cenophor

This is murder, not people falling off the cliff because of some accidents.

There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably right that there is a correlation. But... seriously?

This comment is just delightful to read.

Thanks for saving us from potential frustrations and for reminding us that helping others can be simply an act of kindness without a monetization scheme attached.

> probably a mistake

I hope you won't ever end up thinking that. :)

> The post hardly felt pushy to me, and I don’t understand the skepticism of the poster’s intentions.

Two things that lead me to thinking that:

* Blanket statement on censorship without providing further details and references * Picking a policy that affects a small part of the population and referencing articles that already say that many experts already find problematic

I think it's great that you could read the comment with good intentions, but the way that the details are presented and cherry-picked doesn't sit right with me.

I can only agree to disagree on your point that's just part of how we communicate.

> It really feels sometimes that the only thing the average Australian cares about is the price of their property portfolio.

Maybe the sample average of the people you hang around is quite different from the population average.

The average Australian can't even afford to have a property portfolio, let alone caring about one.

You can say the same things about a lot of things in many countries, someone can probably say the same about the one you live in.

I suspect the censorship that you talk about are not as black and white as you seem to be trying to project. It's easy to cherry-pick the things that you don't like to get your own view across.

Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here than to push your own personal viewpoints on things that you don't like? I mean, I could say something like "I'm always kind of surprised by people who want to move to the US because the lack of gun laws", and what does that achieve?

> Right, that's why I said "Many Chinese".

No offense but I used to do this and I now think of it as a means of lying to myself that I have covered myself from the "edge cases" that don't support my obviously non-neutral arguments.

> And this process doesn't strike me as being super different from the way our democratically elected representatives bring up new bills.

This is the reason that I disagree with the rest of what you said.

There are no democratic elections in China, and the people who often end up making decisions for everyone else are selected and groomed to do that *according to the party's values* early on in life. What that means is that you won't be making any decisions in the first place if they feel that your values and motives do not, or have a chance that they will not, align with the part's interest.

So who gets in? It's people who are truly patriotic (and probably getting exploited for that), people with the relevant lineage, or mostly people who are just in it for career progression, power and money because the states control so much that you just simply can't advance without being part of the party.

In non-authoritarian countries you often have some means of recourse, including putting pressure on the government with media, if the government screws up. You can't even disagree with the CCP to begin with because the means of communication for most people are censored by the government. There are literally laws that the government can punish you with even if you just remotely disagree with the government.

Most people just want to live a normal life and value their assets and family above all. The country is generally growing well economically, so there are no real reasons for them to risk what they have in exchange for some intangible idealistic things that they have never experienced. This is literally the citizens self-policing themselves because control is deliberately built into every layer.

It is super different.

People literally do not dare to speak up, it's not anti-CCP people making up antagonistic stories.

> because there are in fact supporters, just like there are both supporters and detractors to controversial government decisions on this side of the pond.

I'm sure there are in fact supporters for pervasive control and surveillance in the name of protecting children and society. However, at least on "this side of the pond" we can oppose it without fearing any repercussions from the government. I can trash the policy all I like on any social media platform I want, I can write opinion pieces and submit to newspapers, I can organize groups to oppose the policy — all without fearing repercussions from the government. Can you do any of that under the CCP?

Get a piece of paper, divide it into acceptable and unacceptable, write down the things that fall into each category that align with your core values, then come back to read your arguments.

If you don't think there are any contradictions, great. If there are, perhaps there is nothing wrong with "the general tone" that you find problems with.

> It depends on your environment. Say if you are at a university or something with students it will be very different than if you are working for a tech company with your Chinese co-workers.

That's what I thought before I went there but it turned out to not be the case. What I am about to say is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt.

I actually worked in Beijing. The work I did involved both tech companies and students, and I took the time outside of work to mingle with the locals at restaurants and shops. The amount of people who don't agree with the government was generally "surprisingly" high across all groups.

I should also point out that I never took the initiative to talk about politics, so in all cases it was either people being curious about the culture outside of China or, presumably, I was an outlet for them because I was clearly not affiliated with the government in any way.

I'm just going to leave it at that because anything I say past this point are even more subjective opinions.

> I've heard from various Mainland Chinese people: that many of them thinks western media brainwashes us (think the thing about Olympic photo coverage of Chinese medalists) and many condemn westerner take on social matters (the US' handling of [COVID], for example, is seen as a "proof" that the our infatuation with freedom has severe failings).

That's clearly anecdotal because I worked and lived there for a year recently and what you said is only what *some* of them think.

I have spoken to many people, particularly those who are yonung and educated, who don't think like what you have said. Many people are also very eager to speak to foreigners about their governments and, in some extreme cases, they openly criticize their own for exactly the same reasons that much of the HN crowd probably would. Also, I was just a regular worker who wasn't anyone's boss, and I spoke to them in Chinese.

I'm not interested in debating against anecdotes with more anecdotes, but I think what you said is not the whole story of "their side" and is potentially manipulative even if it wasn't your intention to be.

I also don't think "authoritarian" is a loaded word, it's just an indication of how likely or unlikely someone is willing to work with others openly. The important thing is what to do to fix it, hopefully, together, after realizing what the issues could be, not toning in down and making everyone comfortable with some illusions in the first place.

> There’s an interesting discourse about whether gacha games are anti-consumer or not which I don’t have enough space to do justice to here. Broadly I think they have some challenges similar to gambling, insofar as many adults gamble recreationally and enjoy it, while some are clearly harmed by it. I used to think that free-to-play games’ dependence on whales was strong evidence that they were a negative development, but I heard an argument from the CEO of Kongregate which changed my mind. Distilled to its essence, it is that “Many whales are simply employed professionals who enjoy what they enjoy, and professionals historically spend a lot of money on what they enjoy. Why should we have contempt for this in a video game when we don’t if it is e.g. figure skating or wine?” I recommend reading or watching the entire talk if you’re interested in this topic.

I find it pretty disingenuous to put this in the footnote and brush it off as "not having enough space", and then went on to justify it with an opinion from someone who clearly has stake in this space.

Equating whales with professionals is just completely missing the point, and is simply marketing speech that masks the underlying problem.

A lot of mechanisms in Gacha games are engineered dark patterns whose sole purpose is to make money. They are basically there to exploit those who are psychologically more susceptible.

It's ironic that the author uses Genshin Impact as an example and then went on to say something about spending more money in Gacha game is a reflection of professionalism. In Genshin Impact you can power up A LOT by spending money on Gacha because you can get substantially better equipment that is otherwise unavailable through normal game play, or you can power up your existing characters, too. Can someone instantly become better at skating with a better pair of skates?

This reeks like a con-artists rephrasing perfectly normal and mundane observations into scary-sounding situations so that people would buy the air-filter companies that are funding your research.

I'm all for cleaner air and I don't doubt that the already well-established negative effects of high CO2 or VOC concentrations on us, but can we at least keep any discussion to non-anecdotal, strong scientific evidence? None the articles linked both here show any rigorous statistics that pinpoint cause and effects, it's all handwavy conjectures with "common sense" evidence and statistical dressing to show correlation. Correlation doesn't even necessarily mean causality. Some of the articles even have *may" in the title, you can be the judge.

Probably an unpopular opinion given the large amount of anecdotal science already posted.

Dust on carpet is bad and particularly if you don't clean it and let stuff grow - we all know that already and we don't need a laser pointer to show kids how scary it is. Just because you can see it doesn't necessarily mean it's worse, and just because you can't see it doesn't necessarily mean it's better.

It's just insanity that everyone is suddenly a scientists with a few anecdotes or links to articles that show correlation but not causality.

There is no browser if there is no power?

The moment you said "subjective analysis" already invalidated the rest of your argument and supported what I said -- you are just saying it's okay to use you a set standards that are not universally accepted to judge others. It's probably not your intention to come across that way, but it is exactly this type of thinking that brews toxicity.

The OP of that "wannabe" comment could have finished the sentence without saying anything about wannabes and still get the same point across. So why bother calling everyone else who can't get their games paid wannabes?

Do we have any evidence that these wannabes are not "some people just want to make great games, don't care about getting famous"? What's wrong with wanting to become famous as a goal in the first place? Who decides who has the chops and who doesn't?

You simply can't unless you are objectively the best at something. The complexity in deciding what is objectively the best makes such efforts futile, and therefore everyone who thinks it's okay to call others wannabes is just conveniently glossing over the fact that they are also wannabes by someone else's standard.

The fact that you avoided using "wannabe" as a noun to describe yourself in that contrived example says a lot.