That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.
Except that at other sites, politics equals name callings and rhetoric. I understand that that is the primary reason you want politics to stay out of HN.
But if all scientists, techies and reasonable people stay out of politics and common people are distracted by media, how can we expect things to change? If readers of HN cannot discuss political beliefs in a rational manner, I wonder who can.
No wonder legislation like SOPA has reached to the doorsteps of congress in US.
I'm not. I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites is so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise. Plus, most political sites have a clear and strong bias, such that opposing ideas are rarely discussed based on their merits.
Also, many techies who otherwise would not engage in political discussions (due to aforementioned reasons), can bounce off ideas here. I'm not claiming that HN becomes a political discussion forum, I'm saying downvoting legitimate political discussions for being political is taking it too far.
[Edit: missed a word and it bothered me enough to edit the post.]
The connection you aren't making is that politics leads to flame wars, on the internet. "Politics" regards deeply held beliefs people hold about how the world ought to be run. Also, the same discussions tend to be run over and over on ad infinitum. Hacker news doesn't need it. It does well by having a tight focus.
Your point is well taken. But tech discussions can also lead to flame wars and HN seems to handle those rather well. I for one am interested in what this community thinks about many subjects. Including politics.
The guideline I'm referring to here is not stupid.
The "don't comment about flagging" guideline is. It's meant to eliminate pointless arguments about what is or isn't germane to the site, much like how you're asked not to comment about being downvoted. But flags are invisible, and the number of people flagging is dwarfed by the number of people upvoting threads about Ron Paul's newsletters, so that the only way for it to leave the front page of the site (precipitously, if you didn't notice) is admin intervention.
Commenting on this post in the first place was stupid, since the story already got buried. I just felt bad for 'davidw, and I'm a nerd, so when someone says "I think HN is in fact a great place to talk about politics", it's hard for me to resist commenting that it's by charter not a place to talk about politics.
I'm answering in detail because you seem to follow my comments, and I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. I'm not. I don't know you or have any problem with you personally.
"sanity" being "what you agree with" is generally a truism in any context.
HN is in a unique position to offer high quality discussion on topics that have become extremely important to hackers, much more important than some nostalgic ideas on what HN is 'supposed' to be. This is no time to stick our heads in the sand. We have a powerful platform and a powerful community here and it would be very foolish to waste them given the seriousness of what we face.
when I said sanity maybe I should have been more clear: political sanity against tyrannical crap like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_... .. this bill silently passed without any substantial media coverage and grants the president unprecedented powers the kings of old would envy.. I know no politician or anyone for that matter is "perfect" (really no such thing exists) but I like a lot of what he is saying not everything. I would leave it at that to avoid any diatribe that may arise on HN over political discussions.
Maybe this should be a tech-only forum to avoid getting people charged up and polarized.
> Maybe this should be a tech-only forum to avoid getting people charged up and polarized.
Well, technically, it is supposed to be limited to tech, startups, and 'things hackers might find interesting'. Politics is generally considered off topic. SOPA is directly relevant to many of us, so it's gotten a pass, but this discussion doesn't seem to be much about SOPA, but about Ron Paul.
I don't understand why davidw has been downvoted. Ron Paul maybe a principled politician, but his views/past actions on the issues of racism, homosexuality and science and technology policy don't stand up to scrutiny. While some of his policies may be laudable, he also has plenty of stuff that can be categorized as insane.
I don't want to start a political flamewar on HN, so all I'm trying to say is that there are valid reasons to believe what davidw believes and he shouldn't at least be downvoted for it.
I didn't make any comments about Ron Paul; I just pointed out the use of "sane" to mean "things I agree with", which is indicative of a debate that's not headed anywhere good.
I don't understand how you can attribute "sane = I agree with" to that poster. What evidence do you have for that?
I think it would also be reasonable to attribute "insane = courting disaster by inviting unintended consequences".
I would posit that "insane" and "broken" are problematic in civil discourse, as these words tend to evoke strong emotions. However, if one ascribes to, "insane = courting disaster by inviting unintended consequences," and also to, "broken = fails to filter insanity," then SOPA/Protect-IP are clear indicators that something in the system is broken.
In a way, this is much worse than the "Indiana Pi Bill" since that bill wouldn't have had any impact on practitioners who understood math. On the other hand, SOPA/Protect-IP has a huge impact on practitioners of computation and programming on the Internet.
In Indiana they were lucky to have a mathematician in the legislature, and a legislature humble enough to listen to him. The US House of Representatives and the Senate apparently don't meet this standard.
It's a cheap rhetorical trick. "Sanity" is defined as what his favored candidate wants to do, no?
It depends. If Ron Paul were to reverse his views on positions where individual rights and freedom are the foundation, do you think the original poster would still support Ron Paul?
If your answer is no, then he's clearly not defining "Sanity = What favorite candidate wants."
If the answer is no, then the original poster is guilty of ineloquence and inadvisable word choice. By the same token your position is misattribution of the other poster's motivations.
My above phrase was not quite correct: it's not about the candidate, per se, it's about labeling as 'sane' those policies that he agrees with. Presumably, he could have a great time trading 'insane' and other verbiage with the people who view the lack of universal health care in the US as 'insane', as one example, and no one would be the better off for the whole exchange.
By the way, you, too, are insane for not agreeing 100% with me:-)
By the way, you, too, are insane for not agreeing 100% with me:-)
It would be seem we agree on many points, but you've thought a little more about the meaning and implications of (un)civil discourse. At first glance, maybe one would feel compelled to label insane proposals as such. But the lack of a clear arbiter of what is sane and not sane is a bit problematic.
Everyday life has always involved a bit of insanity and unreality, yet somehow we all muddle through.
But what if a person's value system defines certain ideas as wrong, and unsupported adherence to those ideas as insane? Is it wrong in a society that supposedly values free speech to express this belief?
> Is it wrong in a society that supposedly values free speech to express this belief?
Absolutely not! But there's a difference between expressing it here and on some other site. There are plenty of sites for political debate, from free-for-alls with all included, to various flavors ranging from neofascists to anarcho capitalists to communists and of course everything else in between.
I'm skeptical of many such sites producing anything other than volumes of vitriol, because many people do believe other people's positions to be 'insane', and if that's where you're starting from... it's difficult to find common ground.
That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.