salt-thrower

It’s not about an individual experience, it’s about the general quality of HN being polluted by clickbait. More clickbait makes more targets for trolls. If trolls find lots of fodder they’ll spend more time here. Etc etc.

Strong moderation is the key to keeping up the quality of discussions around here. I’m also glad this post got flagged.

Great points. I mentioned this in another comment but it’s worth adding that the Right does this too. Like adults in the 70’s and 80’s trying to cancel heavy metal bands and get dungeons and dragons banned because it was “satanic” and would corrupt the youth. Ridiculous stuff, but similar behavior from a different political faction.

Michael Richards (of Kramer fame from Seinfeld) has been pretty silent since his whole racial slur fiasco.

People think cancel culture is a new thing. Before there was a politicized term for it, specific incidents were just called “scandals.”

It seems like a truly case by case basis as to whether it sticks or not.

EDIT to add: the cultural Right has been attempting, with mixed success, to “cancel” people for decades. McCarthyism, the Satanic Panic, and ruining the careers of country singers who criticize Republicans all come to mind. None of this is new and none of it is unique to the modern cultural Left. It’s just different cultural criteria and different targets.

It seems odd to complain about cancel culture and then make a stunt out of self-censorship. You achieve the same result as the vocal minority who would want to ban you, but now you can claim it was your own doing, so… success?

It’s hard to imagine being in that situation, but I think the better move would be to show up anyway and call their bluff.

I disagree to a certain extent. The business model of adtech + social media creates an especially toxic product that brings out the worst in people, and puts vitriolic content in front of more eyeballs because that's what drives engagement.

If FB's business model were significantly different and didn't depend on maximizing eyeballs-on-screens time, and didn't depend on selling the ability to manipulate people's emotions at scale, the product might be less toxic.

In summary, I think it's a cop-out to just say "humans bad." Yes, but the systems we create and participate in can and do influence human behavior in different ways. Facebook wouldn't be quite so toxic if there wasn't money to be made from the toxicity.

That is true. You can't debate everyone on an even playing field, because not everyone has the same baseline views of morality and reason.

More and more, I have come to think that debates are better for convincing undecided bystanders than convincing the other person you're debating with. At least for arguments or debates held online or in a public space.

One-on-one you might be able to show someone a new value system if they're willing to sit down and talk about it, though.

Super interesting read. Thanks for that. It puts me in a bit of a zen-like state to remember that everything will be dust in the end no matter what we do now.

That is a great quote, but it's misattributed.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed

And yet instead of leading with that, you led the argument with "well the President of the country was able to get around so you're wrong."

And anyway, employment rate alone is one tiny sliver of the puzzle. A thousand factors influence employment rates, and general quality of life factors such as "I can navigate public spaces without someone lifting my chair up the stairs" are not measured by employment.

Further, the ADA was one example of activism making at least a slight improvement in the physical public conditions that people have to put up with. That was my point. All I'm saying is you don't have to just bow your head and accept the conditions that normative society thrusts upon you if you're atypical in some way. Activism can move the needle in a more accessible direction. Perhaps you can think of some better examples of this than the ADA.

What procedures does the military have in place for when a high-ranking officer's mental acuity takes a steep dive? I'm curious about how that plays out.

Other users take note: this commenter frequently makes arguments that are so off-base, that I'm convinced they're either a bad-faith troll, or unwilling to actually think about the discussion at hand.

Take that into account when reading this thread.

> Nothing external will change

Decades of activism disagree. One example: people in wheelchairs used to be called "invalids" and pretty much couldn't get anywhere in public. Then the ADA was signed, and public spaces are much more accessible as a result.

A healthy balance between stoic acceptance and dutiful activism is the optimal approach, I think.

If all you're really saying is "without government there would be vigilante justice instead" then you're correct, but it's quite a non-sequitur in relation to the rest of the discussion in this thread.

You're 100% correct that without a government, vigilante justice is the option that people will take.

But we don't live in that thought experiment. In our current society, let's say Joe tricked Bob into sending him all of his bitcoin.

Option A: the government recognizes crypto as property, and the government intervenes to get Bob his property back. Of course, this also means that crypto is subject to taxes and regulations.

Option B: the government does not recognize crypto as property, and does nothing because no "crime" has been committed. Bob is out of luck. But, there are no taxes or regulations on crypto, so if you don't get robbed you can get rich and evade taxes.

Option B is the logical outcome of the scenario that many crypto anarchists originally wanted for crypto. No government oversight, which means no taxes or regulations, but also means you're shit outta luck if someone robs you. That's what I was commenting on.

Maybe those crypto anarchists also want a world with no government, so they can take Option C and be their own vigilantes. But it's even more ludicrous to desire that kind of world.

That's a fair take, and yet to acknowledge bitcoin as property means it would fall under the same laws and regulations that currently govern property ownership.

Originally, crypto enthusiasts - especially the ones with an anarchist streak - were into the idea that crypto would exist completely outside of government control, i.e. the government wouldn't even recognize it as property. So if thieves trick you into sending coins to the wrong address, tough luck, you should've been more careful.

To sue in court over property theft means the government must recognize crypto as property, and as such, crypto is brought into the fold of government oversight.

I've been hearing crypto enthusiasts say that crypto will make institutions obsolete since crypto first started. I agree that such people are not sane, yet they are a very vocal portion of the crypto fanbase.

> We live in a land of law and order.

This is pretty rich coming from someone who's legitimately suggesting vigilante justice as a policy.

"Law and order for thee, freedom to be judge, jury and executioner for me."

Go ahead and say the quiet part out loud - how would someone "deal" with the problem person in the world you're describing?

Sure, but it is a very popular belief, and one that has been a prevailing "selling point" of crypto since its inception.

The irony of crypto being lauded as an unregulated market outside of government control, and then crypto millionaires using government-backed courts to sue when they lose their assets due to bad opsec, is palpable.

Everyone loves the wild west until they're the ones being victimized, then it turns out 3rd party authorities are useful after all.

Yes, this is the most stoic/zen prayer that I've ever heard from a Christian context. I like it a lot.

Unfortunately Christianity suffers from excessive moralizing and mythology, which turns me away from it. But it definitely has lines of thought that descended from stoic thinking.

As others said, Buddhists and Stoics were earlier. Some Christian writings were definitely influenced by those lines of thought though, yes.

Speaking for myself, another reason I enjoy Buddhism and Stoicism is that they feel more like pure, distilled wisdom. Especially Zen Buddhism. Christian writings are filled with excessive moralizing and mythology, which enables all sorts of problems.

It's my understanding that PH is the only adult site with this issue. They got in hot water because of a series of high-profile lawsuits and media pieces about exploitation videos on their platform.

OF would likely not run into this because all of its content creators are verified and can only post videos of themselves or videos they have the rights to; it's not a free-for-all upload fest like PH used to be.

It is very beautiful and interesting to me that Stoics and Buddhists arrived at very similar conclusions despite being thousands of miles apart and having little to no contact.

Lots of these reviews are spurious, but I did have a very negative experience trying to use Digital Ocean despite not being a fraudster. They locked me out of my account with no warning, before I even had a chance to spin up a droplet or do much of anything. This happened twice with two different accounts using two different emails, so I gave up. To this day I'm not sure why it happened.

> If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor.

I'm replying late, but wow, this is a gem of an argument.

Really? The economic incentives that create this lucrative field in the first place are all gonna collapse if devs realize they don't need to bust ass at their job anymore? It's amazing that you think the individual work ethic of engineers is the only thing holding the tech economy together.

It only seems far fetched if you have a preconceived idea of Native peoples being uneducated simpletons, which unfortunately is the prevailing myth. They did indeed have environmental knowledge and planning abilities that allowed them to prosper in a completely different model of land management than what we think of today.

The Wiki article about Native fire management cites a variety of reputable sources. It's a good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in...

You'd likely run into the same problem of politicians and local companies lobbying against such a rule, in the name of "don't hurt businesses" etc.

Bingo. Rapid temperature changes of only a few degrees can become mass extinction events. Of course, the natural world has eventually recovered from every mass extinction - but it can take millions of years to get back to the same level of biodiversity as before the extinction.

"Amoral" means neither moral nor immoral. That's exactly how I would describe a transactional relationship, so yes, I'll stick with that word.

> Most companies have slack and generally avoid doing layoffs unless there's a special situation.

You're just making arbitrary claims here - the fact that companies can and do lay people off without notice and, sometimes, without severance, still confirms the nature of what I'm saying. It's all feel good until it isn't.

> why on earth would anyone think it's anything else?

I don't know; ask the others in this thread. There are plenty of people here claiming that they owe their company things (time, emotional investment) that go beyond the scope of their employment contract simply because it's "nice."

> once people are employed, they're not doing to drop them instantly.

This is simply not the case. Or, rather, it can be the case so easily and at any time that it's foolish to assume otherwise.