> Anyone deliberately facilitating that certainly deserves the worst fate imaginable. These are tools tailor-made to destroy democracies, we should treat people behind them like we treat ISIS.
Just so you know, I and many people like me will automatically align with whoever opposes you due to this rhetoric. Whatever it takes to ensure you and those who agree with you never, ever get any foothold in the discourse, let alone power. You are writing extremist and very dangerous things. It’s vile rhetoric and in a just world would be flagged to oblivion.
And this is an excellent example of how "polite" fascists come to power. After all, the one with the more "civilized" rhetoric must be the one to support, regardless of why people are so strongly opposed to them.
> Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and side with with people who aren't openly calling for horrible deaths of those that disagree with them.
And there it is - this is why fascists coach their language in a veneer of politeness. After all, they didn't say it out loud, so whatever they're doing must certainly be the right thing to support. Why is the other side so eagerly opposed to them? Well, that doesn't matter, because they weren't polite about it.
It's important to look at what organizations/corporations/groups are actually doing, not just what they're saying.
Meanwhile, the other side is just openly calling for the horrible deaths of people who disagree with them. So, I can choose the 1) openly homicidal fascist, or 2) the maybe fascist (so you say) who is not openly homicidal.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and side with the people who aren't openly homicidal.
You should side with the people that aren't homicidal, not the ones that are polite and closeted about it.
But also, homicidal is doing some heavy lifting here, isn't it? It may be accurate in this case, but someone saying we should go kill all the Nazis in WW2 because they're actively genociding their people would also fall under that umbrella.
> But also, homicidal is doing some heavy lifting here, isn't it?
Yeah, wishing someone's family to be chopped to pieces isn't actually homicidal.
While saying no such thing and not acting in such a way that suggests as much is deeply suspicious because that's just being "polite and closeted about it". And thus the totally not homicidal brutal-murder-liking-people who are absolutely not wishing death and destruction on people not sharing their ideology are the ones to support. because the others are fascists, because they don't say they want the families of others murdered.
You're arguing that being an open fascist is better than being someone you suspect to be a fascist, even though they haven't said anything that confirms it.
Not at all. Please try reading more carefully and avoid being reductive. I'm arguing that you're confusing the tone of rhetoric with the meaning of it and drawing the wrong conclusion from that. Just because one side is more polite and shrouded by the structure of a corporation doesn't mean you should reflexively support them because of that.
If you are arguing that "siding with the others because of rethoric is dangerous", you are right in general. But to a very surprised reader of this thread, you are arguing with someone that responded to
> Anyone deliberately facilitating that certainly deserves the worst fate imaginable.
That came in a thread started with a now (justly) removed
> might wake up to their family chopped to pieces
This sets the tone I (and possibly others) interpret that message.
I know we are supposed to charitably interpret what people write on here, but a thread like this makes it really hard, given the tone.
You're right, I did pick a bad example. It was extreme, and I'm sure many HN users work for corporations like this and felt targeted.
But it's also worth considering exactly what the mass surveillance state we've got is directly leading to - deaths of many people. How many people have been disappeared or killed by ICE because of technology like this? That's just one group actively targeted by surveillance tech, and the government intends to go after millions more, as they've publicly stated. That's not to mention how many millions of people have had their lives worsened or ruined directly or indirectly because of tech like this.
These sorts of things aren't an innocent startup consisting of a few nerds in a garage, they're shaping the world and setting the stage for the expansion of horrible atrocities. This is ultimately what I mean - you have to look at the effects of what they're doing and the actual consequences. Once you see that and know people who are more directly affected/targeted by these technologies, it becomes a lot more clear why people are so angry at them.
And that's fine, I'm willing to accept that the world is full of people who hate freedom.
I have no doubt that the positions you paint as more acceptable than mine are an existential threat.
>Whatever it takes to ensure you and those who agree with you never, ever get any foothold in the discourse, let alone power
Luckily the likes of you lost already. Trumps idiocy pretty much ensured that we'll get a real fight rather than a polite march into the dystopian surveillance nightmare you wish for.
There's no-one seriously trying to turn down the temperature, the fight is going to happen. I'm armed to the teeth (in the EU!) and ready to do my best to ensure that the good guys win.
if this isn’t a joke - new yorker style uses a diaresis when a word has a repeated vowel where the second vowel is part of a different syllable. coördinate, coöperate, and reëlect are probably the most common places where this comes up
Same. And I'm not even focused on whether this is a reasonable number or not. The quoted tweet also says "But our politicians would rather spend that on genocide." And I'm asked to evaluate whether this is "accurate" with a thumbs up or thumbs down. (According to Mentwire, it is not accurate). So I'm evaluating both the cost of housing the homeless, but also whether politicians would rather fund genocide. So, this seems like it is not really an intellectual CAPTCHA, but rather an ideological CAPTCHA.
And just to disclose my biases, I would tend to believe that $350k is an absurdly high figure and that politicians are obviously not holding a vote where they are forced to choose between ending homelessness and funding genocide. But I believe that people who disagree with me can be considered intelligent and not "too dumb to pass an intellectual CAPTCHA".
I'll not that she is "banned" from saying negative things about Meta not by any law, but by a contract she willingly signed, and for which she likely received financial compensation (aka "severance"). I'd like to know the amount she was paid in severance (or really, was it above and beyond the standard severance policy at the time), in addition the amount of the fines she faces for disparagement that are reported here.
That said, Meta seems to have a really stupid strategy here. They are only drawing more attention to this woman and her book, and making themselves looking really bad in the process. I'm not sure I believe her victim narrative, but Meta sure does look dumb and vindictive here.
> completely ignorant about what palantir is and who it's owned by
Perhaps you could give your take? When I look at the facts, I see a fairly humdrum data integration company that was a slightly early adopter of applied machine learning.
This whole debate is pretty weird and misguided, IMO. Marc Andreesen can be right about what works for him. Joan Westenberg can be right about what works for her. This would be obvious to a five year old. This whole brouhaha seems to be merely the setting for HN'ers (and everyone else) to continue their ongoing battles about how the world should and must be and why "the other side" is Wrong. Search through the comments here. Somehow Elon, Luigi Magnione, and Trump are pulled into the discussion.
I am convinced that social media is addictive for some, and likely a negative influence for many. But this is just shoddy journalism:
> "The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves."
They quote one unnamed insider for this characterization. I recall from my stats 101 class that n=1 is not a strong basis from which to make broad claims about a population of 10s of thousands.
> "The Manhattan Project created the nuclear bomb that caused extreme devastation in Japan and ended the war. There’s a lot of U.S. history that’s awful and indefensible."
That's one hell of a non-sequitur. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what she thinks it means. "The US ended the worst war in human history. Indefensible!"
The implication of the quoted sentence is that the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan was awful and indefensible. The author then transitions to “but I want to talk about part of the Manhattan project that isn’t really related to the bombings.” What other explanation would there be for inserting this comment about U.S. history?
My comment was addressing the defensibility of the bombings. They may have been awful, but they were fully defensible. Japan was the aggressor, and all indications were that both the U.S. and Japan were going to see millions of casualties as part of an invasion of the home islands.
I'm not sure how much it really matters but it is mildly annoying when people's brains just shut off when they hear atomic/nuclear.
It's perfectly reasonable to make an argument that they were "not needed" in terms of ending ww2, it's much, much more difficult to argue that fewer people would have died if they weren't used.
reply