outis

The guidelines say: "Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it."

"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to."

I honestly think there's a good chance your decision in this case goes against the spirit of the rules, dang.

I will obey your decisions as a mod.

However, I disagree with the assertion that my comment was about ideology or politics. My comment was about the very concrete conditions of life of someone working in the tech industry in California, which is why I thought it may be of interest to the readers of HN.

The situation I mentioned is not about following this or that political faction. It is a threat to free discourse, to the ability to have an intellectual life, and to folks' actual livelihood. And it is certainly relevant to many people who visit this site or comment on this article.

The only connection to a particular political side was the work "against" in the first sentence. I regret that, and I have replaced it with "about". If, with that change, you feel that it is still possible to identify a particular political or ideological faction which is responsible for the danger I mentioned, that is not something I can control. I can only say that the boot may be on the other shoe someday, and I would still be speaking up against it.

As for the rule against using HN primarily for ideological battles, I was not aware of it, and I apologize. Would it be better if I started posting more technical comments as well?

Also, how does your interpretation of the rules affect users that use "throwaway" accounts? If a user makes a throwaway to talk about a controversial issue, that account may only have one post, meaning that 100% of its posts are controversial. Would that not prevent people from discussing controversial issues at all? Which, in the end, is the same as the advice I was offering.

Honestly surprised at how many people are posting comments about this. You know you'll end up on some list, right? Maybe you think it's ok to debate this kind of measure now, but the line will keep moving. In three years you may have people scouring your internet history for past wrongthink to deny you that promotion, or to get rid of you. In five years, machine learning algorithms may take your comments as input for your Ethical Credit Score. Hacker News is not going to delete your comments if you come to regret them.

It's best not to think about these things at all. What can you do, anyway? Suppress your mind's wandering. Focus on that algorithm on that refactoring, someone needs to get that work done, and it's you. You need that promotion. You need to make a lot of money for the federal government, for the state of California, and for your landlord, and you better make enough that there is something left to save. You don't want to look back in ten years and realize your youth disappeared while you were sitting in front of a monitor, you're still unmarried, you don't own a house, and you haven't had an independent thought in a decade, right? At least you've got to have some money saved up, that's going to make it worth it. So put your head down and get back to coding.

Don't worry, we're getting political commissars in our offices too.

Violence, poverty and deprivation are the state of nature. The way all the evils of the world are laid at the feet of the West has no rational basis. The counterfactual against which West influence is compared is always a blissful utopia that never existed and never could have existed.

If you want to blame the refugees on what the West did, how about the fact that most of these people (most of whom are economic migrants, by the way) would literally not have existed without Western science and technology? Check out the population graphs, look at how many people the land could support before modern medicine, the green revolution etc.

Or so you would think, but as I recall her biggest detractors were SJWs complaining about how much skin she was showing. The whole idea of her being just a facade for some male engineer was driven by the feminist notion of "male gaze". By contrast, the "misogynistic nerd" crowd (Gamergaters and the like) were quite supportive of her.

   DHH: Although Thiel would already have been on a Performance Improvement Plan
   for his legal wars against the press. So easy move 

What the fuck.

> It seems unlikely that the connection between fines and large African American populations—a connection that cannot be explained by poverty—is the result of African Americans across the United States committing more finable offenses.

I'm not sure why that seems unlikely. African Americans commit a disproportionately large amount of violent crimes. It seems reasonable to expect that they also commit a larger amount of misdemeanors and minor infractions. It would be far more surprising if they had a higher propensity to break the law, but only when the violation is serious and the penalty heavy.

Yes, Jews are overrepresented in journalism, politics, finance and other highly impactful careers. Take the percentage of Jews in such a category, divide it by the percentage of Jews in the general population, and you get a number larger than one: that is just a numerical fact. The anecdotal version of this simple statistic is that you see a lot of Jewish names.

But that is not proof of any conspiracy or nefarious scheme: it is simply the result of the high value Jewish culture places on learning. I think we all see that.

However, when there is a similar, or even lower, rate of overrepresentation for other demographics in other categories, suddenly the conspiracy theory becomes common sense. Too many males in tech because of sexism. Too many whites amongst entrepreneurs because of racism. For lots of people, and an even larger share of the media, that is an obvious fact that requires no justification.

This is what I find unbearable: that the exact same statistical signal is obvious proof of evil with some categories, while to even suggest the same of others is beyond the pale. Even making this comparison is wrongthink in the eyes of some. And I want to make peace with it, but I cannot. The mind rebels. It will not bend.

And that is why, as much as I love the Jews, I find myself unable to muster any outrage over this extension, until the same outrage is afforded to other categories. Not even outrage: the same defense. The same presumption of innocence. Or at least, the same non-presumption of guilt. Can't we even have that?

As a H1B worker, I know I am depressing wages for Americans. Not just by increasing the labor supply, but also by having a weaker negotiation position than I would have as a citizen or as a permanent resident.

The "STEM shortage" is pure fantasy. The US should only take in the very best people, those who end up hired by top companies at competitive salaries, and give them permanent residency quickly. The people who come in with low salaries to replace American workers, like in the Disney case, should never have been given an H1B. That sort of abuse is going to end up bringing down the entire program.

Accusation of bigotry are just a means of controlling the conversation using taboos.

Thanks, I was not aware of that aspect of San Francisco's history. It does not seem to have much of a connection to the present situation, though - or maybe it does? The Democrats used to be the slavery party, after all.

Is there a good source for the political history of San Francisco that does not automatically take the point of view of the current incumbents?

San Francisco was only ever really tolerant of the right kind of differences, AFAICT. For example, it appears to be a near-complete political monoculture. It even has a prominent road in the largest city park named after a living and active Democratic politician, just to make sure everyone knows whose turf it is.

More recently, there is the animosity against the tech crowd, which I don't need to describe.