? Because you're with those who ignore the millions of people who did resist totalitarianism and were murdered, as if those never existed, while giving the time of the day to those who build on their corpses and call it culture or the nature of the people?
Imagine an alternate universe where the Nazis hadn't "won the war", but never started one, and had "just" done what they did "internally", while militarizing without attacking. Few would have even raised a brow, nobody would have done anything, and after 20-30 years of that, nobody even capable of forming an opinion would be left alive in Germany. And then people would just say "awww, that's just how they are, that's how they like to treat each other". In that alternative universe, there would also be people for whom that would not be enough, who wouldn't stop with acceptance of totalitarianism, who don't want uglyness to not be called uglyness anymore, they want to see it considered beauty. In short, you're being among the worst in a reality where hardly anyone is good.
If you're not valuing your priorities with a phone, you won't value them without it. It might make a difference for a few weeks, but then you'll work out how to waste your time without your phone and you'll be back to square one.
Or, as someone below puts it
I'm mystified by the number of people who think that they've solved the fundamental problem by getting rid of their phone: being that unable to control one's immediate impulses, is worthy of attention.
Maybe getting rid of a smart phone means "lack of impulse control", okay. The cited study claims the average American looking at their phone every six minutes on average, so it's not exactly cool to ignore that bit and berate the person who took the time writing an article citing that study.
And maybe it's not even a lack of impulse control, but a singular act of will? Would people also be "concerned" for someone who stops smoking but doesn't keep cigarettes around the house? Or hey, what if someone were to say that Linters are for people who don't get it right the first place, and that itself deserves attention? We know humans are imperfect, and find it sensible to guard ourselves against making mistakes in all sorts of ways. Why are smartphones different to you?
A portable mini computer with internet access is useful for a lot of cool things, no doubt. Though to the usefulness on the internet it's like putting a low table on a huge mountain, makes no overall difference to me. None of the upsides you mentioned seem smartphone specific, and you address none of the smartphone specific issues mentioned in the article, other than with a sweeping "I'm not going back".
When I'm not on the train, I can know when it's actually going to arrive so I can do something fun instead of waiting on the platform.
Partly (or depending on where you are, rather) that's because thanks to smartphones, they don't display it in many places where they used to. Just like you can't buy a ticket from a person anymore. This cam be a huge problem for elderly people or those with disabilities. If a smartphone saves one so much time, that time should also be used to help one's fellow citizens by noticing and criticzing such things, to help remove barriers even though they are no barriers to you.
Smartphones were ceded their initial social acceptance solely on being optional. If this turned out to be a lie, the acceptance should likewise be withdrawn, and we can save the the discussion about the mass surveillance and marketing aspects I see completely not mentioned here as a bonus, too.
I can plan my trips instead of listening to the boring parts of conversations.
This probably sounds more rude to me as you are in practice, but it conjure up nothing good in my mind, honestly. The first thing that comes to mind is a Mitchell and Webb sketch about a guy in a pub interrupting the others because their conversation isn't good enough for them, but also not contributing to make it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKJ5w-HQ9b0