It's a sad thought really, no number of history books will ever have the same effect as talking to your grandpa about his experiences on the beaches at Normandy, or marching in to liberate a concentration camp. I fear we're on the brink of forgetting a lot of lessons.
The most glamorous thing he ever mentioned was bivouacing somewhere with enough French wine to keep a functional drunk on…that story was over glasses of Port because his war experience inclined him to functional drunks for the rest of his living days.
I don’t recall ever meeting a veteran who thought the important lesson was D-day or liberating the camps. Invariably the point was how much war sucks.
My experience has been that when I meet people who saw actual combat, they invariably focus on how much it sucks. The folks who glorify it seem to always be the people who never experienced it first hand.
My grandfather helped to liberate Dachau. The only detail he ever told us about that day was how thin the prisoners were. The men were light enough to carry out two at a time, one on each arm; and they felt fragile, like small children.
The chimp brain of ours is highly over rated in what lessons it can learn from blundering about. The more complex the issue blundering is garaunteed no matter what lessons are available and who tells a good story. Look no further than Afghanistan. No lessons learnt.
The only thing to do when things get too complex is get out of the room and run for the hills. Let the buffoon class who think they have a handle on complexity because of their grandpas stories blunder away. When the dust settles return and rebuild.
"get out of the room and run for the hills"
If you're not a member of the majority group in society and you feel a fomenting hatred towards you, it's probably a good idea to sell your stuff and run away quickly. The downside of a false positive isn't that bad.
Fortunately in modern wealthy countries few have had to do that in a rather long time.
What if you feel a hatred fomenting towards you but you're still the projected majority for at least a few more years?
Lolol jk jk please don't take this seriously.
Are they to scatter with the dust in the breeze?
Who will stand before the world, knowing what to say
When the very last survivor fades away?
If this is true, why not give some links to a few HN comments, if not a lot, to add a lil evidence to what seems, on the face of it, a truly ridiculous claim.
I think this is the thread they were referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27414920 or rather at least that's what I found with Google.
Edit: Very relevant follow-up to that post just landed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424421
I'm not in the USA, like about 50% of HN, and know very little about the subjects, so asked only about the HN-part of the claim, that
> a lot of HN ... seem to be fighting to the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and misinformation.
How many comments or HN users until you get to reasonably call them "a lot"? What percentage? What if it's actually 0.0001%? How bad the "holocaust denialism and misinformation" before "fighting to the death for the right to spread it" is reasonable? Especially in a comment particularly targeting misinformation, such extreme hyperbole and writing like that apparently breaks the guidelines in a lot of ways.
Also, being charitable, different people read different parts of HN, maybe the GP reads mostly the political topics with disgusting comments, and "a lot of HN ... seem to be fighting to the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and misinformation" is reasonable. UH but no, it's ridiculous exaggeration, is precisely an area such a thing is not helpful, even on a very charitable interpretation. "Fighting to the death" really means literally that, or anything like it? or..just writing one or a few comments on HN?
So, what would you or anyone say the "strongest plausible interpretation" of "a lot of HN ... seem to be fighting to the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and misinformation" is? (genuine question) I'm struggling to give it any remotely plausible interpretation, even assuming it's extreme exaggeration. Even in the "strongest plausible interpretation", though, it seems to me, drastically changing the meaning of most of its words in favour of the writer, the comment is still hysterical, break a lot of guidelines[0], and is itself misinformation.
Edit: Sorry, I should have had morning coffee before writing above comment. (Also I have the flu!) I reread your comment, you seem to be saying that you thought the GP was trying to say in essence "a lot of people on HN support total free speech" (or whatever you want to call that, if it even makes sense). OK! That does make some sense. But still, describing that as "fighting to the death for the right to spread holocaust denialism and misinformation" seems the kind of writing that regularly gets people banned from HN. It still breaks the same guidelines. Thank you, much appreciated!
[0] You know, like Please don't fulminate, Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive., Eschew flamebait., Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. etc
.
> I thought I was being super-charitable asking for evidence instead of just downvoting, flagging and perhaps complaining.
"charitable interpretation" as in "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." from the guidelines not the generic "charitable" as in you felt you were giving GP something extra because you decided to discuss what you weren't sure you understood instead of immediately flagging/downvoting it.
> I don't hear any charitable interpretation applied to me, rather telling me I was the one exaggerating here!
Same as the above but also there is some bit of irony in saying "I was being super-charitable asking for evidence instead of just downvoting, flagging and perhaps complaining." yet when replying to a comment by someone else giving you the information asked for and a different interpretation of GP's comment you immediately follow up with "I don't hear any charitable interpretation applied to me". Regardless, if there was a different interpretation beyond your doubt of the claim and the desire for evidence of it please give that (as I gave the other interpretation of the GP) instead of just saying you don't feel one was given.
> I'm not in the USA, so was asking only about the HN-part of the claim
Same assumption here, hence only providing evidence for the HN-part of the claim in the response.
> How many comments or HN users until you get to reasonably call them "a lot"?
Hmm, probably something each person gets to decide - that being said the ACLU topic had hundreds of comments on multiple pages, most in supporting of support free speech even in cases the message is disagreeable so I'd hazard to guess that meets most people's criteria for "a lot of comments on HN recently".
> How bad the "holocaust denialism and misinformation" before "fighting to the death for the right to spread it" is reasonable?
Well that's probably the center of the whole debate, crack that and you've got an answer for the whole show. Personally I lean on the "support free speech even in cases the message is disagreeable" side of the fence because I don't think we can trust what's popularly true at an instant to guide what is right to publicly discuss and I imagine GP lives much more on the "if it's even a small amount of denial or misinformation on the holocaust we shouldn't defend it" side of the fence for their own reasons.
I'd be curious of your particular stance and reasoning if you're willing and have the time.
> Especially in a comment particularly targeting misinformation, such extreme hyperbole surely breaks the guidelines in multiple ways.
How much it's hyperbole depends on your interpretation of the comment and how much the comments in the threads do/don't back it up. At the very least it's a bit of a "shoot first ask questions later" approach to start out saying you haven't checked the comments out yet and end saying the claim about the comments has such hyperbole it's surely against the guidelines. Maybe you'll find it is, maybe you'll find it isn't, but it's a bit hyperbolic in itself to claim it beforehand.
Personally I don't think the original claim was hyperbolic because the linked articles are literally about ACLU supporting free speech for card carrying Nazis and there are very many comments in the thread which share my "support free speech even in cases the message is disagreeable" view (which the ACLU does as well, per the articles).
>> How bad the "holocaust denialism and misinformation" before "fighting to the death for the right to spread it" is reasonable?
I was referring to the reasonableness or otherwise of using the phrase "fighting to the death for the right to spread it", not the reasonableness of fighting to the death for the right to spread it. Sorry that wasn't clearer.
Regrettably this sort of trolling has become a pervasive problem on the internet over the last decade or so.