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Comment by curiousllama | Hacker News Reader

Can often see the same thing on Twitter now - it’s cool to see in real time

I don't know about journalists, but given the idiotic replies to the posts of the computer scientists I follow on Twitter, I'm not sure I blame them for producing content for other top computer scientists.

One day some rando really will solve P=NP and they'll show you! (Divide by P and N=0 obviously)

Uh... you mean N=1, unless P=0... :p

I said what I said

I went to high school with a guy who is big in the self described Left-wing journalist Twitter.

I remember very distinctly watching an article - well, the ideas core to that article - he'd written percolate from New Republic to The Atlantic to The New York Times over a period of about a month. What was interesting was that in his original article, the concepts he presented were presented as radical, and as a thought experiment. By the time it made its way down to the NYT a month later, those same concepts were presented as obvious solutions that "both sides" should agree on as a matter of course, and any disagreement was just intellectual folly.

The conversation about these ideas had already happened on Twitter; NYT was just reporting the score.

It is interesting to see the overton window slide in real time.

Can you link these articles? I'd be interested to see this evolution you describe.

People don't present themselves as extreme. I think what happened is that a lot of people ran this "thought experiment" and it made a lot of sense to them.

edit: The New Republic was passed from a famous racist to a founder of facebook to a Democratic party bagman and banking heir. Characterizing it as an extreme left outlet is bizarre, because at times it wouldn't even count as center-left.

From the first paragraph of wikipedia: "Through the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine incorporated elements of the Third Way and conservatism."

So first of all you're responding to what you want to read, not the actual content of my comment. I said that the friend of mine in question was a self described hard Leftist, and that he was big in leftist oriented Twitter. I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication. When you were looking at Wikipedia, did you skip the part where they were owned by that guy in the 1980s because it came out that the editors and owner were spies for the USSR, EDIT and they were trying to revamp their image /ENDEDIT? Or the bit about their return to their leftist roots since their sale in 2016?

Furthermore looking at who owned an institution 30-40 years ago doesn't really add any value to the conversation about what they are today.

Dude.

The New Republic isn't a GOP outlet, sure. It might even occasionally slightly hurt centrist sensibilities, which would put it left of the NYT. But if you think that's "hard left", you haven't seen hard left, or even moderate left.

Try something like wsws.org, or The Jacobin. The New Republic isn't remotely that.

> I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication.

What are the actual ends of the spectrum on which you identify the NR's position as "hard left" ?

I’ve seen Breitbart comments accusing the AP of being communists.

They’re about as milquetoast neoliberal as you can get, but they typically skew towards diversity and democracy which is probably enough to make you a steenkin pinko to some people.

It's the same on both sides. The Hunter Biden "laptop saga" moved from NY Post -> Fox News -> Wall Street Journal.

This was after Fox and WSJ passed on the story initially. Once it got traction from NY Post, they ran with it. Sean Hannity even claimed to have the laptop in his possession. Then he said it was stolen. Then he got it back, but couldn't share any of the juicy details cause his "lawyers wouldn't let him" [1]. They wouldn't even let other news organizations look at the incriminating emails [2].

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/sean-hannity-says-lawyers-wont-020500...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-h...

I had a LOL moment when Rudy Giuliani posed with one of the computers on TV, because apparently the Mac guy wasn't smart enough to know the difference between an OSX based Macbook Pro and a Windows based LG.

I've heard rumors a lot of the grouthink happens as Twitter users share lists of accounts to block and coordinate in private Google Docs.

Wouldn’t not witnessing this yourself or similar be a similar kind of groupthink behavior? In an us vs them mentality.

> Wouldn’t not witnessing this yourself or similar be a similar kind of groupthink behavior? In an us vs them mentality.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying... not doing these things is just groupthink in the opposite direction?

Edit: Maybe there's a better word for it: bubble building.

Edit 2: I do believe Twitter fosters the 'us vs them' mentality you mention; I tried to point out only the tip of the iceberg is visible publicly.

I’m saying that “I heard rumors of X” is the same bubble-type behavior that’s being criticized in the conversation flow just towards an out-group (aka a group on a different social media platform).

Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

How would you recommend initiating a conversation to discuss when 'the actual paying "audience" was the chum that everyone took for granted' but one actually can't 'see the same thing on Twitter' except due to intermittent OPSEC/OSINT failures?

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