Hacker News Reader

> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world.

It's based in European, and more specifically, British Enlightenment thinking, the apotheosis of which (with regard to freedom of speech) is On Liberty[0] by John Stuart Mill, an Englishman. To quote:

> THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place.

It appears his hopes would bring disappointment were he still around.

[0] Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion https://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html

----

Edit: Fixing markup. If anyone knows of a document describing the markup rules, please let me know, it would save me an awful lot of edits ;-)

> ...document describing the markup rules

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

I thank you, good sir!

This to me seems not far from ayatollahs quoting scripture to justify their positions and policies. Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?

Unlike ayatollahs, not only did your parent not suggest the person they were quoting was right, they actually suggested the person they were quoting was wrong: "It appears his hopes would bring disappointment were he still around."

You're confused about the point your parent was making. Let me try to explain the context to you:

Top of thread: we think this way in Denmark (a country in Europe)

Reply: we think this way in America

Reply: "This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. ... That is a supremely American way of looking at the world."

Your parent: actually this way of thinking comes from Europe

Your parent is not saying this way of thinking is correct, only that your grandparent is silly to call this way of thinking "supremely American" and imply that it's inferior to European thinking.

> Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?

Nope, that’s not how it works. People consistently keep retrying ideas for government and economics over and over because they get tempted by promises while ignoring history because “this time it’s different”.

"This time it's different" was exactly the answer the liberals gave when propounding their system. It is also the answer mathematicians gave every time they tried to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Contrary to popular belief, "this time it's different" is a very good way to go about progress, so long as there is good theoretical reason to believe there could be a difference in application.

It has, but due to the orthodoxy of thinking in terms of the liberal conception of human rights in the US Constitution, other voices aren't listened to much - their views are different to the orthodoxy such that they are considered heretical and against liberty.

It's a circular argument in the sense that because liberty and freedom are defined for the mainstream framework, any outside framework, in order to be accepted by adherents of the mainstream framework, must provide a vision compatible with the existing framework.

We're stuck in a hole in terms of what can be done outside academia in the real world.

I'm curious as to why this comment is being downvoted; if anyone could offer an explanation I'd be grateful to learn where I went wrong.

Downvoting is not being wrong, it is being disagreed with. It is a win in my book if you ruffle some feathers in your opinions, it means you’re not just restating the majority belief.

In terms of a graphical model, voting is dependent on not only opinion but also motivation. Somebody that thinks you’re wrong is more motivated to downvote than someone who thinks you’re right - one has an ax to grind, one does not.

I learned this principle early on (and I think it's an unfortunate facet of HN as compared to, say, Reddit where Reddiquette is that one does not downvote for mere disagreement) though I also learned that HN is a place with a great deal of intelligent people who enjoy to think about problems - presumably, there would be some reason behind the disagreement. HN threads are known for pessimism and critique, so it's curious when a HNers feathers are ruffled they don't say anything.

Though, you're right - I think a lack of reason given for disagreement itself can reveal something interesting - not only that they may not have a reason, but that they can't articulate the reason well enough. In real life we often don't voice disagreement for either of those reasons. In my view, HN is no different.

> and I think it's an unfortunate facet of HN as compared to, say, Reddit where Reddiquette [...]

You are not supposed to downvote when disagreeing. You are also not supposed to complain here about mod votes. You should read HN netiquette and email them instead.

Btw, down voting based on disagreement happens on Reddit just as well. Reddit is a bunch of smaller, semi autonomous communities where quality differs. You could even say quality differs per HN thread.

>You are not supposed to downvote when disagreeing.

Both pg and dang have expressed that on HN you really can downvote if you simply disagree.

>You are also not supposed to complain here about mod votes.

Although I was more annoyed at the time, I wasn't trying to complain, I really just wanted to know what problems people had with my post.

>down voting based on disagreement happens on Reddit just as well.

It happens, but at least it's against the etiquette of the site as set by the admins - various subs may have their policies, true.

> Both pg and dang have expressed that on HN you really can downvote if you simply disagree.

Where?

I admit I didn't find either way at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I did find this:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

The former obviously applied.

As for the latter, while you didn't comment about HN turning into Reddit, I'd say comparisons in general fit this rule.

> It happens, but at least it's against the etiquette of the site as set by the admins - various subs may have their policies, true.

AFAICT it happens rampantly, and far more than it does here. That is my very subjective experience, I'm sure everyone has their own, which is why such a discussion leads to no good. It isn't objective/unbiased, nor intellectual.

This has been discussed extensively on HN over many years:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Where exactly ayatollahs talk about people rights and free speech? Comparing J.S. Mill to a bunch of religious maniacs is a bit far-fetched.

The fact that Mill wrote those words 200 years ago does not mean they are incorrect. We stick to the rules of Roman law in many aspects, although it was written pretty long time ago. Pythagoras formulated his theorem quite long ago too, yet we still learn it at school.

There are certain ideas that seems to be universal, that just make people lives better. People tend to challenge them and thanks to that we get goodies like Communism and Nazism.

>The fact that Mill wrote those words 200 years ago does not mean they are incorrect

It also does not mean they are correct or meaningful, at least not in every case they are applied or quoted...

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body

No. It wouldn’t. When that kind of power (arbiter of truth) is placed in a single point, that point will become the highly contested point of control. Eventually, inevitably, the body would end up turned to some ruthless power of the day, and would serve as the most phenomenal propaganda machine.

“The Ministry of Truth is pleased to announce that bootlace production is up a thousandfold this quarter, due to the heroic efforts of the King. You may now cheer.”

Total decentralisation is the only sane route - you build a bulwark out of billions of human minds, and you build inertia into your system such that emotional volatility led by events or propaganda efforts is smoothed out.

This is basically the concept of democracy and electoral cycles - group consensus on what reality is and how it should be responded to, with a temporal buffer (the election cycle length) to smooth out rash decisions.

Our systems need amendment to better smooth our inherent volatility, which has been provoked by our exponentially growing sphere of information - but this can’t come at the cost of handing control over something as fundamental as the idea of truth to some technocratic committee. That’s how you end up with gulags.

Edit/addendum:

Further musing on temporal smoothing of volatile and labile humanity led me to recall the idea of Concents in Anathem - groups are sequestered away for a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium, and are allowed only at those intervals to interact with the outside world. This monkish dedication to record preservation minimises informatic drift within the group, and provides a continual negative feedback factor to the unstable curve of truth, thus preventing the rewrite of the past, and therefore the present and future.

Ok, so a centralized system is as smart as the people working in the Ministry of Truth, but also creates a highly contested point of control. It's not guaranteed that it'll be smart, but ideally it can get as smart as possible for human beings.

A decentralized system is not controllable directly, but can only be as smart as the mean of the population[0]. Also, it also has a mechanism of control - propaganda. It's not all that effective, because you can have competing groups countering one another, but the side effects of that are relevant here: people take sides and reason by soundbites, while facts and critical thought get crowded out. Which means the more competing propagandists you have, the dumber the system becomes, even if all propaganda attempts cancel each other out.

So, on one hand you have a system with a very good quality ceiling but easy to manipulate; on the other hand, you have a system more resistant to direct manipulation, but consequently with a much lower ceiling that that also goes monotonically down as attempts to manipulate the system increase. Or, in other words: good results with high risk of bad results, vs. consistently shitty results.

Can't we do better? Are we doomed to choose between only those two?

--

[0] - Assuming a normal distribution, by the central limit theorem. If that doesn't hold, things could get even worse.

Machiavelli said something similar about principalities vs republics. Its hard to kick down the door of a principality but if you do, you are now in charge of a system designed and accustomed to keeping you there. You can always find a way to grab some power in a republic, but the entire system is designed to unseat you at the first sign of unrest.

Regarding your [0], in my experience larger groups of people tend to behave somewhat less smart than their mean intelligence ...

The issue is that influence matters more than the average or median in themselves - although oversimplified and "catchy" ideas tend to be favored more. This doesn't neccessarily mean dumb is favored per se - promoting say eating criminals would be an overwhelmingly unpopular idea even without constitutional limits.

They aren't guaranteed to be smart or just (sadly there probably isn't anything which qualifies) but they are are stable in a "not likely to piss off everyone into an insurrection" way.

We had total decentralization 9n Usenet. People went away from it. Mastodon split due to Japanese porn.

> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense.

Calm down. This isn’t productive to discussion.

> that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person

For being the most powerful person, he doesn’t get much done and is in the process of potentially being impeached. Sounds like an argument in favor of the checks and balances and an argument in favor of less power being concentrated at the federal level in general.

> publicly broken all the norms and all the rules

Publicly broken “all the rules”, really? Methinks you’ve been drinking some koolaid.

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies

Absolutely not. A ministry of truth that dictates what people say and answers only to politicians is about the worst and least imaginative solution to the problem.

> What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest

False dichotomy. State-level governments in the US are very capable of handling many of the responsibilities that have amassed at the federal level.

If you think more centralization is better, why not have a single world government that decides what is true? The government choosing what is true is working pretty well for China, why don’t we just let them take over control?

I'm sorry this comment is being downvoted so hard. I think it's excellent, apart from the "koolaid" bit.

> You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world.

Literally every government and civilization in the history of the world has eventually failed or been corrupted.

Given this inevitability, how is it not better that citizens have protections against a failing government abusing that power? Avoiding centralization of power is one such protection. This is not an "American perspective", it's a simple conclusion reached after looking at history.

Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn? After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50% people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any way.

It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

> It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

Majority of the people simply trust the media they like or get used to. They usually assume news from these channels have been fact-checked or are trustworthy but we all know messages can be crafted in different ways.

In other words, the media can potentially/likely manipulate how people think and make decisions.

>They usually assume news from these channels have been fact-checked or are trustworthy

I think this is irrelevant. People will listen to what they like to hear or what matches what they already think. NOBODY is exempt from this, I dont care how smart you think you are.

One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth.

I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a lie?

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/in...

I think you may be in an echo chamber. Most of my coworkers watch fox news. Its even playing on tvs at work in the hallways and cafeteria. People chat about their latest dose of truth and the outrageous lies of cnn etc. I listen to npr on the way home to get the sam facts in a different light/bias and then resolve to ignore everything but local races. I wish high offices were still elected by lower offices down to the lowest of offices where all the voters actually know the people they are choosing between.

Not sure if you're referencing the constitution's original intent for state legislatures to elect senators. If you are, here's a good reference for anyone interested in the topic:

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing...

People who pay attention know that fox news is fine and sticks to the truth (perhaps a selective truth, but still truth). It's the editorial panels that run around it and look like news that are a pile of made up lies.

Why would you expect someone calling for tighter regulation of the media to give a free pass to CNN? I would expect regulators to be a thorn in the side of any commercial television network. They're in the business of selling entertainment for profit, not upholding community standards of truth, decency, etc.

>Why would you expect someone calling for tighter regulation of the media to give a free pass to CNN?

The side doesn't really matter, what matters is giving that power to government will lead to one side winning and entrenching themselves via said power. I believe it's better to let free citizens learn wrongly on their own than to pretend government can teach the so-called right things.

I strongly prefer what we have now to the authoritarian "society" you have described. It sends shivers down my spine to think that there are westerners advocating such things. You can always move to China, they have everything you sound like you want

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body

No. And i'm from Europe, the supreme "nanny state".

And Europe isn’t “one” thing. Finland works quite differently than Greece. I am very happy where I am in Europe.

> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News.

Have you ever considered the option that you might be the one who is disinformed? European media have a tendency to "group-think" and to extrapolate certain narratives to the extreme. For example, I observe that even reputable German news outlets like "Der Spiegel" put a negative spin on every single story about Trump. My guess would be that the Danish media is simiarly biased given your views. And apparently, your laws did not prevent that from happening.

Well, if you read factcheck.org or any other fact checker, or just read transcripts of Trumps speeches you can see that the negative spin is usually there for a reason.

The problem is that a centralized body immediately becomes too powerful. The body itself would need to be limited in scope with other outside checks and balances.

SCOTUS is close to one of these centralized bodies you speak of, and they purposely only deal with cases that have gone through every other avenue. And even then, they are not trying to determine truth, but only fit the verdict within the existing body of law. I would prefer less decisions being decided in this manner.

I prefer giving power no secrecy to hide behind and limiting it by democratic control. I dont know why the assumption is always that a central power has to be some opaque inscrutable beurocracy.

I don't know why the assumption is always that a democracy is incapable of tyranny. Gay marriage had been illegal for most of our modern democracies' histories under the tyranny of democracies. Prostitution and drug usage are currently illegal under the tyranny of democracies. In England the manner in which you discuss large scale immigration or transgender issues, or what pornography is acceptable to watch is subject to review under the tyranny of democracy.

Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little.

In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would be a good thing. I have no problem with European and Asian countries granting their (very often highly competent) governments greater authorities than what is afforded to the US government, but I think it's supremely important that there remains at least one superpower fundamentally predicated on a mistrust of a central authority.

Trump has accomplished much more than you think he has. He has done a good job of using controversy to divert people from a great deal of the significant changes he has made via executive authority to the various government agencies under his control.

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"?

no.

I mean his arguments is the basis of the the separation of powers. It's only American insofar as American democracy was inspired in it's founding by the enlightenment thinkers.

Ask the Uighurs in China how well a centralized authority is "protecting" their speech and beliefs as a minority.

We do have libel and slander laws, you know.

Yes but that only works if they say something bad about someone or something. If they only tell positive lies or completely make up things it's hard for anyone to prove standing, much less show damages.

But it still has a negative effect on public discourse. It's like information pollution.

Would this centralized body extend to regulating bloggers and YouTube personalities? It's tricky to draw a line based on scope - influencers and personalities will grow ever more popular, and conspiracy rabbitholes will only grow more decentralized.

How would you deal with foreign media that violates the laws? You'd either have to permit them - which opens up the country to foreign meddling, since they can and have spread propaganda - or sanction/block them, like Russia and China (and Australia.)

Also, suppose despite your best efforts, Trump still gets into the White House. He's installed loyal yes-men in many departments already - if they defy him, they'll resign under pressure or be fired. He'd easily gut this Ministry of Truth and weaponize it to quash CNN/NYT or even climate scientists.

I'm quite on the left and not averse to regulation or centralization, but it's wishful thinking to assume this "powerful centralized body" is going to do the right thing.

See, for example, the use of corruption taskforces in many countries to purge political rivals or even honest bureaucrats who won't take your bribes. Corruption should be illegal, allegations should be investigated but things can go very wrong and these checks perverted against their intended function.

Media regulations do exist, and are more robust outside the United States. Usually the answer to your question about bloggers and YouTube personalities is that they are ignored by the regulators of the professional media, but may attract police attention in extreme cases under anti-vilification laws that would likely be unconstitutional in the U.S., eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan (UK), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Cottrell (AU).

I don't see the problem with subjecting foreign media to the same or even stricter laws. Yes, it's difficult to enforce the law against foreign nations, especially your friends, so enforcement often doesn't happen. That doesn't mean that foreign meddling ought to be made legal, which would be a step backwards in view of laws like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_....

Is it easier to corrupt one institution or five?

Looking at how fast the Republican Senate became supplicant to Trump, the separation did not turn out so "separate" after all due to the concentration of parties.

>>> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making.

This should be basic assumption of the all laws. Remember early 20th century and legal takeovers of governments by warmongering maniacs in Europe?

It was legal, there was trust toward government. All it took was a single group to take over Germany and start WW2.

Even if no one will abuse the law currently, you have absolutely no guarantees(as democracy is popularity contest) that no one will try to abuse them in future.

>> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world.

Not really, it is very prevalent in Europe too - especially Eastern Europe which suffered under Russian communist occupation. Mostly because it was the case in those countries - the populace still remembers government actively working against people.

>> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News.

>>> How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems.

It works perfectly... for those in power. From citizens perspective it is a nightmare.

>> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"?

What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? If we go to the extremes we have examples in history - heresy trials, censors in communist Russia, and even current example - China.

One could argue for centralized body of such power in only a single case - system transition by force with benevolent ruler that will dissolve itself after transition.

Good Luck with that.

> What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions?

An established institutional culture of apolitical service, reinforced by respect for those who uphold it and consequences for those who violate it. The kind of thing that the U.S. still expects of its military, judiciary and public service, and the kind of thing that is corroded by political leaders showing contempt for it.

The US works by checks and balances. You can't point to, for example, the US military and say "see, we have the expectation with the military so it will transfer." You have to say, "See, the world holds respect for <$Centralized_Power>'s military despite centralized power."

Finding the value of $Centralized_Power might take a while.