Comment by sleepysysadmin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sleepysysadmin | Hacker News Reader

How topics are approached is important. Do you believe children of illegal immigrants should be allowed access to healthcare/schools? Most people will say yes. You then by definition also believe we should have government services/benefits provided to illegal immigrants. If you ask in reverse, do you believe illegal immigrants should receive government services/benefits. Most people will say no. It's not a left or right wing thing. Bipartisan support depending how it's phrased.

The problem with politics is that it's very subjective and how the topic is approach matters greatly. There is no ability to 'fact check' the majority of politics. What fact checkers really are is just censors. This article is concerned about first amendment because they are calling for censorship.

Now back to the article, how's the approach? The article also very clearly is written in 1 direction. Covid conspiracies like lab leak, climate change of florida being under water right now, and election fraud where Republicans have submitted 425 election bills across 49 states because they see the election as fraudulent. Are those misinformation or just politically inconvenient truths?

Clear political skew on the positions is the approach here. I'm not in the USA, not American but when you label your political opponent's speech as lies/misinformation. Bad things happen and Trump is the tip of the iceberg of bad things coming because of this activity.

>Do you believe children of illegal immigrants should be allowed access to healthcare/schools? Most people will say yes. You then by definition also believe we should have government services/benefits provided to illegal immigrants.

These two categories overlap but are not the same. This is a problem of asking a yes/no question to about access to a vague category that contains thousands of services.

This relates to your post in that you can't fact check imprecise claims that mean different things to different listeners.

>These two categories overlap but are not the same. This is a problem of asking a yes/no question to about access to a vague category that contains thousands of services.

This is the subjectivity of politics in a nutshell. Well written.

>This relates to your post in that you can't fact check imprecise claims that mean different things to different listeners.

Let me even propose more what should the immigration number be? This is a bit of a bigger issue in my country but lets stick with USA.

It's around 1 million new legal immigrants a year.

If I say it should be 750,000 vs you say it should be 1.5 million. There is no way to say what is correct.

What happens in my country? Anyone who thinks we should have less immigration is literally a white supremacist.

Even just side line: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370?s=20

February 2020, Trump took the plan from Obama's playbook to restrict travel from China. For which he was called xenophobic and fear mongering. Even just looking to stop travel because of covid, not even just reducing immigrant and he's called xenophobic.

Hindsight 20/20 Biden looks very bad here because he himself has now done the same thing that Trump did.

What's the misinformation here? Should we be looking to censor something?

>If I say it should be 750,000 vs you say it should be 1.5 million. There is no way to say what is correct.

Even this would be a vast improvement in over the current debate: is immigration good or bad. At least you can start to have a reasonable conversation about a number, why you support it, and what the results would be. Further, there are different types of immigrants. Some are skilled workers, refugees, and yes, even criminals. Should the number be the same for all?

when someone simply says it is good/more. what does that mean? 2 million, 10 million, ect?

>What's the misinformation here? Should we be looking to censor something?

When there are no details, there is no information, and if there is no information, how can there be misinformation?

Do you know how in school, if you cool and you got a funny haircut people thought you were a trend-setter; but if you were a dork, it just make you even more dorky? This is how it is with adults as well.

People already thought Trump was xenophobic, and Trump himself even played up the stereotype, since it was politically useful; so anything that could be interpreted as xenophobic, was. People don't think Biden is xenophobic, so they look for alternative explanations instead.

>People already thought Trump was xenophobic, and Trump himself even played up the stereotype, since it was politically useful; so anything that could be interpreted as xenophobic, was. People don't think Biden is xenophobic, so they look for alternative explanations instead.

Putting aside the horrendous worldwide result that Biden and friends caused by calling Trump xenophobic. Most likely delaying and or preventing similar travel restrictions until it's too late.

Imagine what would have happened if Biden agreed saying Trump should do more lockdowns. What if Tam and Singh in Canada also didn't call Trump xenophobic and recommended we close the borders. Would north america be a much better place covidwise?

Also yes, trump doesnt play it up persay but simply shows how toxic the democrats are. How many people are simply fed up with being called racist by the democrats over and over and over? Everytime Biden or similar calls Trump names, they lose voters.

> election fraud where Republicans have submitted 425 election bills across 49 states because they see the election as fraudulent. Are those misinformation or just politically inconvenient truths?

Ultimately it has to be determined whether the election was or was not fraudulent. By some process outside of both the political parties, that they are capable of both respecting. If that ceases to happen - once the parties cease respecting court rulings and public inquiries - then the ability to hold free and fair elections starts to collapse and you get power grabs like that.

(IMO the US federal system should simply not let states run Federal elections, they keep having to sue them to ensure fairness)

> Ultimately it has to be determined whether the election was or was not fraudulent.

I honestly think it would be preferable if we changed it to "Ultimately it has to be declared whether the election was or was not fraudulent." To me, this is more palatable as "determined" implies the unequivocal truth is known, something which is plausibly not possible at least under the current design of the system.

My intuition is that conspiracy theorists would at least somewhat prefer this as the possibility of inaccuracy is explicitly acknowledged, although I wonder if normal people would find it unpalatable.

I would accept "agreed", but see the 2000 election: quite possibly it was wrongly determined, but the Democrats agreed to concede and largely haven't mentioned it since. Whereas you can already see Republicans "pre-declaring" that an election that hasn't happened yet will be fraudulent if they don't win.

So we have (with my subjective and surely biased interpretations of the meaning & "epistemic status/quality"):

1. [Current Approach] determined - "was 'discovered' to be X, regardless if was actually discovered (as opposed to estimated)" - decision made by bureaucrats/experts &/or courts | Invalid: it is not necessarily possible to discover what is true (under the current system)

2a. declared - "was decided to be categorized as X, regardless of actual(!) ultimate truth" - decision made by courts | Valid: acknowledges that the actual truth is not known, but fr pragmatic reasons a decision is made so we can move on (which is what actually happens now, but we do not speak truthfully about the details, which causes anger, which often has complex, outsized systemic consequences)

2b. agreed - "all parties voted to categorize as X, regardless of actual(!) ultimate truth, with or without (optional) formal complaints*" - decision made by party officials | Valid: roughly, same as "declared", but the decision is voluntary by party officials, rather than decided by courts

What do you think of this way of thinking about it?

I find #1 fairly repulsive, but the exact same outcome recorded/discussed as 2a or 2b I find much less problematic.

>Ultimately it has to be determined whether the election was or was not fraudulent.

That seems to be the problem. We can't seem to say anything that might challenge it. Here's 425 bills in 49 states proving conclusively that the republicans believe it was fraudulent, but literally nobody saying anything

>By some process outside of both the political parties, that they are capable of both respecting. If that ceases to happen - once the parties cease respecting court rulings and public inquiries - then the ability to hold free and fair elections starts to collapse and you get power grabs like that.

Oh no, we went the other direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

So very clearly the republicans believe the election was fraudulent. What is the democrat response? Assert the republicans are attacking democracy. Which is absolutely not the case.

Lets just hypothetical this? Lets say the republicans fail to fix the fraudulent election? Lets say 425 bills are failed and nothing changes. Do you believe the republicans just accept their fate? No, that'll be civil war for sure.

>(IMO the US federal system should simply not let states run Federal elections, they keep having to sue them to ensure fairness)

For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Integrity_Act_of_2021

Georgia has passed significant changes. Biden calls it racially discriminatory but I fail to see how that's the case. DOJ is suing and I guess will prove how its racist but I dont see how that works. Georgian republicans very clearly believe the election was fraudulent and the cheating party is calling them racists without any legitimatcy to the claim. Its not like the bill says black people cant vote.

What's the alternative? It certainly means democracy falls if this didn't become law. What's very interesting and I cant wait to see in 2023. Will georgia flip back?

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