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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985·

While you are correct, this is the logic that is used to guilt-slash-shame folks who do not want to get involved into getting involved. It is one of the many sources of intense polarization that we suffer from today, and it forces people to take uninformed stances on things that makes them little more than mindless footsoldiers for causes that need a nuanced touch.

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> it forces people to take uninformed stances on things

There are lots of ways to unproductively engage with politics - and I agree that we live in an age of highly visible unproductive engagement. However, banning engagement makes it official company policy that every interaction with politics be uninformed. "It was hard so we gave up" is just not a good sign for your leadership.

> I agree that we live in an age of highly visible unproductive engagement. However, banning engagement makes it official company policy that every interaction with politics be uninformed.

Not necessarily - I don't think engagement is particularly informative. A ban, even a widely flouted one, gives people permission to disengage, and might be valuable for that reason alone (in the same way that e.g. people have argued that monasteries and convents created a good place for asexuals in society, even when their rules were widely flouted).

Either way, the Coinbase employees are now involved with this. They helped build this, they are in this. The discussions may be silenced but "politics" isn't. It's not possible to not be political. This is a great demonstration of that.

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