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Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

Comment Rating: 1/10: Just another Political post

> The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes.

Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.

> If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace,

You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory. Then you're making a comparison to someone and the party that is new to older established negatively impacting politics.

If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.

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Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.

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> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?

The notion that we can remove politics from all the discussions we have is just silly. Especially when we're discussing immigration, something controlled by the governments we elect and the politicians that represent us.

I'm not arguing that the OP's post was great and insightful ("fascist" is indeed not helpful to use without elaboration) but neither can we say "keep the politics to /r/politics please".

Never said to remove politics from the discussion. The point that you started with was how the technical topic had influence from politics (from another time).

My point, don't make blanket inflammatory accusations of a current political party that just came into "rule" [I'm letting you get away with that claim] in the last two months). If you're going to interpolate, make a claim to the political action that occurred and what you feel is going to happen.

Right now we're seeing a lot of changes, to make a bold statement there is a direct cause is reaching. (It's because of the "fascist party" we have.. they ran under the conservative/right-party) To blanketly label the party/group of people "in power" that corresponds to the labels being thrown at it leads me to believe that your comment was motivated to just repeat the same catchphrases that are pushed in the left/liberal media.

We already have direct cause: the religious based travel ban. to my knowledge there is no exception for a founders visa application if you are from this list of countries.

Pretending you can ignore politics in any discussion other than a technical seminar about compiler optimization is in itself a political position: you are supporting the people who can afford to ignore politics at the expense of those who can't, endorsing the status quo whatever that happens to be.

This post is about people who are worried about being banned/being banned from the country who previously could enter and how YC is trying to help them. It's an explicitly political post. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Politics discussions are so unfruitful though. Everyone replies to everyone else with the exact same format:

"The problem with that way of thinking is [problem]. It's dangerous to think that way. In reality, my way of thinking is superior"

I don't find them unfruitful. I find them quite fruitful and enjoy and learn from political discussions with others. The problem with them is that they are not scientific or technical questions, and this forum is populated by a lot of people who naturally tend to look at things from a science perspective -- that there is a correct answer, and we just need to arrive at it. A discussion is only 'fruitful' if it gets us closer to that goal.

There isn't a correct answer in humanities/politics but that doesn't stop some answers from being very bad, and some answers being better than others, or from some answers being interesting and insightful and valuable regardless of how 'correct' they are.

There's definitely a range of quality in politics discussions though and the barrier for entry to having an opinion is very, very low unlike technical discussions -- it's very easy for it to quickly sink to the lowest form of human interaction that you're describing -- Breitbart, 4chan, youtube comments, /r/politics, etc. I find HN is markedly better than that almost all of the time.

And your quote isn't even so horrible. Pointing out problems with a particular point of view if new can be enormously insightful and helpful.

> And your quote isn't even so horrible. Pointing out problems with a particular point of view if new can be enormously insightful and helpful.

From what I see it just becomes a back and forth though that reaches no consensus.

"UBI will solve all of our problems"

"The problem with UBI is X"

"The problem with X is Y, so X isn't really a problem with UBI"

"The problem with Y is Z, so Y is not a problem and X is a problem after all"

"The problem with Z is..."

Consensus isn't a reasonable goal or even desirable when you're discussing things which are more complex than, say, cut and dried technical facts. I can achieve consensus among mathematicians by providing a proof. I can achieve consensus among scientists by performing repeated experiments. I can achieve consensus among philosophers by, well, killing all the other philosophers. But if I don't do that, I can learn a lot and better develop my own positions and thoughts by having discussions with them even if I'll never force them to agree with me.

You don't have to particularly care for 'soft' discussion and reasoning, but that's not a problem with it, it's a personal preference of yours which is extremely uncommon among the general population, however over represented it is on HN. Every discussion about anything nontechnical has this 'soft' property.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this?

Because politics, especially what's happening now, affects all of our lives? Hacker News talks about politics all the time, just look at Bitcoin or Snowden threads.

If you are curious to hear more about this, you can read the following articles, for a start:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/european-minds-who-...

(and the related documentary)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1991-11-03/the-sovie...

>If something is going on at the moment that is relevant, name the specific thing. Trying to blame the whole group now is just silly pandering.

Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? I'm really tired of hearing armchair politicians or regurgitation of political pundits. This is hacker news not r/Politics.

And I'm tired of techies thinking politics can be refactored into its neat own class, properly abstracted out of any other activity they take part in. Everything is inherently political, and aspiring to "change the world" through your startup or work is obviously so.

Regarding your unhappiness with me calling the current regime fascist... well, when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> Huh yes, how about the current executive order ban on muslim countries, and the general eagerness of the current administration to purge the US of many kinds of immigrants who are there completely legally? Many of my Iranian coworkers - most with PhDs from US universities - are affected by this. Many academic conferences I participate in are experiencing problems because organizers or speakers didn't get visas. Several professors are telling me they had to pass on promising applicants due to visa concerns. Anyone in an academic/research environment right now will tell you these things.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's relevant, doesn't pander.

>If you are curious to hear more about this, you can read the following articles, for a start:http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/european-minds-who-....

This is great, it also can be blamed on the government then.. because it's hindsight.. you've seen the lasting effects of what happened.

>when the president in power has insinuated the assassination of his opponents, encouraged his supporters to engage in violence, been spinning outlandish lies about the former president wiretapping him, etc, well I call that fascism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Consider looking up the definition, because the definition of fascism is not "having a leader who makes dumb statements".

Nor is this word a label for "a politician who makes you feel really bad emotions".

It means a certain type of government policy.

> It means a certain type of government policy.

Did you actually look up the word? All the sources I'm seeing[1][2][3] also say that it can be used or is commonly used to denote someone with authoritarian or extreme right-wing views.

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=define+fascism

2: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascism?s=t

3: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fascism

Please don't provide comment ratings or dismiss comments out of hand as "Just another political post". The startup community does not live in isolation, it is part of a system which includes political factors as well.

> Awesome! I was curious about hearing more about this.

Albert Einstein is only the most famous immigrant. Enrico Fermi is yet another. These were people who emigrated willingly. And then you have operation paperclip [0]

A lot of the current lead of American Science and Technology has its basis in the contribution of European scientists, mathematicians and engineers. And once Immigration opened up to the rest of the world, you've had smart people from all corners come to US universities, part of what makes them "great"

> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory

He most certainly is not. The simple fact is that the Trump administration has shown alarming tendencies towards fascism, and the republican dominated Congress and Senate have been unwilling to stand their ground. The "Resistance" in encouraging and shows that Americans still care about their civil liberties, but this administration, the people that hold actual power, can be described as fascists.

The only real check seems to be the US judiciary... and that too cannot single handedly stop a determined WH and Congress + Senate.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory.

Neither is true.

David Neiwart, an expert on US far-right militia groups, wrote a long piece in 2003 about protofacism in the US and how its ideas were being gradually mainstreamed by a chain of pundits and media organizations:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160106001734/http://cursor.org/...

It's a bit wandering, but I think it has turned out to be remarkably prescient.

Trump specifically has been compared for a long time to media-savvy populist strongmen like Hugo Chavez. E.g.:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election...

Personally, I still think full-on fascism is still unlikely in the US, but it's no longer unthinkable. Previously, serious concerns about fascism in the US were the provenance of ultra-radicals on the right and left. But now you can find plenty of political science professors both in the US and elsewhere soberly discussing the possibility.

I concur, but have to admit there are correlations between political policies & funding. Many of these same assertions were made back during the GW administration"s decision to defund stem cell research. Would anyone directly involved in stem cell research care to shed some light on the current standing og the US in the field and how those 8 years affected progress in the US and elsewhere?

How can we talk about recent shifts in SV due to immigration issues without being political?

Sorry that people can't frame their interpretations of Trump's policies to make you comfortable. They very clearly echo past fascist regimes. That's Trump & co's fault.

Talk about directly the issues and what has happened, and what you think is going to happen (give reason, don't just emote out with fear).

Don't just blanketly throw the entire group under the bus.

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