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If the last couple of weeks are anything to go by, I'd strongly argue the quality of discourse on any ICE/Trump/Tariffs-related topics have been at exactly Reddit-level, along with the most upvoted opinions mirroring those on Reddit almost to a tee.

I vaguely remember checking one of those ICE posts out the other day, and there was not a single comment going against the grain that was neither flagged nor heavily downvoted, out of over a hundred. Nuance/dissent wasn't even vaguely on the cards.

I don't know what your definition of Reddit-like is, but that's mine.


Nuanced understanding of a thing does not necessary ends up with opinion in the middle. Sometimes, understanding the nuance will make you walk away with "yep, this is bad and dangerous" conclusion.

Overwhelming majority of people concluding that shooting protesters to back or head is a bad thing does not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion. Overwhelming majority of people concluding that political repressions and fear based government are bad thing does not not imply lack of nuance or low quality of the discussion either.

The both sides and truth in the middle knee jerk is does not represent nuance or meaningful discussion. It frequently muddles nuances, creates false equivalences and makes the discussion loose the substance.


Reddit comments would focus on the headline—essentially confirming they never read the article. And of course add a sprinkling of "Cheeto Emperor" or whatever. I've not seen that (that wasn't also then heavily "disappeared" on HN).

Regarding the past couple of weeks, I think it's rather difficult to find nuance when we all saw the videos of protesters being killed by a federal police force. Anyone trying to take the Administration's side is, I imagine, going to come across as shrill.

On the more nuanced political issues though I have been happy to see opposing viewpoints well reasoned—even when I disagreed with them. There was a time when reddit was young that you might have found the same level of discussions.


On reddit they used to say "the down vote is not a disagree button" but that's not the case here. I've been specifically corrected when I assumed that.

So if the prevailing opinion is that ice is committing murder, it makes sense a contrary comment would be heavily down voted.

I agree that hn is heavily liberal and holds a lot of the toxic leftist anti-thought patterns that are prevalent on reddit. But I think it's more of a symptom of the country and perhaps the West being wound-up over "things".


Agreed. HN has proven time and time again that it is incapable of having a good discussion on politics, or at least American politics. The threads are always chock full of flamebait, outgroup-bashing, and unwillingness to consider other points of view. I flag every single post I see about American politics at this point because they are always, without fail, extremely low quality threads.


> Nuance/dissent wasn't even vaguely on the cards.

Not all topics are nuanced when discussed by an educated, well-intended audience. Is the world flat? Does evolution lead to speciation? Dissent is for the sake of dissent, and nothing else.


I've largely stopped commenting here because I feel the community is broken. There's definitely truth to what you say, that an educated audience can have a consensus. But one thing makes the HN community (and many Reddit communities) particularly bad: A lot of these threads have repetitive comments with insults or silly name calling get upvoted. Even if consensus is around the earth being round, there's no need to pettily insult flat earthers. We just ignore them and move on leaving their content to languish at the bottom. On the other hand these threads bring a lot of childish insults that get upvoted just because they hit the right buttons.

This to me is one (of many) sign that the community here cannot healthily discuss these topics. IMO the community here isn't healthy at all. That's why I don't post here much anymore. It's a sign to me that too many discussions in this community are about seeking emotional catharsis. And I'm sorry but for my own mental health, I'm not going to listen to someone else's panic attack resulting from political uncertainty.

I feel for dang and tomhow. It seems that most of their work is doing emotional labor. And emotional labor can grind a person down quickly.


Some topics can't be ignored. Vaccine effectiveness, for example, require a consensus from a large fraction of the population. That larger societal consensus begins with discussion in smaller subsets, of which HN is one.


I've been sleeping on this, works like a charm!


At this point I suspect anyone who even asks that question of concern trolling. The evidence is overwhelming.


That's a weird way to avoid providing evidence :)


You're right: I didn't answer the question, because I suspect it was asked in bad faith to begin with, given that a simple online search would yield ample evidence. Much of which has already been discussed here on HN.

Given that you've dismissed said evidence provided in other comments as not compelling and/or you attacked the source without addressing the evidence, I think my concern was well placed.



Rust jobs: 0.04

Python jobs: 0.9

Seems about right, maybe.

Except there's no way PHP (0.09), Ruby (0.07) and Go (0.1) are on the same magnitude as Rust jobs.

So this site doesn't pass the sniff test for me.


So it just must be the case that Rust has more jobs because that smells right to you? Even compared to Go which has found a nice niche in networking?

If Rust is as good as its evangelists say it is, we won't have to worry about how the stats smell, we'll see it, and it won't rely on some "Cnile" conspiracy to keep it down either.


I think you've got the parent backward: they're saying that Rust "should" have far less jobs than these other technologies.

If your parent is wrong, happy to be corrected. I thought it was interesting that we read the post in completely opposite ways, and I think both readings can be accurate. I based my reading on a vague remembering that I think the parent isn't a fan of Rust, which is fuzzy and also may be wrong!


> People have free speech, but obviously that doesn't mean you are free to say things that could be considered hateful or factually untrue.

So people don't actually have free speech.


The actual outcomes of those different voting systems is still a dominant US that is increasingly leaving the rest of the Western world behind.

So maybe we should be learning from them?


We are getting old, are having few if any children, yet our social contract is built on a series of Ponzi schemes that become unmaintainable under such circumstances. The temporary band-aid fix of mass migration is seemingly bringing many old and proud nations to a boiling point. We like our regulations, we like our welfare state, we like our extensive holidays and work life balance, and we’re not willing to budge on any of them, really. There’s too many contradictions in the system now. I’m not sure what it would take for this “will” to materialise, but I’m afraid if it does happen, it’ll come about due to some form of neo-fascism than a glorious rejuvenation of our current political order.

If the will doesn’t materialise, well, that’s exactly what civilisational collapse looks like in the historical record.

Either way, I’m not really seeing the optimistic outlook for Europe.


> Those Romanians are not Hungarian citizens.

Those “Romanians” are absolutely Hungarian citizens, as it is a precondition to voting in Hungarian elections.


We’re rapidly approaching that reality, yes.

Maybe Switzerland?


If people in Switzerland wanted that they could vote for it. But they actually prefer having limits on other peoples' speech more than they resent the limits on their own, so they don't.


Once they all start doing it, it won't matter.


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