
No politics please, we're hackers, too busy to improve the world - Xylakant
https://jacquesmattheij.com/no-politics-please-we-are-hackers-busy-improving-the-world
======
jasode
Jacques M,

Presumably, you have read through the comments of the referenced thread[1]. If
so, your essay omits a perspective about politics dicussion that many HN
participants have. I'll attempt to summarize that position:

1) Yes, politics is extremely important.

2) Yes, politics _touches every subject_.

3) Yes, HN readers perform technical work in programming and hardware that
affects politics, and vice versa.

4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low
quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of _emotional_ comments instead of
_insightful_ ones.

5) The overall _net effect_ of political discussion on HN is _negative_ and
we'd rather not have 1 of the valuable 30 slots of the front page taken up by
a political story (e.g. "Trump denies climate change.")

To reiterate the points above, it does not mean "climate change" is
unimportant or that HN posters are _" burying their head in the sand"_. That's
a 1-dimensional caricature of the people who'd rather get their diet of
political discourse from somewhere else besides HN.

Therefore, it's possible to _simultaneously_ hold the view that politics is
super important and they don't want it on HN. Your essay doesn't address this
perspective.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

~~~
hiddencost
Maybe the quality of the political discussion is so crappy because we don't
talk about it?

My experience is that one has to express their emotional relationship to
problems and be aware of it before they can actually insightfully engage with
problems; if people don't, they just introduce their emotional biases into
their problem solving and pretend they're not.

~~~
aaron-lebo
That works in personal therapy. If you expect people in a thread of hundreds
of partisan comments to have some kind of catharsis, please see r/politics.

It's too complex of a topic and too emotional to be discussed in a large group
setting.

~~~
makmanalp
You make a good point, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion - think
this is an area of open research - could we build UX for discussion forums
that don't encourage and highlight shouting matches? I think the wide-open
nature of twitter, for example, where everyone can immediately jump in on any
conversation without context or consequences encourages such shouting matches
and abusive comments.

There's a reason a one-on-one discussion is much likelier to at least be
resolved in amicable disagreement and a greater understanding of perspectives,
versus online "discussion" is often about vast hordes of people participating
in one single "conversation" one comment at a time, while also trying to get
upvotes.

I think it's quite possible to alleviate this, but requires getting over the
simplistic per-comment upvote/everyone can comment on every thread model.

~~~
dwaltrip
The primary reason for the immense difficulty is that casual political
discussions are almost entirely wild speculation and conjecture. The topics
are too vast and complex. Most people don't have the tools and understanding
needed to have deep insights or meaningfully predict the actual impacts of
different approaches. Throw in the emotional and tribal components, and it's
not surprising that politics is a never-ceasing shitstorm.

This isn't true for every issue. Some things are relatively simple, like gay
marriage for example. But the more obvious issues tend to get settled
eventually, even if takes a few decades or centuries :)

It amazes me that I rarely see this discussed. Of course, I also fall in this
bucket.

------
johngalt
You know how you have that hacker meetup, or small conference that starts off
as all meaty tech topics? How great that feels to be able to
learn/teach/demonstrate advanced topics knowing that everyone is on the same
page. Then gradually money/business interests get involved to the point that
the fundamental flavor of the group changes, and the first ones to leave are
the most interesting. Five years later it's just a bunch of business/sales
guys in suits giving power point presentations to each other. Of course no one
would say that money, or business interests aren't important, but something
has been lost here that is difficult to rebuild.

It's true that we should all consider the ethical ramifications of what we do,
but opening the floodgates on politics _will_ have the cost of reducing the
utility of HN. The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the
least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the
day.

I miss Erlang day.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145)

~~~
matt4077
After the Second World War, the part of the city the Technical University of
Berlin was in came under British administration.

They quickly passed a decree mandating classes in philosophy, politics,
languages, and other social sciences to be required for every
student–engineers, physicist, chemists etc.

The idea was that never again should a generation grow up with the power of
scientific knowledge but none of the tools to judge the ethics of using that
power.

Meaning: there are times where enjoying purely the wonders of technology is a
luxury you can't afford. For HN, it doesn't mean a need to debate the Paris
accords. But this community has quite a few people sitting at the levers of
power, and where technology and politics/policy intersect, it can make a
meaningful difference for people to know that the group of peers whose
judgement they may value would, for example, applaud them for walking off the
job instead of handing over the iPhone encryption keys.

~~~
jimbokun
But I doubt they mixed politics lectures into the physics course.

Of course politics is important. Doesn't mean Hacker News is the best place
for a high quality discussion of politics.

~~~
patcon
HN is emphatically NOT a physics course imho. It's a social space, not a forum
for content from authority.

Maybe the thing we need is a mechanism to "dose" on sharing of political
thought every so often, without allowed it to overwhelm: A day of the week or
a megathread, where we can then engage with our community in political convo
of substance...

~~~
Bartweiss
> we can then engage with our community in political convo of substance

This is damned optimistic. It's not as though politics doesn't show up on HN,
and when it does the results are usually unpleasant and uninformative. I'm not
opposed to politics-on-HN because it's a formal space, I'm opposed because
historically the results have been inflammatory and useless.

I suppose its possible that structured exposure would work better than
'natural' discussions arising from politics-related links, but I"d intuitively
expect the opposite. "Political threads" with no clear prompt are especially
easy to derail, and I'm scared that any major experiment with this would
damage HN.

------
0xcoffee
What makes HN so great is that when a topic is discussed, often someone with
direct participation in the topic is somewhere in the thread, to give an
inside view.

What I miss about mixing HN and politics, is that HN doesn't have politicians
who can pop in and say 'oh hi guys I wrote this bill feel free to ask me some
questions'.

(I'm not saying nobody on HN participates on politics, I remember reading an
interesting post about someone who ran for governor(?), but those posts are
rare).

For example, a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to
interview economists on both sides, people who write some controversial bills,
people who take part in lobbying, and even senators. This approach has really
opened my eyes to the political process and I have heard many well formed
counter arguments which made me reconsider some of my positions.

I cannot say I have ever experienced this on an online forum.

~~~
aaron-lebo
That's a big issue. HN has no special insight on politics so the discussions
turn into the same old canards and groupthink on Reddit or anywhere else.
There's just very little informative or useful about those discussions.

It's pretty often that stuff which is factually wrong but meets emotional
needs gets upvoted without a second thought. Disagreement with the notion the
world is ending or Trump is literally James Harden and is gonna start the
Holocaust (a popular feeling at HN 4 months ago) gets swiftly downvoted
because it doesn't meet how people feel.

Every time one of those groupthinky discussions happens it makes HN less
attractive to informed discussion.

I'm sitting at -12 in a thread from yesterday in which a guy responded "No
offence you don't seem to have much knowledge of post ww2 history" after he
was the one who made a weird historical analogy and I more or less copypastad
part of a wiki article on the issue. I don't really care about being wrong or
losing Internet points, but when stuff like that happens it just convinces me
that even really intelligent people would rather agree with their biases over
actually debating something. No thanks. It's the kind of behavior expected on
r/politics.

~~~
mowenz
I cant find the thread, but last year someone posted something close to 'all
Trump supporters are idiots, I don't know how he got so popular,' and someone
replied, 'I have a top uni degree, successful career and I am voting for
Trump, so start with reassessing your assumptions about Trump supporters if
you want to understand them,' and everyone just downvoted him. Nobody asked
him anything.

For the record I'm not a Trump supporter, but I can see that when it comes to
politics people think emotionally and ideologically, and very few are asking
themselves "have I not made any mistakes?" in the same way we do (everyone
does make mistakes) when we care about being proficient.

I studied economics and had a passion for public policy and realized how
corrupt that all is. There's no moral excuse for anyone to still suffer in
2017--but it persists. People are irrational, greedy, and selfish. Not all,
but enough.

~~~
cableshaft
As a counter-anecdote, about half a year ago a a self-described 'Alt Right
Trump supporter' posted, and I posted a comment asking him about his beliefs,
since I had only heard people hating on 'Alt Right' from my own sources, and
was curious why he believed what the believed. You can see it here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971897)

So not everyone here tries to silence alternate viewpoints, at least.

------
erikb
I love how this article became an example exactly of what's wrong in politics
in general. There is a huge group of people in every political unity, that
doesn't care about general consensus, understanding problems, considering
different points of view. Yet, these people tend to turn on their political
flak cannons from time to time and march into the political landscape like
elephants into a porcelain shop (thinking about a funny picture with Trump
here).

Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by
everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self-
responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single
person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't
even see that it exists.

So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus
finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable
to them, no matter what the results for the group are.

I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the
highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet
they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just
ignore them because they are so many.

~~~
franciscop
I totally agree, but there are two things to note:

\- I think for many the "flag" button is in a grey area between downvote and
an actual flag button. I am pretty sure many people use it as a downvote
button with the original meaning of StackOverflow's downvote, so it might be
_partially_ unintentional and with no ill intention.

\- HN should probably implement a downvote for stories, leaving the flag for
truly abusive behaviour. Then implement their algorithm based on (Up/Downvotes
radius) * (Total votes).

This would probably allow for conversations like this, polarized/controversial
but still valid, to remain in HN.

~~~
smichel17
My observation from other communities with downvote buttons is that they
encourage more groupthink, not less.

With no downvote button, it's at least possible for a subcommunity to get a
thread near the top for a while. Downvotes let the majority suppress these.

~~~
eduren
But what's worse, an actual downvote button, or not being able to stop people
from using flag as one?

------
sbuttgereit
Oh dear. I couldn't disagree more with the assessment of this story's position
on Hacker News.

There is a difference between sticking your head in the sand politically and
having a forum where people with differing political opinions can come
together and discuss ideas in other areas than politics. You can both be
politically active AND participate in a forum that avoids politics. Hacker
News policy and avoidance of most political issues is precisely right in this
regard. I know I come here to listen to stories dealing with computer
technology and expert/practitioner commentary on those stories and business
people engaged in the business of technology, particularly start-ups. At those
times public policy has direct bearing to these subjects, such as patent law
or net neutrality, I do expect to see discussion here.

Some here have been saying this has to do with US/Paris Accords. I agree with
those topics being purged from this forum. I mean, really! How many readers of
Hacker News do you think are on the fence about this subject: probably not
zero, but my money says pretty damn close. I would wager that most here not
only have already formed opinions on the subject, but strongly held opinions
on the subject. If that's the case what possible value is yet another place to
shout how right you are and wrong the other guy is at the top of your lungs
given the number of other venues for such virtue signaling? I doubt you move
the needle in one direction or the other on such terms.

So, what can you possibly achieve by being political in all venues and
discussion forums? I suppose you can further entrench the move to ideological
purity in all endeavors, further degrade any ability to find common ground
with people that don't otherwise agree with you, further degrade the political
discourse, and achieve a flourishing sense of tribalism in a large, complex
society.

Is politics important? Sure it is. But so is time and place.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess jacquesm would like to see a political discussion of the same high
quality many technical topics are discussed here. But it won't work - you
can't shove politics into a quality tech forum and expect quality politics to
come out, simply because political discussions inherently invite low quality.
They're rarely about facts, mostly about status and opinions.

Hence, I agree HN should keep limiting political discussions.

~~~
CM30
That too. There's no necessary connection between 'good at programming' and
'understands politics well'. Or being good at anything else a forum covers and
knowing much about the politic world and current situation within.

I mean, you wouldn't necessarily expect a site populated by mathematicians
interested in discussing what's going on in their field to give you a good
political debate. Why would you expect it on Hacker News?

~~~
state_less
1\. The author is saying, the outcome of an election dominate our lives in a
negative way more than our positive contributions via technology. In fact,
technology can and does in some cases increase the chances that people have a
bad day (eg. tyrants crushing dissent via tracking).

2\. If we are serious about improving the world, we can't ignore these
significant downsides/risks in the world that occur along the political/power
dimension.

3\. You can do this a positive way. I like how Elon's tech has a (not so)
subtle political/power dimension. For example, he does not believe that power
should be concentrated in the few hand that figure out AI first, but rather
diffused into the many (via OpenAI). Stallman did some impactful political
hacking in the (corporate) software world via GPL.

4\. I think chatting about this can be helpful if only to remind us of what
some of our elders have contributed in the past. Maybe we can alter the power
dimensions to hack our way into a more free, humane and well-off future.

~~~
TeMPOraL
AD 1. I suppose it depends. From my POV, the outcome of any election that
happened during my lifetime in my country had close to zero impact on my life.
But maybe I'm just fortunate. Or maybe the talking heads change, but the
general direction stays mostly the same way anyway. Honestly not sure about
that.

AD 2. People here are not ignoring them. The issue is about the difference
between knowing about important changes, downsides and risks, vs. discussing
every trivia of political sphere. A lot of the things said out loud don't mean
anything, but they still invite outrage and flamewars.

AD 3. This is my personal outlook. Technology is more powerful than politics
because it can unilaterally shift the playing field. If you talk Elon Musk,
skip the OpenAI. Think Tesla, and how it basically forced the hand of all the
other carmakers. It fought hard to make EVs a viable product, very much
_against_ the market.

AD 4. See my comment to 2.

~~~
state_less
> AD 1. I suppose it depends. From my POV, the outcome of any election that
> happened during my lifetime in my country had close to zero impact on my
> life.

From a tech perspective, the dismantling of net neutrality came pretty fast
after this last election. More generally, If you're gay or smoke pot, then
you've felt the foot lifted off your face recently. Also, if you're in the
insurance market, you have some protections (for now) against preexisting
conditions. These last few aren't tech specific, but I just wanted to
illustrate important change as the result of an election.

> AD 2. People here are not ignoring them.

That's good because I believe we should have some non-zero amount of political
consideration/discourse. Not too much, but some.

> AD 3. This is my personal outlook. Technology is more powerful than
> politics...

I tend to agree. In 1. there should be a 'can' in the sentence, because
politics CAN ruin your day if you don't respect it. If we took a blase
approach to seatbelts, it might work out fine for a while, but that doesn't
mean it's something to be done. I believe casual conversations about politics
early on can prevent a shouting match later.

Tech is wonderful, but I believe we should guide it towards broadly empowering
uses if we are to meet the goal of improving lives. For example, building
companies like Tesla where there are few imaginable ways that the outcome
could be negative.

------
atemerev
Right. But are you comfortable with the fact that not all hackers will be on
the same political side?

I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra-
libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free
migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who
actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are
many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that,
enabling political discourse?

Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction
of change.

~~~
franciscop
On the other side I do like discussing _topics_ with people with opposite
ideologies. Some of the most interesting discussions I've had started with
something like "Imagine that machines continue automating jobs and in the
future there is only 10-20% of jobs today. What would you do with the rest of
the people?".

Edit: I normally take the opposing side of the person that gives the argument
just to explore the topic in-depth, so probably people from the left thing
that I'm from the right and the reverse as well.

~~~
briandear
The one problem I see with most people discussing things with "the other side"
is that they don't genuinely care, nor would be ever swayed by what the other
person says. It's just a game of "gotcha" most of the time and thus
unproductive.

Some people are so anti-Republican or anti-Democrat that you might as well be
trying to convince a Jihadi to eat bacon or a Catholic to abort a pregnancy or
a Baptist to star in gay porn -- or a Mormon to play blackjack -- or an
Atheist to become a Buddhist monk. Online forums (and newspaper comment
sections) have created such a political balkanization as to make participating
nothing more than sadomasochistic entertainment.

I used to care about those sorts of discussions with the "other side," but
I've found that the level of discourse has devolved into to some variation of
"Trump wants to send people to the gas chambers and destroy the planet" or
"Hillary hires hitmen and Bill took a payoff from the Russians." Or, often
it's "America is horrible and should be boycotted" \-- or some other
hyperbolic rant based on an anecdotal news item about a brown person at an
airport.

I've got no use for it. I vote, encourage my like minded friends to vote and
that's about it. Occasionally, I'll get sucked into a political discussion on
Hacker News, but pretty much instantly regret it. I'm ok with the "crowd"
disagreeing with my politics -- but I definitely don't relish getting into
intense political debates with people here that I'd probably like to call my
friends in real life.

Maybe it's my age (I just turned 40,) but I feel like engaging with deep
economics and political discussions with those under 25 to be bordering on
pointless. There are exceptions obviously, but when a 19 year old college
sophomore wants to tell me about business unit economics, tax policy or
building permits -- I'm pretty closed minded simply because they're generally
citing other people's ideas rather than ideas based on actual experience or
original thought grounded in experience. But that's ok. Views change as we
begin to see the world for what it is rather than as what we want it to be.
Everyone has the right to be wrong -- even me, as rare as that is. ;)

I'll leave you with a quote that is attributed to many people but this version
came from Anselme Batbie, a 19th century French politician..

Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de
son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la
rectitude de son esprit.

~~~
franciscop
That is exactly why I only have these kind of discussions face to face and
with people I trust. More than trust, maybe I'd say I'm comfortable with.
Anonymity is great for some things but not for having a conversation about
politics.

And my reason to talk about these topics is to learn and understand them
better! Many times the other person might not have a formed opinion (so we
both "learn" or at least share what we know), the person knows about the topic
(I learn) or that person has a one-sided view of the topic and just wants to
play politics (run!). Always with a super-skeptic point of view of course, so
my learning is NOT what they are explaining/teaching but still related to it.
And after talking about it we can accept we have different points of view and
still being friends.

I don't feel identified in your extreme examples so I'll put one of my own.
I'm a strong atheist but I'm probably quite knowledgeable about several
religions after years reading. First (when I was a teenager) I was kind of
what you describe, trying to find flaws and argue about it. Then I started to
ask myself, "wait why so many people believe?" which also led into being
interested in psychology.

Now I have a quite decent picture about Japanese and east Asian cultures and
religions and Spanish and Western ones. This allows me to understand why
there's basically no vegans in Asia, why they overwork so much, family and
relationships, etc. In turn this allows me to have more meaningful
conversations and keep broadening what I know. The opposite would be those
people who go to Japan and stick their chopstick in their meat (;

------
Overtonwindow
I am a lobbyist and I work in Washington, so I'm surrounded by politics every
day. I think what makes HN great is that it avoids politics, for the most
part, and true intellectual stories and debate is able to take place. Politics
is extremely polarized, and permeates every aspect of our society to the point
of extreme. I prefer an HN sans politics, without incendiary articles and
commentary, because I learn a lot more about the world and society that way.

~~~
drvdevd
One of the more interesting lines of political inquiry that I think has arisen
lately _outside_ of HN, is the question of the actual true affect "hacking"
(and I don't just mean in the Security sense -- I mean in the Hacker News
"Comp Sci" sense as well) actually had on recent elections around the world.
In what way, _technically speaking_ and regardless of your personal political
affiliations or beliefs, could US and other electoral processes (and let's
just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical
means? Maybe there are some good links to technical resources that others
could direct me to?

I think the rest of the world desperately needs the Hacker News viewpoint on
this, in detailed, non-partisan technical manner. I believe there is some
deeper, non-polarized, apolitical (think, "highest bidder") aspect to what is
actually happening right now around the world.

~~~
eduren
Well in the interest of discussing that, I do have some thoughts:

>could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in
general) have been directly affected by technical means

One could claim that an intrinsic variable in democracy is the "voice" of any
one citizen. For lots of years that has stayed stable. If a politically minded
individual wanted to affect change, they could only "shout" so loudly.

They could spend day and night lobbying, petitioning, speaking, getting
elected, but all that effort is only a constant multiplier. Technology in
politics, just like in other areas, can move the needle orders of magnitude
more effectively. When any one person or organization can use technology to
add voices (apps, hacks, robots, etc), it can exacerbate issues and cause
secondary effects that weren't present when 1 person = 1 voice.

~~~
Overtonwindow
That's a very astute point and speaks to the concept of grassroots advocacy
(my specialty) and multiplying one voice into many on an issue. A problem
arises, however, in that increasing voice through technology for political
means is in a constant battle with government systems designed to minimize
that voice. Like spammers versus spam filters.

For example: When I worked in a congressional office back in 2005 we used a
system called IQ to log, process, and respond to all of our mail. Emails that
came in that were the same were reduced to a single message. We never saw the
4,000 individual emails, only one with a counter. The system then would parse
that out and show us how many were actually in our congressional district.
Often it was between 1 and 2 percent. Thus we had the option to ignore that
issue because it was only 1-2% of those who "mattered".

Newer systems do this so much better, and really block out those apps and the
technology. The spam filters are incredible. So now the tactic is to go hyper
local, recruit local, and use a lobbyist to leverage those local numbers. "Hi
I'm a lobbyist, and on behalf of 300 of your constituents and eleven companies
in your district, I'm here to talk about something important...."

------
humanrebar
The irony in this entire thread is that sufficiently broad technical
leadership is indistinguishable from organizational politics. It's all about
talking stakeholders into doing "the right thing".

I would _love_ to just be able to solve Big Problems by hacking on them, but
the more experience I get, the more I find that the biggest roadblocks involve
changing minds, not changing code.

~~~
kaiku
Is organizational politics inevitable once you reach a certain size? Any ideas
or lessons in avoiding politics in favor of solving problems – short of a mind
meld?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The less people are there in a group and the less formal the area, the less
organizational politics. The more difficult the problem, the more people you
need to tackle it. Problems are made simpler by better tools (and smarter
people).

Idea: make more tools reducing complex problems to something tractable by
small groups of people. Couple that with freedom of association and let people
self-organize.

------
franciscop
TL;DR: I think the appropriate thing to do is talking about _ETHICS_ here as
that's universal and some times it will involve politics, but not just
politics for the sake of it.

From an opposite point of view to this article, politics vary greatly around
the world and I'm guessing that by _politics_ the article mainly refers to USA
politics. For instance I ignore my country's politics talk since it's too old
fashion and USA politics talk since it feels quite pointless arguing/bashing
for the sake of it most of the times. I do enjoy a meaningful politics
discussion from time to time, normally in person and with someone I trust
already.

While I do agree on the big picture--USA is one of the most influential
countries, politics there affect all the world--this article seems to be
setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care
whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter
(metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became
quite unbearable at points TBH.

So I would say that the things we should continue doing is talking about
_ethics_ (especially when it is related with hacker ethics). My short list of
rules for HN topics are (the more the better):

\- It is about hackers/startup/programmers/IT/privacy/etc.

\- It is interesting for a global audience.

\- It is something new or happening right now.

\- It is noteworthy or at least interesting/geek.

~~~
erikb
Your comment is political. It adds a point of view to the discussion about
politics in HN. It also tries to achieve something (talking about ETHICS).
This is politics. No need to talk how US government politics is different from
Russian government politics. We can just talk about our politics here.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If you take such a broad definition of "politics", then the word becomes
meaningless, since everything is "politics".

'jacquesm wrote about politics as in what politicians in the governments do.
This is a particular thing, and I personally believe it's rarely useful to
discuss it on HN.

~~~
erikb
No, eating a cake is not politics. Buying a cake may be though.

How would you call this thing that is there when multiple people interact with
each other?

PS: This interpretation of the word "politics" isn't mine. I try to bring you
closer to what the author is talking about.

------
qudat
From my point of view, discussing politics is a waste of time. We don't make
progress by discussing the daily musings of the people who appear to wield
power in the world.

I'm more interested in the technology that will eventually render their power
useless: counter economics.

For me the goal isn't to find the right people at the right time to seat the
power of nation-states, but to make it impossible for them to wield any
meaningful power at all.

I am deeply interested in politics, governance, and the way humans interact at
scale, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in what bills get passed, who gets
elected, or what Trump said in a tweet. While these small blips in history do
have an impact, I think technologies such as bitcoin, uber, etc., have a much
bigger impact on the world because they usurp political power.

------
justin_vanw
Lets all waste time virtue-signalling about things we have no experience or
expertise in, that are dominated by charismatic dummies we can barely
communicate with, and that we'll have no measurable impact on!

Or we can keep doing what we can do well and has actually, fundamentally
changed the world for the better and made us rich.

~~~
4c2383f5c88e911
Well, if you negate what "politics" mean and conflate it with the current
politicians star-system, your reasoning holds.

Although I can raise doubts whether it has made the world better, it certainly
has made many people rich, at the expense of others. What you said is very
political, ironically.

~~~
justin_vanw
Very solid points, totally agree.

~~~
4c2383f5c88e911
That being said, I'm not sure about how discussing politics on HN would go.
While I think it's essential to assess the political implications of any
project, especially in CS where things go global real fast, it will be
difficult (although interesting) to have meaningful interactions between
people of wildly different viewpoints and axioms when decrypting reality.

------
eternal_intern
I'm not sure if I agree with the author. Hackers do care about political
issues. My question is whether political discussions over short form text do
more harm than good to a community. To me, HN detoxing politics seems more
like the librarian enforcing a rule of silence rather than encouraging
ostriching. And polarizing topics like politics, especially over short form
text, to me, seems like it would destroy that ideal of HN.

That being said, the Internet sure could use a proper forum for political
discussions.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Why is the post flaggeg, then?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because enough HN users clicked the "flag" link, most likely.

------
wand3r
I don't think one must devote themselves to politics. However, this thoughtful
essay by regular contributor here should be UNFLAGGED. It is piercing, but
measured and in line with the ideals here on this site AND the reasonable
discussion.

If dang or another moderator could weigh in; this is not how I believed flags
were meant to be used. We defend free speech here unless we have a strong
reason.

~~~
DanBC
It's tedious bullshit that makes a bunch of mistakes - some of which have
already debunked.

In particular it mostakes the reason for the detox. This was only ever about
stopping tedious pathological arseholes making the same boring hyperbolic
bullshit flamebait arguments that a not particulary bright 16 year old would
make.

HN thinks of itself as smart but the political discussion here is normally
embarrassingly weak.

~~~
wand3r
> mostakes

> Not particularly bright 16 y/o

I found his write up of the custom Lego sorter hardware design he made to be
innovative. With a treadmill and some spare parts he made a classifier and
trained a neural net.

Either way; I think your comment is rude. If you don't like his piece-- which
again I am not sure I agree with either; use <hide> not flag.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The second thing you quote ("not particularly bright 16 y/o") isn't about the
piece, but about the type of content that happens and what HN political detox
was meant to limit.

------
Lio
<personalOpinion> The problem with political or religious discussion is that
much of it is irrationally about 'tribes' and self image.

Some positions cannot be easily influenced with mere 'facts' because you're
arguing against people's feelings and cognitive dissonance is very powerful.

Bringing politics up on Hacker News will rarely positively influence anyone's
opinion but will almost always be divisive and distracting. </personalOpinion>

~~~
humanrebar
Sometimes the goal isn't to "convert" people to your political or religious
views. There is immense utility in reinforcing that there are intelligent and
congenial people (who deserve the benefit of the doubt) that disagree with you
on important issues.

I think pushing "controversial" discussions to the edges of polite society has
been shown to make us more culturally ignorant.

------
maaaats
I'm sad the posts about USA withdrawing from the Paris deal all got purged fro
the front page yesterday. Yes, some political issues aren't relevant on HN,
but this I think was.

Edit: Kinda ironic that this post is now having the title [FLAGGED] and being
dropped from the fp as well. Edit2: Still flagged but back up, interesting

~~~
lloydjatkinson
No HN only allow political ideologies or narratives they agree with. The
moderator team do not hide that they are SJW's.

As another example, currently HN's narrative of choice is how Uber is
literally the worst thing since Hitler and you can't go a week without seeing
3 or 4 top-voted links bitching about Uber. Perhaps some people like being
able to conveniently travel from point A to B without caring about what some
whiny keyboard warrior hates about Uber this week.

~~~
insin
What's an SJW?

Not playing dumb, just interested in what it personally means to someone who
applies it to others as a (pejorative?) label.

~~~
TeMPOraL
A Social Justice Warrior, though it's mostly used to refer to people who
weaponize feminist ideology and use it to disturb peace in a community.

I don't know what SJW accusation has to do with Uber here, nor have I observed
any particular SJW inclination within the mods. There's plenty of SJW action
on HN, especially in threads about diversity in IT industry - but I'm yet to
see a HN mod behaving that way.

~~~
nl
I went and checked, and the OP seems to have been offended over this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379)

The OP posted "*he" as a "correction" for a "she" talking about Chelsea
Manning, and seems to have been offended they got downvoted.

Apparently they may not be familiar with the difficulty of assigning gender.
The least politically charged way to seeing this is to look at Olympic sports,
and [https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-
olympian...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-olympians) is
a good overview.

I'd draw particular attention to the case of Ewa Klobukowska who was stripped
of an Olympic Gold medal for "failing a chromosome test" (ie, exactly what the
OP is claiming should be the arbitrator of gender).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez-
Pati%C3%B1o) is another case.

Ewa Klobukowska later had a son, and had her medals returned.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah. It was a surprise to me when I first discovered just how complex
sex/gender is, in purely factual terms. I suppose over time society will have
to develop sub-qualifications, because having just one binary category
(man/woman) doesn't properly work at categorizing various aspects of a human
being, like:

\- grouping by the way someone looks (influenced by hormones)

\- grouping by reproduction capability (can or can not be pregnant)

\- grouping by reproduction _hardware_

\- grouping by which group of partners one finds sexually interesting

\- grouping by various other aspects of biology (chromosomes and all)

Different areas in life really want to categorize by a different set of those
aspects, and bundling it all under one word starts to become problematic. My
programmer intuition tells me we need to become more explicit about which
aspect we mean at any given moment.

~~~
nl
And of course it gets even more complex when you consider how things like
hormonal changes (either natural or unnatural) effect gender.

Also there seem to be other factors which aren't understood yet:

 _The researchers identified a region of the hypothalamus, known as the bed
nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), as being responsible for sexual
behaviour. This area is always larger in men than women. However, in their
study of six MTF GID sufferers, a female‐sized BSTc was present in all
subjects. Additionally, the size of the BSTc was not influenced by taking sex
hormones in adulthood. This implies that these individuals had a powerful
biological force compelling them to be female, rather than just a
psychological conviction._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600127/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600127/)

But.. I guess yelling "SJW" is much easier, or something.

------
tonyedgecombe
I'm interested in politics, I follow it closely and I am a member of a
political party. But I don't want to see it here, I don't think HN is a good
venue for it.

~~~
kelnos
That's a shame, because the things we discuss here have political
consequences, and it's irresponsible to ignore them.

I wouldn't want to see posts strictly about politics on the front page, but I
think discussion of political topics that relate to technology and our
industry is not only interesting, but necessary.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's not irresponsible to keep discussions in their right place, of course
politics will seep in everywhere but if I want to talk about the US pulling
out of the Paris agreement (and I do) then there are better places to do that
than here.

~~~
humanrebar
The problem is "the right place" is always somewhere else.

~~~
gmancruthers
"political discussion" gets 252,000,000 results on Google.

This simply isn't true.

------
mmjaa
One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is we
feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by
computerising everything.

This may or may not be true. In the meantime, computer programmers all over
the world are working on computerising subjects that are traditionally used to
having political power/influence involved. Pulling the humans out and
replacing them with shell scripts, in this scenario, is of course a source of
contention.

Fundamentally, governments and politics are broken. Computers can be used to
fix them. However, this is one of the most controversial areas of
computerisation and - like politics itself, along with governance - a cause of
never-ending social strife.

Its almost like something, "ethical", is missing in the equation.

~~~
wodenokoto
> One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is
> we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by
> computerising everything.

I agree with the first part, but personally disagree with the second part.

Yes, I find politics broken, but I have absolutely no faith in fixing it in
any way. So I hack away on problems I feel like I can solve or at least
improve on. This keeps me sane.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Same here. I don't buy fixing politics with computers - not until we take
politics _entirely away_ from humans and give it to a superpower AI that will
act as a god.

The argument for this belief is this: people keep gaming stuff. No matter how
smart your system is, given enough interest someone will hire someone smarter
to cheat it. Even mathematics won't save you here, because math is too narrow-
scoped. For any theoretically secure system on paper you can find holes in its
messy real-life implementation. See e.g. quantum entanglement used to create
untappable communication channels being defeated by simply tapping at the
classical endpoints.

~~~
soundwave106
Right. There's no incentive to "fix politics" with computers from a business
standpoint. If anything, there is plenty of incentive to _break_ politics from
a business standpoint with computers.

A well known example: Target people with a particular political persuasion,
make them mad or shocked with some bait headline, and get clicks. Basically
the well known phenomenon of "clickbait", which is also implemented non-
politically. As implemented in politics, such might reinforces "echo chambers"
or epistemic closure. But they also made some people a fair bit of cash.

The same goes for what large social networks probably are already doing to
keep everyone happy in a polarized environment: curate people's news feed to
match their "political tribe". EG: the red feed blue feed concept reported on
in the Wall Street Journal ([http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-
feed/](http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/)). Again, same concern:
such may reinforce "echo chambers" or epistemic closure. But the alternative
might be users quitting there social network = less ad dollars. So there is no
incentive to promote balance.

Unfortunately, humans are very tribal creatures. To break away from this
requires active resistance of what is a very human trait. I don't think hardly
any human alive has done this completely.

So even in the "superpower AI god" case, probably another "tribe" would come
along to make another "superpower AI god" with a completely different filter,
and we'd be in the same place.

------
hawski
We're hackers, too busy helping extract wealth from the population as
efficiently as possible.

~~~
samdoidge
You do know wealth can be _created_?

~~~
Super_Jambo
It can but the market is currently showing us this is far less profitable than
collecting rents and Phishing for Phools.

------
spion
There are two different types of politics and we often conflate both. The type
that many people hate is "politics the art of manipulating people".

The second meaning refers to actual policies and their effect on people's
quality of life. I don't think anyone would have trouble discussing that -
that is, if it were somehow magically separated from the manipulation. But
often its not.

If you look at the first meaning, things like "detox week" make a lot of sense
- its about getting rid of the manipulation so that your brain can process
information better again. "Squelching political debate" means stopping
discussion that attempts to manipulate, and so on.

Since the tools used for manipulation are currently better than ever before,
and we don't like manipulation, I suppose the best approach would be to work
on things that expose manipulation and/or defend people from it.

edit: exercise - try to replace the word "politics" with "manipulation" in the
article and re-read it. The point that we shouldn't burry our head in the sand
still stands, but the reasons why that happens become much clearer.

~~~
marvin
Politics, from my Norwegian social studies textbook, is defined as "the
subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society". Nothing to do
with manipulation there. The same definition can be used for office politics.

Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the
surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't
carry them.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The same definition can be used for office politics._

> _Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull
> the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn
> 't carry them._

... which is pretty much the _exact meaning_ of the term "office politics".
You don't talk about "office politics" when people get rewarded appropriately
for their contribution to the company. You only talk about it in the context
of e.g. sucking up to managers, backstabbing cow-orkers, taking credit for
something you didn't do, etc.

As for the government-type politics, "the subject of distributing the burdens
and surpluses of society" is as good a definition as "the subject of
distributing land and wealth of a society" is a good definition of war. It's
_technically_ true, yet totally misses the important and problematic aspects
of it.

Definitions are a way to draw a broad-stroked border in thingspace, so that
you know the general area in which the meaning of a word lies. Nothing more.

------
lgleason
\--A bit of a Rant---

I would argue that politics have infiltrated tech too much already.

Don't believe me, try being a open, vocal Trump supporter or conservative at a
major tech company in Silicon valley. You will be labeled a hateful, racist
(fill in your favorite derogatory term) based on your political beliefs
irregardless of your actual actions both at work or even in your personal
life. Most people who are conservative are afraid to talk about their
political beliefs due to the very real threat of losing their job.

Look at Larry Garfield with Drupal. In the course of things stuff went as far
as people in the Drupal association actively trying to ban conservatives among
other things.

The ruby community is just as bad. Rails Girls, Rails Bridge and later on
tech404.io banned a woman because she was conservative
[https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-
editor-172e93ecc...](https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the-
editor-172e93eccbb1). Then there was Opalgate where a community diversity
leader tried to get a key contributor banned over his personal conservative
beliefs.

At this years Lambdaconf a black, first time speaker and military veteran, who
grew up dirt poor in the projects, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps was
blasted by a group of people because in his personal life he believes in the
red pill, specifically, in his own words seeking the truth, not being anti-
woman.

As a moderate I really don't need to be concerned about someone's personal
beliefs work with people or to even have a friendship with them. People are
messy imperfect beings and there are many shades of grey with people and
beliefs even when they hold views that I'm against. The only time that becomes
an issue is if someone acts on it. IE: they steal from the company or murder
someone etc. but that is not what I am talking about here. In all of the cases
I mentioned here, these people did not act inappropriately in a professional
setting. They didn't harass people, try to convince people about their
personal beliefs, make sexist statements etc..

People who dedicate their lives to parsing out complex political/moral issues
have a tough time doing it. If I go to a tech event I'm there to talk about
tech not a political conference. The irony is that if people on all sides of
the political issues have a place where they came come together and see
someone as a human it also may be more effective than the division that the
politicization of tech has been creating. Could that open us up to some bad,
maybe, but politics being combined with tech are causing a lot of damage to
the industry and people already. More importantly its not working. \---Rant
over--

------
varjag
We can argue all we want, but it is clear that in 2016, blocking one Twitter
account could alter the course of history.

~~~
staticelf
Yes or it could have the opposite effect. What I think is that a lot of people
feel hated upon from the rest of the society.

In my country there is a political party that has been excluded from a lot of
public things, other politicians telling them they are fascists, racists and
just any kind of slur basically. They were even excluded from a party where
Saudi Arabia was invited. Just think about that.

Now, they are the second largest party in the country and well on their way of
being the largest. They had everything to gain being the underdogs and their
opponents has been their best ad for gaining trust and votes.

~~~
varjag
Fascists are excluded from public discourse in many societies, and I'm not
positive it makes the situation worse in any respect. People still supporting
them no matter what are typically like-minded bigots rather than some sort of
libertarians sticking up to authority.

------
cyphunk
Let's start with the techno-essentialism that many in the tech world depend on
for their mental well being: Yes developers impact the world, no they do not
impact them as much as TV (still), comedians and most other fields of science.
Dumping movies, 0days, user databases online, developing some new prediction
market with whatever cryptocurrency doesn't change that. Still, I completely
agree one should be aware of the ethical implications in the code they write.

Relevant quotes from article:

> and that hackers, more than any other profession, create the tools and the
> means with which vast changes in the political landscape are effected.

> The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all
> kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability
> to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers,
> far longer than you’d normally be able to achieve

> Between ‘Wikileaks’ and ‘Cambridge Analytica’ it should be more than clear
> by now

stop this. Go back and look over CA's marketing material. They brag about
taking Ted Cruz from a field of 20+ into 3. Not exactly a winning pony. And
I'm sure there were plenty of other analytic companies that would have used it
to their marketing benifit if their pony got further instead. The "we predict
you better than your mother with just 300 likes" is a line people already
wanted to believe. Someone just made a good story for us to bite into it.

Still, I do agree "everything has a political dimension"

~~~
iamcurious
We are, right now, influencing each other through a filter. A filter designed
by Paul Graham and friends with some values in mind. For instance, there is no
picture of each other, no reference to sex, nor race. That prevents many
prejudices from being activated. That is impact.

If actions speak louder than words, infrastructure, that which dictates which
actions are possible at all, speaks much louder. Developers are building new
infrastructure all the time, for every action and human need. Right now I can
buy groceries online, get a remote job, and find a date on an app. That is
techno-essentialism.

The future belongs to the hacker in much the same way that medieval Europe
belonged to the knight and the bishop. The power of the computer is obvious to
anyone that isn't living under a rock, naturally, this brings many fakers, if
you focus on them it all seems like a bubble, because you _are_ focusing on
the bubble. Treat yourself better and focus on what pervades. The Times They
Are A-Changin'.

------
forgottenpass
Does it ever occur to people who want to introduce explicitly political
conversation to a project, that a "lets focus on the task at hand" policy
might be for their own good? That bringing the political dimension in might
chase away contributors with whom their interests were temporarily aligned?

I can understand bringing up politics when the topic is something like
deliberately using psychological manipulation against their users. Because if
you think it's morally wrong, your interests were never even slightly aligned,
and the goal is to be off-putting. Hopefully in a way that puts people off of
what they're building, rather than putting them off of venues where you can
converse with them.

But using that case as rhetorical cover for bikeshedding a minor slight that
occurred in the context of an otherwise noncontroversial piece of software?
That is why people hate "politics."

(I wish I had the link to where I saw this argument presented first, but I'll
guess my poorly rephrased version will have to do.)

------
mnarayan01
Political discussion tends to be of a fundamentally different type vis-à-vis
technical discussion. Discussion mechanics like voting and flagging
(particularly apropos here) which work well for technical discussions are
often...lacking...when it comes to political ones. This is _literally what
much of the article is complaining about_.

If someone is pounding in nails with a screwdriver, I might suggest that they
use a hammer instead. That doesn't mean that I think nails are beneath me.

------
yellowapple
"The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all
kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability
to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers, far
longer than you’d normally be able to achieve comes with some obligations."

If this is true, then "some obligations" would almost certainly include a
reluctance to abuse those long levers or alienate a large swath of users.
Power ought to be used responsibly.

Back to reality, though, the reason why hackers and other tech-minded folk are
averse to politics is the exacy reason why they're hackers: because politics
is about as far away from the hacker ethic as possible. It'd be like asking a
racecar driver to take up an interest in gardening; yeah, some NASCAR drivers
can probably grow one hell of a vegetable patch, but it ain't exactly
something one could or should expect them to do.

Hackers would rather focus on being immune to politics. It should be no
surprise, then, that they tend gravitate toward things like cryptocurrencies
and other technologies resistant to governmental control (or providing a means
for such resistance).

------
guscost
Are you kidding me? It's not that I'm not political, but this isn't a place
for doing anything with politics, it's for hacking and talking about that. Go
away with this crap.

Politics is OK to get into but I skip over any comments that directly provoke
flame wars. I don't flag articles but I sure did flag this. And I deleted a
personal insult from that first part. What are you thinking??

------
thedevil
It's not that politics don't matter, it's that political discussions are not
just useless - they're harmful.

Political discussions almost always become emotional, rather than
intellectual, discussions. They work on the wrong part of the brain.

Virtually everyone takes absurd positions and then viciously attacks their
fellow human beings who take a different absurd position.

------
scandox
I never saw an article that was both flagged and still on the
homepage...Didn't know that could happen. Badge of honour really.

~~~
erikb
I would guess moderator influence here. And it's reasonable to keep it on the
front page, since it doesn't contain anything flag-worthy.

------
randallsquared
Explicitly talking about politics is exactly what everyone who doesn't have
any access to long levers is doing. Using those levers to accomplish something
doesn't necessarily look like "doing politics". It might instead look like
writing the bitcoin whitepaper, or running some tor exit nodes, or just
improving wikipedia.

------
masondixon
Politics divides us. The more we can do together whilst holding opposing world
views the better.

If the left didn't excommunicate anyone they disagree with maybe there would
be more a chance to have reasoned political discussions, but so far, anywhere
online where there is a left-wing community, all opposing viewpoints are
silenced. See Reddit, etc.

------
luord
I'm yet to see a political _discussion_ among people not dedicated to that or
with no in-depth knowledge that actually accomplished[1] something. Several
(hundreds) of posts/comments asserting opinions before dying out, or turning
into a flamewar of insults, doesn't do much to change the world, as far as I
see anyway.

With that in mind, I don't see the point of promoting even more (it's not as
if there isn't plenty of it already) political talk in HN.

Is it important to be aware of political ramifications? Maybe, and that's why
I _personally_ follow several general news publications in my RSS feeds and
not only tech blogs. Is it important to _discuss_ it? Following what I said
above, not, in my opinion.

[1]: Even among knowledgeable persons, most of the accomplishment is swaying
people from one side to the other and that can be good or bad.

------
ivanhoe
In many people's view just being broadly aware of political situation around
you is not enough anymore, they seem to believe that you need to have a strong
emotions about (certain) political subjects, you need to take actions... even
though for the most of time they don't do anything constructive about it
either, except for venting off the frustrations on twitter or with friends
over a beer. Which is perfectly OK, I do it all the time, but you need to be
aware that some people just don't get that much emotionally involved in
politics as you do. And that it's perfectly OK, because not taking active part
in politics is also a form of politics. IMHO one should be free to choose his
role in the society, without being forced into one or the other by peer
pressure.

------
euske
I tend to think of politics as resource arbitration. Say, you have limited
resources (as we all do) and there are too many contenders who want to settle
this without resorting to any sort of violence, then you need pretty much
politics.

Technically, a kernel scheduling algorithm or packet forwarding algorithm are
politics too (hence they're called "policy"). The problem is that the real
world is so messy and complex and has too many variables unlike CS stuff that
we can hardly reach any sensible solution in a timely way. In theory we can
tackle on politics in a somewhat objective manner but it's typically waay
harder than any software project.

~~~
pdfernhout
See the book: "Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making" by
Deborah Stone for an exploration of this issue of resource arbitration and
politics.

One simple example she uses is how do you divide up birthday cake? Equal
pieces? What if come people arrive late to the party after you start cutting
the cake and giving out pieces? What if some people are full but others have
not had dinner yet? What if some people don't like the pieces with chocolate
icing?

While we can be "objective" within a set of established priorities, we can't
be objective about designing a set of priorities. Albert Einstein wrote on
this in "Science and Religion" about how science can tell you about what is
and how it is all connected, but it can't tell you what should be.

One other point Stone she makes is that when people are on the outside of an
organization they want transparency of the decision making process -- while
then the same exact people move to the inside of an organization they suddenly
have many reasons why they want decision should be opaque. "Yes, Minister" has
a great comedy episode on that called "Open Government".

------
cpt1138
The problem with politics and a great many other things is that talking about
it is just talk. The vast majority of these problems are so outside the scope
of any one's frame of reference and that creates two problems. Even the most
educated of all people are only able to say "it's complicated" and most people
only have opinions. It's glib to say that it will just turn into FB with
everyone spouting their own un-educated opinions. But the reality is that
unless you have actionable YES/NO type ideas, no one in the tech industry (or
any other group) cares much about opinions other than their own.

------
appleflaxen
I think this title would be so much better without the ironic voice (or
whatever the english term should be for saying one thing but meaning another).

Something like "All technologists should care about politics" is so much more
meaningful.

~~~
jokermatt999
"Sarcastic" would probably be the best fit. Good point also.

------
thinkingemote
two things, firstly don't confuse hackernews with hackers as a group.

secondly and the most important is that politics posts here usually devolve
into flame wars, and people don't like that.

Finally this submission has already been flagged, I notice.

------
braft
There are two claims here that should be considered separately.

1\. Hackers are reluctant to acknowledge that their work has political
ramifications. I believe this is true, and a problem.

2\. Politics should be discussed more on HN. This is what most in the comments
are disagreeing with, and I think with good reason. I like that HN avoids
politics for the most part, but I'm also very glad to see someone point out
that too many intelligent and technologically-inclined people insulate
themselves from taking questions of values seriously.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The topics of impact of tech on society, and of ethics in technology, are
something that I too would like to see discussed more. Separated from politics
as much as possible, per your point 2.

------
jokoon
Even the Snowden leaks seemed not so important to me. Unless there is good
oversight of who views what as long as there is due process, I don't see any
reason to view those things as politically charged.

Honestly I prefer having a nihilist point of view about politics in general,
having a minimum amount of trust towards separation of power, always weighing
the pro and cons, trying to guess what public opinion wants. It's much more
freeing to see voters as children expecting things.

Geopolitics are much more interesting honestly.

------
notzorbo3
The tools we create can be used for both good and evil. It's not my place to
decide who can and can't use the tools I create and what they can use it for.
Frankly, I simply don't care _at all_ about any kind of politics, which is why
I got into programming in the first place.

And if the author doesn't like that, than that's just too bad for them.

~~~
rbanffy
> It's not my place to decide

You are still responsible though.

"It's not my place to decide who uses the torture devices I design. My job is
only to make them as painful as possible."

~~~
Sean1708
I make kitchen knives. People use kitchen knives to kill each other. Am I now
responsible for these deaths?

~~~
kelnos
You're not responsible, perhaps, but you should think about it. Choosing an
extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous (hooray cherry-
picking); there are plenty of things you could build that have positive,
innocuous uses but also could be used for bad in a much less trivial way than
a simple kitchen knife... and for some of those things, one might suggest that
the builder _is_ responsible.

~~~
Sean1708
_> Choosing an extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous_

I completely disagree, I think most of the things that we build as developers
_are_ as innocuous as kitchen knives.

If you're building (for example) pen-testing software then I completely agree
that you should be thinking about how this software might be used against
others. But if you're building some software which helps run processes across
multiple nodes then I don't think it's up to the developer to police how this
software is used (What would they even do about it? You can't not write
software like this just because it could be used for nefarious purposes.).

And I genuinely believe that 99% of us are writing software which is much more
like the latter than the former.

~~~
rbanffy
A bit late for this thread, but, still,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac)

------
c-smile
Technology development does directly affect trajectory of where the humanity
go as the whole. Yes.

But I think that HN shall be the place where we can discuss how AI moves us
from post-industrial to post-human world for example rather than particular
fluctuations of the trajectory (a.k.a. realpolitik).

------
overgard
I'm pretty sure a lot of my favorite blogs on political subjects I discovered
from reading hacker news, so im a bit skeptical of the premise. What I see get
(mostly) rejected here is outright political activism -- but it doesn't seem
like the place for that.

------
snth
Hacker News is a high quality forum _because_ it disallows political
discussion.

Maybe someone could build a forum that enforces civil discussion on political
issues, either with automated or manual moderation, but Hacker News'
moderation isn't nearly strict enough.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political
> discussion.

Hacker News does not disallow, and but for a brief experiment never has
disallowed, political discussion. This non-existent ban does not, therefore,
explain HN's quality.

~~~
snth
By "disallow", I'm talking about the guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics ...

and most people's willingness to support these guidelines with downvotes.

------
happy-go-lucky
> too busy to improve the world

I would say I'm just busy trying to improve the world.

------
retox
Politics is driving people away from the Google homepage.

------
elorant
Hackers don't bother with politics because they understand that it's the
people who change the world and not the politicians. Politicians' job is to
get re-elected, everything else is irrelevant.

~~~
ohashi
Politicians are people, they definitely are changing the world and affecting
people's lives. If you care about your society, the world in general, then it
is relevant.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think the question isn't whether it's relevant, but whether it's an
_efficient_ way of doing things.

~~~
kelnos
Efficient or not, politics does change the world (both for the better and
worse), so it'd be foolish not to at least pay attention.

~~~
TeMPOraL
True. The problem is - most of the political public sphere is just noise. To
the point that e.g. following regular media sources is just a waste of time
(and risks infecting the brain with lies).

Being efficiently engaged in local or global politics has little to do with
discussing e.g. the latest media blunder of a politician, or whatever promise
they made that probably won't happen anyway.

------
5thaccount
Coverage of political machinations is pointless, but information on political
outcomes is invaluable - there is a massive difference. Chomsky has said the
only paper that tells the truth is the Financial Times, in part because you
don't make money with lies, whereas most news is designed to push an agenda
and obfuscate anything real.

Understanding political outcomes is very different to listening to political
debate/punditry/noise, and learning, for example, that certain subsidies are
ending is not the same as reading political arguments on the environment, and
they shouldn't be confused.

Knowing that Trump is president means one can predict certain things - the
Paris accord ending - but not others, for example budgets are far less
fungible than people think, and a lot of the budget of any nation is kinda
locked in, so a lot of the noise on funding cuts and changes is unlikely to
come to fruition. If you read a lot online/watch a lot, how do you know which
of the multitude of BS will come to fruition?

I reckon if more news focussed on "this is the debate, these are the likely
outcomes, these industries would be affected in these ways", then reading more
would be invaluable. OTOH, Covfefe coverage? I'll Pass.

------
kradem
You guys, what would be the crucial ingredient in "socdem" vs. "libdem" diff
that makes you so angry when someone compares it to "angular" vs. "react"
diff?

------
wordupmaking
You're downvoted _because_ you're exactly right. People on here generally
can't handle inconvenient truths that include themselves. Never trust a person
who can't rend their garments.

> This generation

No. Resoundingly NO! These smug clowns can't speak for anything and anyone.
They're not even _a_ generation, just farts in the wind. Even just 1% of the
people paying attention outweigh them easily, and at any rate, _the world
belongs to those who genuinely care about it_. Period, anyone who disagrees
can come fight me. Think less "no child left behind" and more "Noah's Ark";
they had their chance, they made their choice, let's not be held hostage by
them. At the very least, let them queue after those who are not ungrateful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Period, anyone who disagrees can come fight me._

Can I flag you? Yes? Oh, there's the link. I just flagged you.

You see, _this_ is why some of us want less politics on HN. Because every
political topic inevitably turns into people doing the thing you're doing here
- assuming that those who have different views than you are "smug clowns",
instead of trying to figure out _why_ their views differ from yours.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
> Can I flag you? Yes? Oh, there's the link. I just flagged you.

And you are holding speeches about tolerance??

How tolerant about different views are you? Or are you just misusing your
power?

So much about the "tolerance of the self assigned tolerance watchers".

~~~
TeMPOraL
HN rules are: full tolerance for differing opinions. No tolerance for low-
quality or uncivil posting.

------
cyphunk
That HN flag's this post but not some VC B.S. about company valuations is
ironic. Can we call a moritorium on posts entirely about finance and money as
well as posts like this one here about politics?

------
chicob
Hackers have nothing to do with politics.

Just as much as whistleblowing and exposing fraud, espionage, or illegal
activities has nothing to do with journalism and transparency. Let alone
politics.

In general, software has nothing to do with anything but software itself. Take
encryption: it has nothing to do with privacy, which has nothing to do with
with surveillance which has nothing to do with politics.

Also - Startups also have nothing to do with the economy; Automation and
design has nothing to do with the industry.

And while we're at it: Science has nothing to do with politics. That's why
politicians ignore climatologists, physicists and biologists.

~~~
tudorw
FeelsBadMan, I got it though ;)

~~~
chicob
It's like conventional currency vs cryptocurrency. If you couple the two,
given enough market size for each, volatility couples as well. No need to go
through the meanders of algorithms or blockchains.

(Coincidently, cryptocurrencies are just another target for some hackers with
deep consequences for any economy that trusts them.)

Some things cannot be ignored, or seen as independent. They are stuck together
since their conception.

