puredemo

A moderator just a hair left of your current moderation approach on the authoritarianism scale would "flag and remove" PG's entire recent article about income inequality with a note calling it "tedious ideological posturing."

Censorship is generally the territory of petty proceduralism, not grand political gesture.

"It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is."

That's a direct quote from PG. Take it for what you will.

The internet has already been a massive boon to fighting boredom in general, sure. If you are highly literate (~15%) it's difficult to be bored when all of the world's knowledge is at your fingertips. Even if you aren't highly literate, there are still X-box games. ;) And you're right, VR will just help even more.

That being said, I do see some issues with our youth habitually living in gaming ecosystems rather than in the real world. For instance, a couple studies lately have noted empathetic behavior sharply dropping among millennials, [1] which I would think comes from spending far less time interacting face-to-face with anyone during their formative years -- their emotional attachments are probably not as strongly imprinted when staring at a screen all the time.

Internet and VR are still a huge net win imo. Real-life, positive social outlets are crucial as well though.

[1] http://www.ipearlab.org/media/publications/Changes_in_Dispos...

I grew up in an area like that. One of my goals if I ever get wealthy is to simply open up something cheap and fun to do in small towns to combat this. Like rock climbing gyms for $30 a month. Or small indoor water parks.

I wouldn't even care if that chain of businesses made much money, I'd consider it a public service.

Well, I appreciate the response, but as you might have guessed I disagree with your approach and assumptions.

Flamewar material could basically be any contestable subject people get passionate about. Of course people online will disagree about contentious ideas, that doesn't automatically make it a "flamewar topic" as you seem to think, unless you plan to flag and remove all impassioned speech here.

Typically for forum moderation, flamewars involve a slew of personal attacks, which are simply not present in my quote. I said something ideologically controversial, but I didn't flame or personally attack anyone.

My statement also wasn't casual. Since the BLM movement was founded on the Michael Brown case, I've put a fair amount of time and consideration into an analysis of what happened in the case and how I should feel about it and the ongoing protests -- protests that shut down the freeway here in SF for hours yesterday, I might add.

My overall conclusion is as stated, and that directly relates to the initial post about empathy online -- it's an completely valid example where displaying a lack of empathy on a given subject is very controversial, which you have certainly reaffirmed here. To you, it's such a controversial (read: not politically correct) opinion (to refuse to show empathy towards a perceived victim) that you, as a moderator, felt the need to denigrate the perspective and flag the comment as off-topic (which it wasn't).

Tedious ideological posturing

I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, and for what it's worth you've labeled this quote more accurately, but it's still extremely subjective (bordering on facile name-calling) to label what I said that way. What you find tedious others might find empowering, in that they don't have to put the world's problems on their shoulders and feel sad about every victim narrative bandied about on the news. Or people could have a slew of other emotions.

I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview. That's the definition of bias. You also tend to resort to tone policing to justify acting on your biases when any argument rubs you the wrong way. That's not good moderation, imo.

Removing personal attacks is fine, sure. Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it -- that's disappointing to see on HN. Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.

I don't even like Facebook much, but I still strongly preferred the design of it over Google+.

Not to mention Google+ was truly asinine about forcing users to merge their YT and G+ accounts (and even gmail, iirc), it was all just very confusing and obtuse. I don't want a SSO. I don't want a G+ account for every Gmail account.

I didn't want to have to fuck around with merging my accounts, tethering each YT channel to my social network, etc. I want -- and have business needs for -- a division between the sites I use. I frequently need several different usernames and identities on different sites, even if the sites are owned by the same company, as sometimes I am creating social accounts for clients.

Google was, IMHO, trying to be shady and act like every youtube comment was actually Google+ activity, simply so they could claim, "We have XXX million active G+ users each month!!" They weren't and you don't. I'm glad their shady network and backhanded business practices failed.

What part(s) do you consider dross?

To me, "flamewar material" sounds like "stuff many people would disagree with" [1] and "tedious posturing" sounds like, "Unfortunate realities I don't like discussing," so if you could quote [2] the specific part that breaks the rules it would help.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] http://paulgraham.com/okung.html

I changed the downvote line, thanks.

Might makes right.

Or, more accurately: Might muddies the waters enough to do whatever it wants regardless.

solely to avoid programming for the web? What is it about the web you dislike so much?

People can simply be uninterested in certain types of work..

Aliens of the gaps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

Sure, that's why every college relies on them for admissions, not to mention everyone taking the GRE / MCAT for grad school.

Are applied sciences grad programs not "creative work" in your mind? Standardized tests statistically predict success within those programs.

http://portal.scienceintheclassroom.org/sites/default/files/...

Considering I managed literally thousands of agents over a period of years, you would statistically be an extremely rare exception to a rather well-examined trend.

Did you ever take the SAT / ACT?

"Hire anyone with decent standardized test scores," would be my baseline after managing a large, technical support callcenter where many new hires were simply not able to learn the (imho fairly rudimentary) modem troubleshooting steps after weeks and months of on-the-job training and support.

The people who seemed the sharpest in the first two weeks of training usually excelled, most others didn't. Some were simply unable to learn fairly basic concepts. It mostly came down to raw intellect. I'm sure the same would be true for aspiring developers.

snobsolence.com

I still can't fathom how monetizing what are basically just shared network drives, a feature already built into windows, is a successful venture.

Hire an IT guy and have him setup network shares, done. But obviously there seems to be some need I'm overlooking, considering the revenue these companies are making.

He resold cereal dammit, he's practically a miracle worker. /s

That's a robotics company.

Nothing but Soylent drinks and Slow-cooked BBQ

If I wanted to take it super literally, I'd ask why Pink people aren't considered "People of Color." ;)

He thinks I'm racist for quoting wikipedia.

I mean, I think you buy into and identify with a concept that is explicitly, by definition anti-white..

Is that not racist?

--

This is exactly why I don't want to write about race issues.

Because everyone needs to agree with you about them 100%?

It sounds like you're saying it's fine to be racist against whites, but offensive to do the same thing to your personal "in-group." Little ironic, lol.

Excuse my ignorance but do Asians "count" as people of color? I thought that usually referred to Latinos and African Americans?

I know that university admissions PoC don't include Asians, in fact most admissions standards are stacked against them.

Nice blog post, though I disagree with the title -- being right certainly pays my bills. ;)

The theme is more like, "Learn to pick your battles with clients."

First, it would be trivial to reroute inheritance funds through trusts or protected business assets, so very few wealthy families would fall victim to this sort of tax in reality. Governments have been trying to steal from the rich for a very long time, and the rich are fairly skilled at protective countermeasures.

Beyond that, your policy comes off as just the most base form of theft. Generational wealth is important, it's core to our survival instincts to look after our offspring when we die -- beyond just their basic needs, we want them to thrive. We want our grandchildren to thrive as well.

Also, generally speaking, I trust the children and grandchildren to spend money in more interesting / authentic ways than our government, who has, for example, the yearly defense budget we carry. And the yearly prison budget we maintain.

What if a child whose rich parents died would have started the largest cancer research center in the US with his billion dollars, but instead that money is seized by your "tax plan" and simply goes toward the defense industry coffers? Is that a net gain? Taking from the rich and giving to Halliburton and Blackwater?

How do you remove billions in net worth more than once? It doesn't exist the second time.

Realpolitik is by definition not ideological, while libertarianism very much is. Quite different approaches.

It was actually a well-executed joke. Quite acerbic.

Unfortunately many click-bait "journalists" were simply too thick to understand the satire.

1. She's describing "in-group" preferences in most of the latter part of the article, not herd mentality. These are two separate things.

2. Since libertarianism is, by definition, fully supportive of the rights outlined in the constitution, being anti-gun / gun-grabber / endlessly wanting more government restrictions on what is a fundamental constitutional right makes her not a libertarian. The criticisms levied against her on this front are correct.

3. She's quite insulting. "most sane individuals on this side of the Atlantic," implying one must be insane to respect and honor 2nd amendment rights? "Preening contrarians," "infantile sneering," "rejoice in this toxic effluence." Yikes. Exactly how full of disdain and contempt is she regarding anyone's opinions that don't precisely align with her own? I find it rather hard to believe anyone she is criticizing is as vitriolic as the author seems to be.

4. The important thing is, she's found a way to feel superior to everyone..

https://xkcd.com/774/

You are suffering from the just world fallacy.

I think you're projecting. He is saying the world is harsh and unfair, and people need to work hard to mitigate that. That isn't a fallacy.

What are you referring to when you say "past performance" specifically?

Are you talking about the Great Leap Forward, which killed tens of millions?

You realize we're discussing individuals getting hired in a job market, not genocidal dictatorships in Asia 50+ years ago, right?