Hacker News Reader

Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

>perhaps it's just empathy

Any system can be hacked, including empathy. We call it "fraud" and unfortunately it seems that the number of humans who can keep two concepts in their head at the same time are vanishingly rare. So you end up with a useless "empathy vs fraud" debate repeated endlessly, roughly corresponding to the left and the right, and it doesn't go anywhere. Of course, what we need is a synthesis. The left needs to be more attuned to fraud that targets empathy, and the right needs to stop using the risk of fraud as an excuse to do nothing.

View on HN

Unfortunately, "risk of fraud" is a cover for the belief that giving their money to people who haven't worked as hard as they have is theft. Many want to decide who deserves their money more than themselves.

Being poor or disabled is effectively a character flaw.

Another example of the fundamental attribution error on the right. In the same way, many on the left believe that having money means that you've stolen it and don't deserve it. So it cuts both ways.

Delusional centrism.

One side : use our immense wealth as the richest nation on earth to provide basic services to all citizens by maybe taxing billionaires so they only have 1/10 b instead of 100.

Other side: if you're poor, it's your fault. Get fucked.

Laughable you can consider those two positions in any way comparable or equitable. Absolutely silly the enlightened centrism I'm seeing here. Gross and dishonest to even pretend like there's more than one viable non ecology destroying, democracy preserving political position in the us.

Stop obsessing over what marxists think of profit, consider what they want to do with the wealth they redistribute. Make all our lives better for literally zero quality in life change for the rich who we'd tax. Tell me who's going to have any discernible decrease in quality of life if wealth was capped at 1b or 10 vs infinite and I'll call you a silly little child.

You highlight the difference between zealous advocacy and debate. The advocate cannot admit the flaws of their own position, or the merits of the other position. You characterize the left in a moderate way, and the right in an extremist way, even though extremism exists on both sides.

I miss the cultural norm that privileged debate over zealous advocacy, leaving the latter to lawyers and politicians.

>Zealous advocacy is centrist handwaving that ignores material realities on the ground. Acting as if noting one side is reasonable with faults and the other are lunatics not fit to old office is empirical, here's some proof. Side A are passing a 4% tax on millionaire's and passing universal school meals for kids. [0] B are forcing 12 year olds to carry their rapists' child to term. [1] You're mistaking empirical pragmatism with "zealous advocacy" because you've probably bought a little too much horseshoe theory nonsense or some other centrist silliness. [0]https://www.npr.org/2023/08/18/1194424563/free-school-lunch-... [1] https://theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/14/mississippi-aborti... Please, tell me what extremism is there from the left outside of twitter??? Because I can list dozens of articles like [1] that the right are doing on the ground, right. now. Please, privileged debate away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com