Hacker News Reader

Comment by klik99 | Hacker News Reader

I still feel it’s a conspiracy theory but Jack Ma is absolutely being targeted. He was beloved by the Chinese media as a motivational speaker as well as a business man, when he started not speaking highly of CCP (which is tantamount to criticizing) I told my wife that in a year he would be vilified by the media, and sure enough here we are at the first stages of that. This might be happening on a case by case basis with those who don’t want to “play ball”, but I don’t believe there is a concerted effort to bring down all billionaires. Reminds me of the rise of the middle class in Europe as they threatened the existing power structure. Sometimes it feels China is going through the same stages of history Europe went through over centuries but at breakneck speed.

View on HN

It is in fact a conspiracy theory. But a small reminder that conspiracy theory doesn't tell you anything about the truthfulness, e.g. that the Iraq War was based on made-up evidence was a conspiracy theory.

That being said: Your explanation makes more sense to me. It is often enough to anger the wrong person to get a bad treatment (well, even assassination). And looking at history this is exponentiated in dictatorships, where power is concentrated on few ppl, who can act with impunity.

> that the Iraq War was based on made-up evidence was a conspiracy theory.

To be fair though, that never was much of a conspiracy. Maybe in the United States it was but in the rest of the world I don't think people believe the WMD story, rather, we believed the UN weapons inspectors' story.

A poorly executed conspiracy is still a conspiracy.

No, it was simply a lie. And one that should have fallen completely flat. My respect for Colin Powell went through the floor that day.

The word ‘conspiracy’ itself has a legal, original, meaning entirely different from the popular meaning. I find all good discussions involving this clarify what meaning is intended.

I resort to just saying the definition of words, in a sentence, instead of the word itself.

I've told and convinced plenty of anti-vaxxers about the magical secret way our body naturally produces antibodies if we expose our body to dead versions of a virus (or, now, things shaped like that virus). They like magic, secrets and nature, they do not like the word vaccine.

I do the same with the word conspiracy, "That is a secret plan by a group to do something harmful". It rolls off the tongue.

The only really effective way to change someone's mind is to make them believe they came up with the conclusions themselves

> It is in fact a conspiracy theory. But a small reminder that conspiracy theory doesn't tell you anything about the truthfulness, e.g. that the Iraq War was based on made-up evidence was a conspiracy theory.

I think that's interpreting the term "conspiracy theory" more broadly than it's typically used. IMHO, colloquially it pretty much only refers to outlandish theories, based little to no actual evidence, and usually requiring a conspiracy so impossibly large and impossibly well executed that it beggars belief.

I don't think the idea that Jack Ma is being targeted by the CCP is just a plausible theory, not a conspiracy theory (in the colloquial sense). You have a group with the motive, means, and MO to do so, you just need to find the proof.

Watergate would've been a better example of a time when the conspiracy theorists turned out to be right.

> I don't think the idea that Jack Ma is being targeted by the CCP is just a plausible theory, not a conspiracy theory (in the colloquial sense). You have a group with the motive, means, and MO to do so, you just need to find the proof.

Which is the definition of a conspiracy theory. Words have meaning and this is a technical term; and altho it is common knowledge that it is being used as a smear word, this doesn't mean we have to play the same game here as well.

There is also no reason to pretend that the colloquial usage of conspiracy theory is more than opinion.

> Sometimes it feels China is going through the same stages of history Europe went through over centuries but at breakneck speed.

And you feel it right. This is what is the explanation for the schizophrenic public position of the Chinese establishment: on one hand they shout out loud that "economic liberalisation is irreversible, opening up will go on," and on other keep tightening all legal, and extralegal nuts on private enterprise, and in overall sliding back into the madness of seventies.

They have accepted the fact of millionaire chicken run to the West being unstoppable, but they at least want to prevent the multimillionaire, and billionaire chicken run.

They simply want their money that much, and that started to outweight the rational interest of "not slaughtering a hen laying golden eggs" in recent 2-3 years.

Your post reminded me of my recent encounter with the phrase "damning with faint praise". It is interesting how applicable it is in authoritarian governments; you can't simply praise, you must give enthusiastic encomiums. That is particularly interesting in business, where it may be obvious to business leaders that something is wrong, but anything lackluster brings about government condemnation, which is part of the problem the business people can see. Startup founders are usually sharp, rebellious individuals trying to upend current business practices, so the condemnations damper the business spirit to some degree.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise)

I mean, I get the same feeling from Apple events, everything is constantly the best ever.

The worst possible condemnation of a powerful national government: to compare its normal everyday functioning to a corporate product launch. Orwell was too optimistic.

Eh, it was just a more relatable example. If anything, it shows you that our idea of oppression is Apple overstating their product's capabilities.

The Orwellian part is people talking as though it’s a fact that Apple is overstating something.

As far as I can see that’s bullshit.

They say what they are measuring, and people do check it.

They’d be open to straight up legal action from both customers and shareholders if they were lying.

The Orwell's of the future will be writing about China and western social media (and a bit of Apple thrown in there)

Compared to other companies that present new products with something like "this year we've made a product worse than what we had before"?

Haven't been following Macbook quality much, huh?

I'd reverse the question.

Keyboard design aside (which was fixed a year ago, and wasn't a poor production standards/cheap materials, etc. issue, it was a BS make-it-thinner-design issue), you mean the best built laptops in the industry, or the CPUs, battery, etc. with universal praise (M1)?

> everything is constantly the best ever.

Not just the best ever, always 3x or 300% better according to fake benchmarks that nobody can audit. It's beyond Marketing, basically propaganda.

"It's Magic!"

They indicate what they are comparing in the smallprint and they do get audited by people like AnandTech or Ars.

So far, every single time, they have been shown to be accurate.

> They indicate what they are comparing in the smallprint

(smallprint) * tested in very specific condition X that does not reflect at all everyday usage of 99.9999% of users.

(The tech media) Apple did it again with 300% perf increase! Mad engineering!

That's just legal department finding a way to make propaganda harder to challenge. It's still propaganda in effect.

The fact that you are using a made up exaggeration doesn’t help your point.

They don’t in fact make exaggerations like that, otherwise you’d be able to quote a real one.

Accurate, with an asterisk (i.e. technically true, but intentionally misleading), which results in headlines like "No, the new Arm MacBook Air is not faster than 98% of PC laptops" when they are "audited".

"No, the new Arm MacBook Air is not faster than 98% of PC laptops"

The piece with that headline is about the only thing that has been audited and found to be false.

Search for commentary anywhere on that piece and you’ll find it has been completely debunked.

>Not just the best ever, always 3x or 300% better

Well that is the new / recent Apple. Steve rarely use these technical benchmarks with specific numbers and only talk about the experience or it is being faster, better.

Now it is just a more polished event Keynote which felt the same as Google event in that they were prepared by tech people for tech people.

Reminds me of the legend that the first person to stop clapping for Stalin in a meeting would be arrested, interrogated, and executed for treason.

That was an episode in The Gulag Archipelago. (I'm not sure how factual that makes it. I don't doubt it illustrates a real dynamic.)

Putin does the same thing. and literally just takes companies from billionaires.

Ah, if only our governments would take companies from billionaires too!

Or perhaps they could start with properly taxing them!

how about first journalists that don't tell lies about how taxes work.

99% they report on gross revenue and complain about how little tax is paid. And almost everyone buys it.

I know how taxes work.

That's why I don't buy the "gross revenue" argument, or the "actually the rich pay more of their income in taxes" arguments.

The rich and big corporations have billions (pun intended) of ways of padding their expenses, hiding their net, moving their wealth around so it can't be taxes, making shell companies etc.

IF those are all legal actions, you do not know how taxes work (knowing how an internal combustion engine works generally does not mean you understand valve timing formulae) Your anger is misplaced, and should fall at the feet of lawmakers.

>>>*Shell Companies*

Panama Papers is the most unreported, under-investigated scandal of the century

“Sometimes it feels China is going through the same stages of history Europe went through over centuries but at breakneck speed.” A dangerously ethnocentric perspective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com