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Comment by kevbin | Hacker News Reader

The truth hurts. China released a deadly virus into the world. It tried to cover it up. It tried to blackmail Australia. It is extorting Africa.

China and the Chinese people must accept their responsibility for this catastrophe. They must let the rest of the world, in the guise of the UN, come in and sort out how much of this crime was intentional and how much incompetence.

China must be held accountable. It should pay reparations. It should be forced to suspend any and all biomedical research until it can provably meet western safety standards.

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Are you aware that you're posting in exactly the flamewar style that we're asking people not to? I realize that this is a high-emotion, high-activation topic, but there are certain principles here that everyone needs to respect. That is what the site guidelines are for.

A comment like this one (and worse, "we need to shame China and the Chinese people" – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26548441 - I can't believe that anyone who has been here over 10 years would post something that horrible to HN) takes us deeper into the hell that we're trying to stay out of. I'm not going to ban you for these, because if I imagine myself into your position, my guess is that simply re-reading what you posted, once you've cooled down, will be punishment enough. But if you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Yes, I'm sorry for being incendiary. However, I think shame and guilt are excellent tools for getting a culture on track. Better than war, anyway.

In my view that vector points directly toward war. The only difference is magnitude, not direction.

> a backwards culture

If you continue to post slurs, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, but you can't do this here. Please don't do it again.

Thank you for showing more restraint than I did. I'm sorry for being incendiary, I did not mean to use any slurs. I've removed what I thought might be construed as slurs from my comments. I won't post further on this topic. Thank you for shaming me, I feel guilty and will do better.

I was trying to avoid shaming you, but I'm sure I could have done a better job of that, especially because I'm posting from a position of authority and that magnifies such effects by a million times.

One of my teachers once told me "I did a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford and I learned just one thing from it: that punishment is not good for learning." Hopefully we can get to a state where there's less punishment and more learning. I think examples are good for learning, so I hope you can stop feeling guilty and just take it as an example.

It’s the regime that’s the problem not the culture

Thanks for illustrating so well the flamewar mode dang just mentionned.

--"The truth hurts"

You are just accusing people of refusing to see "the truth" which may be true but is not a argument about the validity of your thesis. That common rethoric. That also preemptively invalidates any counter-argument to your thesis because you know we're just deceived out of (fill in what you want).

-- "China released a deadly virus into the world."

China is not just one person. Even the Chinese gov is too big an entity to be given a single will and agency. This kind of abstraction is fine for everyday talk but must be discarded whenever you try to have an intelligent debate about something. --" the Chinese people must accept their responsibility" Wow, like if I am working as a coal miner in remote China I must be held accountable by "my" poor control of high tech labs? Come on I live in a "democracy" that has conducted nuclear trials in the Pacific nearby living places which I was totally against. Do I need to be held responsible?

-- "this crime"

Plain flamewar mode

--" it can provably meet western safety standards"

Did you even read the article?!

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