The Hacker News RSS feed is in the same place it has always been.
Why do you find this story to be so objectionable?
From the guidelines:
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
If it gets bad enough, then eventually people will start moving on to something better, that is actually about hacker news, and not the political article du jour. This article and discussion were both extremely off topic. And it's not just any off topic, it's politics, which brings out the lowest common denominator in most forums it's introduced in. I mean, how can people vote up stuff like "The system we are part of is not the best. In fact it is arguably the worst system since the caveman era." ? Apologies to rokhayakebe, but that's not serious, interesting discussion, it's hyperbole typical of thousands of other internet forums. I would prefer to try and keep HN from becoming just like all those other forums, although perhaps it's a vain hope.
I'll agree that the discussion in this thread is rather mediocre and is evidence of the phenomenon you are concerned about. But I've seen great discussions about politics and economics here and I like hearing it from the perspective of the users here. I've learned things and I just don't understand why you think we'll be better off not learning about these issues from each other. It reminds me too much of a generic rule for pleasant banal conversation, "don't talk about religion or politics."
We disagree about whether such discussion about things we are less knowledgeable is inevitably bad for the site. Ultimately the answer is unknown and I would like to see the limit pushed as far as possible to make the test of not degenerating into the lowest common denominator harder. I think it can be done, though downvoting stories may have to be enabled eventually.
Except we're beginning to have a new problem here at hn.
The only thing worse than threads about politics, religion, drugs, or popular culture are the comments about how they're not "hacker news".
We're starting to sound like a committee that gets together and spends most of our time writing the agenda.
But it's not hn.
Davidw is right, in my opinion.
Perhaps the reason we keep having this discussion is that the board continues to serve up material that we find innappropriate? That people vote based on emotion, not on whether it is good material for hackers, and political stuff has the most emotion-laden content of all?
This is a nice seque into our other favorite topic: how rating systems are broken. I'm afraid these two are highly connected.
Yes! Even more so with their purchasing dollars. A nonintuitive but incredibly important lesson for any budding entrepreneur.
If you cannot see the relation between this problem and how software can help solve it, then I suggest you look again. Even a self-centered hacker could see opportunity here.
In all fairness you have submitted 4 articles in the last 70 days i do not know how much that says about the "HN for the rest of us".
If you want to see less articles as this one make it to the top, then be my guest and SUBMIT.
It isn't news anymore, but I find it very heartening all the same.
I've always felt that taking people out of ignorance will always make them less inclined to kill. The more logical justification people have for doing good and not doing bad vs purely faith-based, the harder it is for some religious nut-job to come in and say "kill the infidels in the name of god".
The fun part is that it goes both ways.
In the end, both bullies will need reconstructive surgery.
Actually, taking people out of ignorance always results in warding off some error. The thing to be doing with the great bounty of western prosperity is reducing ignorance in ourselves and in others, not entertaining ourselves to imbecility.
People figured out at least 2,500 years ago that knowledge is the antidote for ignorance and even laid out the specific conditions for its acquisition. Unfortunately, designating that the economy is full of "knowledge workers" doesn't cut it.