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It’s funny and sad how many people that consider themselves apolitical and above the quarrels of the left and the right are completely oblivious to how they let the political devils pipeline bias straight into their brain.
And how people that consider themselves centrist seem to have a genuine hate against anything actually centrist. Centrism today is anything from market liberalism and rightwards straight into fascism it seems.
Anoþer issue is defining what “political” topics are. Is AI a political topic? It’s certainly an eþical one, and as soon as someone politicizes it (“super intelligence”) it becomes one. Co-opting is also a problem for everyone: you used to be able to like red baseball caps wiþout making a political statement.
Lots of stuff is apolitical until someone makes it political. Omarchy is, I þink, a good example. I’m certain a lot of people liked and like it wiþouy agreeing wiþ DHH’s politics, and now feel conflicted about using it. I know I feel þat way about Framework, and Mullvad, alþough þose are more clear because if you’re giving þem money you’re only one degree from financially supporting people you may not want to.
Edit: to be clear, I’m not contradicting Drew’s position, nor am I implying HN is just talking about tech which has been politicized. I re-read my comment and it could easily be interpreted þat way. I agree wiþ Drew about HN; I was just considering it in context of my sites and projects, to which I’ve been adding “no JS” and “human written” banners - and wondering if I’m making a political or expressing an apolitical opinion about some technologies. I feel as if it’s þe latter.
Years ago, in the early 20-teens, I had posted on HN in protest to some new web property that aimed to tie yet another aspect of life to cell phones. I said something like “I work in software but I still don’t have a cell phone, I don’t like them, I don’t want one, I don’t want yet another aspect of modern life to encourage dependence on some subscription service like a phone.” Which was all true.
This attracted rather more reaction than anything else I posted on there. The reactions fell into a few categories:
- I don’t believe you, liar, why would you post this
- I have no sympathy for you, loser, go buy a phone
- Fuck you
Any illusion I had that the HN people were software-loving geeks like me kind of dissolved after that, and I stopped visiting. I suppose that’s exactly what they wanted.
Doesn’t internet require a subscription service?..
My library has free access, as do any number of local business and location. And I once lived in a building that bundled internet/TV service for every resident.
You would weep at the coat the library pays to provide that service. It certainly isn’t cheap. Free…so long as you ignore your taxes.
My taxes paying for library Internet is a lot better than my taxes paying to bomb Iranian schoolchildren.
Way to miss the point.
I used to read HN and find interesting stuff, but stopped when it became ever more flooded with startups and AI this.
In its place I have the RSS feed from lobsters, which surfaces plenty of interesting articles.
Another article of Drew Devault grasping straws. For example he picks out this quote when trying to diminish Paul Graham:
Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one. I don’t think any reasonable person would deny that. The problem with political correctness was not that it focused on marginalized groups, but the shallow, aggressive way in which it did so. Instead of going out into the world and quietly helping members of marginalized groups, the politically correct focused on getting people in trouble for using the wrong words to talk about them.
I literally don’t see what’s wrong with this quote. Paul Graham is referencing identity politics, virtue signaling, and other behaviors that were definitely common before, and are still fairly common today.
Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one.
Anyone who uses “the woke” to describe people who give a shit about that sort of thing can safely be ignored.
Instead of going out into the world and quietly helping members of marginalized groups, the politically correct focused on getting people in trouble for using the wrong words to talk about them.
Let me translate this bit:
"Instead of ignoring systemic problems and quietly helping those being hurt by the systemic injustices, reasonable people focused on getting racists in trouble because they choose to continue to be shitheads using slurs’
How do you know what he means by “woke”? I read it as “people who virtue signal and don’t actually care”
Let me translate this bit:
your interpretation, not necessarily what he meant
How do you know what he means by “woke”
Because I have a brain with functional memory and basic pattern recognition. The only people who use “woke” like that are using it to cover for what they really want to say. I’ve seen this plenty of times from MANY right wing shitheads, so if he uses their vernacular, he gets painted with the same brush.
I read it as “people who virtue signal and don’t actually care”
Yeah, that’s the exact mentality I’m talking about. Right wingers have used that exact line on me, because they assume all “woke” actions are performative and aren’t based in real beliefs.
I’m not willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when they use the same speaking style as those who want to hurt me and mine. If he meant to say something else, he should have said it without virtue signalling to the right.
Edit: reading Paul’s original article doesn’t really change my original interpretation. @[email protected] summarized my feelings better than I could at the moment:
In context, it is clear that Paul Graham regards any public protest for social justice to be performative and born from a need to feel morally superior to others. “Racism […] is a genuine problem”, but you are only ever allowed to “quietly” help marginalized groups. His examples for the birth of “wokeness” are people starting to report sexual harassment and racist language. Paul is very mad that people told him it’s not ok to call black people “negros” and it shows plainly in his writing.
He does not give one example of what would be a real racist thing that you are allowed to get mad and vocal about. He does not give one example of proper not-“woke” activism. This is the telltale sign of a fascist pretending to be a moderate worried about the “intolerant left”. Social justices exist, but I won’t name a single one. Helping minorities is good, but every time I see it happen it’s bad and I’m going to call it out.
Right wingers have used that exact line on me, because they assume all “woke” actions are performative and aren’t based in real beliefs.
Well Paul Graham is not referring to you, since the rest of his quote makes it clear that he is talking about those who don’t engage deeply.
Imo there’s no point in discussing a quote or article if you aren’t going to take it in good faith. If you take the worst interpretation of their words, of course it’s going to be bad.
But if you take Paul Graham’s words at face value, then he’s simply saying that he believes shallow engagement had a large and negative influence on online discourse. That’s all you need to take from that quote.
It’s easy: “Woke” and “political correctness” are words that are not really used by left-wing people. There are only a few lefties who would call themselves “woke” or who would advocate for “political correctness”. Those words, however, have been taken over by right-wing conservatives and are used broadly to bash the other side. So if somebody is using that like Paul Graham here is doing, you know that he has a right-wing-conservative world view. Just because using “woke” as a category is nothing somebody progressive left-wing would do.
In case anyone reading this is wondering if @[email protected] and Drew DeVault are imagining meanings behind these words, you can go and read the entire article:
https://paulgraham.com/woke.html
In context, it is clear that Paul Graham regards any public protest for social justice to be performative and born from a need to feel morally superior to others. “Racism […] is a genuine problem”, but you are only ever allowed to “quietly” help marginalized groups. His examples for the birth of “wokeness” are people starting to report sexual harassment and racist language. Paul is very mad that people told him it’s not ok to call black people “negros” and it shows plainly in his writing.
He does not give one example of what would be a real racist thing that you are allowed to get mad and vocal about. He does not give one example of proper not-“woke” activism. This is the telltale sign of a fascist pretending to be a moderate worried about the “intolerant left”. Social justices exist, but I won’t name a single one. Helping minorities is good, but every time I see it happen it’s bad and I’m going to call it out.
Reminder that Drew DeVault is a pedophile.
He also wrote a smear piece about Stallman and then pretended it wasn’t him.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41838124
He is the problem. Ignore him.
What a string of grasping at straws. I’m sure this (Attempted) character assassination has nothing to do with Drew DeVault publicly naming and shaming fascist developers, with receipts.
Those are probably terrible people too. Drew DeVault is still a pedophile that stirs up shit to benefit himself.
Both can be true
Drew has posted a response in defense of these allegations.
Having read it as well the “report” on him you linked, I personally find the report lacks credibility. I take much more stock in Drew’s accounting of things, including his mature ownership of the bad decisions he’s made in the past.
As for the Stallman Report: it’s not a smear piece in my view. It’s a whistleblow that outlines an argument why RMS is unfit to lead the FSF with accompanying evidence. You may disagree with some of it, but it’s hardly malicious; I can sympathize with anyone who wishes to see better from the leaders of the major social movements of our day.
And as for why Drew initially denied his involvement, I found his response reasonable:
Myself and the other authors asserted our moral rights to publish anonymously, motivated by our wish to reduce our exposure to the exact sort of harassment I’ve been subjected to over the years.
His rebuttal curiously doesn’t dispute the facts of his pedophilia. It’s included in a blanket denial and then ignored.
Are you claiming those pedophilic accounts aren’t his? Why?
And he did more than “deny” his involvement in the report
Speaking as someone who has done a lot of my own research on Stallman’s bullshit, the depth of this report is astonishing.
That was his report. He can’t be trusted and will openly make bald-faced lies. He’s full of shit and best left in the dustbin of history.
Oh my God he looks at hentai! Oh, the humanity!
The list of subreddits he programmed his bot to run on includes one, “r/pomf” so pedophilic that it was banned by Reddit, along with many other pedophilic and racist subreddits
I did some research and r/pomf was apparently an ecchi sub with like 50 members.
Mildly problematic at worst…
It was banned with a bunch of other pedophilic subreddits (spez calling them all “animated CP”). Here’s someone complaining about it at the time
For fucks sales I thought I was blessed when I found Reddit Loli community, I’ve spent far to much time on the darker parts of the web to find that stuff, and far to often its thrown in with material that none of us a r/lolicons or r/pomf ever wanted, the real disgusting vile poo poo. it was safe here. Had it been a quarantine I would have understood, We get it out fetish is creepy as gently caress! But we were not hurting anyone. I mean those were probably two of my favorite communities because we understood one another, no one got harassed or attacked like on 4chan or 8chan, were weren’t being flooded with referral links to actual CP by robot spammers, it didn’t feel like some dark alley where I had to do shady deals for a fix, for once were safe and I didn’t feel ashamed, I didn’t hate myself, And you took it away because you don’t like it! That’s your only reason, you clumped us together with a bunch of racist, hate mongering assholes because you found our fetish morally objectionable. And don’t act like your doing some great deed by getting rid of it, it still exists, you’ve just forced us back to the places where were going to abused and harassed to find it, you’re helping no one, your just hurting us, me and my fellow lolis. You’ve left us to fend for ourselves against a horde of trolls. I’ll never leave reddit, I’ve invested to much, but as a company I’ve lost all faith in you, your saving face, not your community. [EDIT] fixed auto correct mistake and added a sentence for clarification
Stop defending Drew DeVault’s pedophilia.
People in positions of privilege very often tell on themselves when they dismiss anything that challenges their worldview as “political,” and therefore inappropriate for whatever “no politics, please” forum they’re in. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid, but it does mean they’re stunted. They would be better leaders if they had broader horizons.
