gitrog

I appreciate that, hope I didn't come across too harsh. Have a nice evening.

I guess Germany itself is kind of exceptional, given its past, but maybe I'm just moving the goalposts now, so let me try to substantiate.

I don't think positive discrimination laws in the US has as much to do with an embrace of Leftist ideology as it does with an attempt at attracting previously disenfranchised voters. I realise this seems very cynical, but my argument is that having a few policies that seem Leftist doesn't mean that the underlying ideology behind those policies is; correlation does not imply causation etc. So I'd argue those laws are reactionary, much in the same way they are in Germany and also in places like South Africa, to varying degrees of course. They're exactly the kind of toe-dipping you'd expect of parties who are more driven by quests for power than ideology. That's why, even with several Democratic presidents, for instance, the US still doesn't have proper vacation and parental leave: it's bad for business.

If I had to plot it, I'd say Germany's political landscape is also quite huddled up around the Center, but slightly Left (with more outliers than the US), where the US is huddled around the Center and slightly Right. This would explain why the Right in the US feels further Right than in Germany. These configurations are probably not even that strange for developed and developing Western nations, though most have more outlier parties than the US even if they're not generally in contention during elections.

I just feel that the binary-narrative - even though the spectrum is quite large and nuanced - is something that has spread from US political commentators to other nations and is watering down the discourse.

You would lose nothing by omitting terms like "the Left" and "the Right" and gain not immediately baiting people into partisan flame wars. I find it baffling that so many Americans have an inability to discuss politics without invoking either of those terms, especially when your "Left" and "Right" are practically leanings of Centrism to most of the rest of the world.

But really, it does nothing to enforce your argument. You complain about 24 hour news and social media eroding Democracy (and presumably discussions about the politics of Democracy), yet you use these terms so loosely and end up reducing anyone Left of you to some or other policy you deem to be essential to that position.

> Ethnicity and IQ relationship is mainstream psychology.

Care to substantiate that claim?

Why is /that/ the most likely explanation? Peterson has said many controversial things on topics that aren't his area of expertise.

Peterson does have a way of trying to tie all of his beliefs into a larger world view, and selling that, though. It's the same thing with the Mesopotamian gods and his beliefs about gender.

Definitely, but I guess I'm implying many people don't think it's subjective. Should have probably put "common sense" and "blatantly obvious" in quotations.

I think "pseudoscientific mysticism" is just in response to the fact that many people don't see it as being subjective, but rather objectively measurable/common sense/blatantly obvious.

> In the story, they gave him no warning that the password was prohibited, or why, and then permanently deleted the account with no recourse.

/She/ is also a well known journalist who could easily have had her account being monitored. Other people on that thread claimed that they changed their password to the same and nothing happened.

Okay, let me just say then that your tone is very, very confusing. What with the "Obviously, everyone here is a sexist. Wake up people!" It sounds like you were being sarcastic? Were you being sincere?

I read Slaughterhouse 5 first, so that might be why I prefer it, even though I really enjoyed Cat's Cradle. But beyond that, I felt that Slaughterhouse 5 tied into reality more for me. It just felt more relevant, if that makes sense, but it could totally just have been due to my mindset at the time.

I've been deliberating over where to start with Le Guin. What would you suggest?

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut was probably the most recent one for me. I guess the book in its entirety is probably fairly mild by modern sci-fi comparisons, but without wanting to spoil anything there is a certain species in the book whose outlook on life immediately changed my perspective of reality.

Ubik had my head swimming for weeks afterwards, I'm still not sure that my mind has ever recovered.

In the throes of your rant at someone making a perfectly accurate observation you seemed to have made a false dichotomy.

The options aren't just that everyone on HN is sexist nor that women aren't interested in writing books on mind bending concepts, but another reason, as has been mentioned above, is that women for most of human history weren't allowed to write. From there it becomes rather obvious why there are less woman authors at all!

Also, check out some of Ursula Le Guin's work if you are into sci-fi.

I honestly believe your thinking here is one of the biggest misunderstandings of our time. Is it really so hard for you to believe that the majority of constituents in these groups want equality rather than them being envious of others' wealth?

Really? Facebook started censoring completely of their own volition? Not because Western governments started to apply pressure on them?

Facebook's handling of filtered out messages is honestly not an improvement over WeChat worth celebrating.

> There's not a single social network that has begun to require phone verification because of the risk of "toxicity or hate speech". It's all to fight spam and to better track user activity (and, if we're being charitable to them

I think that _is_ being very charitable. Way too much in fact.

The thing with Chinese censorship is that people living under it either don't care about it or are fully aware of it. It's very much in the open.

On the other hand, Facebook/Instagram, Microsoft, Google, etc all start requiring your phone number for verification or some other valid reason, reeling and locking you in, and before you know it not only one entity but any entity willing to pay for your data has access to it.

We should of course be outraged at both approaches.

Also, is removing fake news/propaganda not censorship solely because it's not the government doing it? Because if that's the case, Facebook and Google only really started removing fake news _because_ governments started to apply pressure on them.

What are the benefits of FeatherJS and Firebase over using the backends that I'm already familiar with?

I'd like to get the prototype out quickly, and then there will probably be quite a bit of time before the final product is launched.

Things like this worry me about getting up and running with GraphQL though, especially "Common GraphQL problems: Server/Client Data Mismatch":

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/five-common-problems-in-gr...

I'm keen to try out Flutter as I've heard good things, but I'm weary of delving into an entirely new language for this project if the languages I know already offer a viable (and popular) mobile app dev stack. Unless it really makes state handling on the UI mega simple, which is my biggest problem with the JS library/framework solutions I've worked with before.

GraphQL and Apollo looked attractive to me for all the reasons you stated, but I was just worried that the learning curve and making it play nicely with the rest of the stack (that I know quite well already) would be too steep to justify using for the prototype. I'm thinking of writing the prototype just using DRF and React Native but during each step of the process basically looking into how that step would be done with GraphQL.

Something crucial I should have mentioned is that many of the users will likely have poor internet quality. Not sure if this will end up affecting my need for state management.

You're making it sound as if the economy in the abstract sense is the thing that is employing people. Those people would still definitely be employed in a "different" economy, since an economy is simply a space in which people trade goods and services.

And I don't think his framework actively excludes people, it's just that economies almost never contribute to all individuals equally.

If you're going to downvote save_ferris, at least have the decency to give a rebuttal?

A lot will have to happen _during_ lockdown, you can't just sit idly by. Basically it will buy time.

Of course the virus will still spread once lockdown is lifted, but for countries like the US (not even to mention Italy and Spain) who started behind the curve any time you can buy to bolster your response should be taken.

> Pragmatically one could argue that economically and socially it would be fairer to just let people who contract COVID die. But politics intervenes and forbids that.

Really? And what if two thirds of the world contracted it and ~3% of those died. I ask you to provide your own proof, models or what not, that letting this virus run rampant won't have equally or even more disastrous affects economically and socially.

I'm not sure why you're calling the author's character into question here...

This is such an outrageous thing to say. Do yourself a favour and go read the paper:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...

Researchers go and model data, making every caveat imaginable along the way, and then predict outcomes based on possible actions taken, and your response is to label them as spreading "bad" and "dangerous" information. You're literally condemning them for doing the science at all. You're inadvertently screaming at models...

I'm not sure why shutdown prevents routine patients though? At least, in my country anyone needing to go see a doctor is exempt from the lockdown.