bra-ket

I've seen the phrase 'threat to democracy' thrown around this week to justify silencing voices. If you're afraid of what someone who thinks differently will vote for, then maybe democracy itself is the problem.

Facebook, Twitter and Google are monopolies. They carry different weight than simply private corporations, and with great power comes great responsibility.

I think it's a blatant free speech violation. As long as Big Tech have monopolistic power they would serve as tools of political censorship.

Don’t allow ideological posts then alltogether, otherwise you can only expect flame wars, endless flagging, and more work for you.

I’d be happy not to see politics on HN, but I’m not going to remain quiet when I see one-sided political argument here just like on Reddit.

That's a tough job to be a mod, for sure, but there is also a thing called free speech which grants even lunatics like the scientologists, freedom of, you know, speech. And it doesn't mean 'free speech you agree with'.

What happens now is that Capitol protest is used as an excuse to exclude half of the country in the conversation before the inauguration (and most likely after), silence their voice, the voice of opposition.

And that doesn't smell kosher to me, to 75M people who voted with me, and thankfully many on the left, the classic liberals.

I don't think it's good for the country to derail to this level of totalitarian censorship, even temporary, no matter what yours or mine political beliefs are.

> But I'm fine with supporting this temporarily, at least through the inauguration

sounds like 'just a little bit of fascism, it won't even hurt'.

I think the best plan of action is creating a new decentralized free speech platform, as resilient as a cockroach, blockchain or scihub.

I’ve sent a message to sama & pg asking to add this to the YC list of ‘requests for startups’. I hope they hear.

For those lurking, this is a tremendous opportunity and real need as you have half the country desperate to let their voice be heard while being aggressively silenced and de-platformed for political reasons.

You can have a monopoly on free speech.. just kidding , purely decentralized. Hit me up with your hot ideas and Go chops.

Exactly, move to Parler or start another free speech platform.

Otherwise expect one party to dominate both government and the entire media spectrum silencing all opposition.

TLDR: you're right

'In common parlance, randomness is the apparent lack of pattern or predictability in events' [1].

It doesn't mean there is no cause, but we can't predict the outcome of the random process [2].

In some case we can't predict it because we don't understand it, in others it is inherently unpredictable according to our model of the world.

As for radioactive decay, specifically: 'According to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay, regardless of how long the atom has existed'[3].

That only means quantum theory can't predict it, it doesn't mean other theory won't be able to.

It's just we're stuck with quantum theory for now, because it has been verified by all experiments done so far, and not yet disproven by new experiments.

Every theory has a lifetime as long as it is not proven wrong by experiment. And cause and predictive capability are directly tied to particular theory/model you're using.

so 'random' might mean:

1) we have a good coherent model, consistent with empirical results, and a particular process/phenomenon is unpredictable according to our model.

or alternatively

2) we don't have a good model/don't understand the cause and therefore can't predict the outcome a particular process/phenomenon

both 1 and 2 leave space for a new theory to come in, and be able to explain the cause/make the prediction and eliminate 'randomness'

so essentially you're right.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

not gonna happen as long as 'deep learning' is still in fashion.

That fake "AI", with its gigantic dumb models, is too artificially stupid to know what's it's doing.

Sentience is going to be perpetually '5 years away' as long as we keep yak shaving our gradient descents.

But I for one welcome our attractive overlords when the time is ripe.

I wish you were right.

I'm talking about gazilions in charity which goes to waste, with that $4B being a very small part of.

The libs are sh*ting their pants for real now.

Orwell stock will explode this year, I wish I could bet my money on it.

I’m surrounded by liberals and their bs, just like you. My only source of disinformation is liberal/mainstream media, just like yours. And I haven’t seen as many lies as I’ve seen last year, and this one, oh God.

I’m ‘radicalized’ by you, dear liberal people, and I’m one of the 75M.

Nah, I think I answered it alright , why don’t you go after leftist media and their propaganda , ask WaPo to provide a “good faith summary of other person argument” when they accuse ALL Trump supporters of being racist ‘white supremacists’ indiscriminately and without evidence on daily basis for years, inciting witch hunts and riots.

What you’re doing is called demagogy, or worse, sealioning.

But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, just apply your high standards of good faith argument to left wing media and their culture of political ‘discourse’, lmao. I’m just a lowly Trumper.

1. 4 years on non-stop propaganda by left wing owned mainstream media, amplified by online echo-chambers, will do that to you. Especially if the other side is labeled all shades of evil, like ‘racists’ and ‘fascists’ indiscriminately and without evidence. Slander is a powerful political weapon.

2. "Moronic sheep" is a poetic way to describe people who tend to trust lies they've been force-fed, without questioning. I blame the lack of critical thinking, groupthink, and deep internalized 'herd following' attitude nurtured from schools to colleges. Which, btw, a possible reason for larger Trump support among people who haven't passed through the brainwashing machine of the US college/academia.

I guess anti-individualism is the best way to call it. I always refer to excellent "Excellent Sheep" book by William Deresiewicz who succinctly described just what I experienced first hand during years of Ivy League un-education.

3. see 1.

if we can't get free speech on BigTech platforms then we shall part our ways, each stuck in its own 'safe space'. As for me personally I prefer swimming against the current.

Funny, I get the same impression when I go to Twitter, it’s full of far left loonies and communist sympathizers, not to mention raging cancel culture mobs, so brainwashed they disown their families for supporting Trump.

And the worst thing is that Twitter is based in Silicon Valley, with many of its key employees belonging to the same herd.

There must be an alternative platform.

Thanks for free Parler ads.

More people should be aware of free speech platforms.

1. Twitter bans people based on their political beliefs

2. Twitter provides a platform for cancel culture

3. I don’t like Jack Dorsey

Twitter, Google and Facebook are using Capitol Hill protest as an excuse to silence all conservatives, i.e. half the country.

I think Parler/CloutHub and Telegram/Signal will explode in popularity. It’s also a great opportunity to build alternatives.

@sama and @pg, YC should add free speech platform to their list of requests for startups.

agreed, but somehow the left stick 'racist' and 'fascist' labels on the back of everyone who disagrees with their ideology.

shutting down free speech is one of the hallmarks of fascism, and it happens before your very eyes.

Yeah, the kind of 'progressivism' that calls for silencing all opposition through censorship, propaganda and intimidation.

That's all swell and dandy until one of these cultures controls the media and government and shuts down the other via every means possible, from non-stop propaganda and censorship to witch hunts and persecutions on ideological grounds. We are in '1984'.

we voted against ‘liberal’ version of fascism.

Unfortunately fascism won.

hmm, have you heard of Gulag and millions of 'enemies of the people' that perished there

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

also you didn't notice "/s", I'm a proud Trump voter, one of the 74M.

CNN is trying to force Fox News off air.

Twitter deletes people who have opinions different than theirs.

Apple is trying to delete a free speech platform.

Google already did.

Biden and Democrats in charge are cheering it on.

Fascism is here and it’s the 'liberal' left.

74M

arxiv paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.07393.pdf

I'd argue it further isolates users in those liberal echo-chambers from hearing a different opinion.

Given the heavy left leaning media bias it leads to free speech being free as long as it doesn't disagree with the 'party line'.

I.e. the same dynamics as in communist Soviet Union where 'enemies of the people' were ostracized and persecuted by totalitarian regime.