Hacker News Reader

Comment by stuartjohnson12 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand your point.

My point is book burning can cause backlash. Therefore so can deletionism.

When the backlash happens, it's often already too late. But people are aware something was gone, that's why there is a backlash.

I know this because it happened in the past with the Cultural Revolution. Not saying it will happen in the same way here.

Maybe the only backlash we'll ever get is against my stupid comments. Lol.

"We should delete data so that people get upset" is just shy of "we should shoot some kids so people will finally get upset". If we're going for over the top statements anyway.

When we look at the actual current US sociopolitical climate, we see that people don't actually care about either of those things. Quite the opposite, they are more than happy to burn books.

So what we can expect instead is that they'll care even less about a bunch of folks hitting the delete keys that wipe out several generations worth of historical record because it happens to be digital. If anything, they'll cheer about it.

> "We should delete data so that people get upset" is just shy of "we should shoot some kids so people will finally get upset".

Excuse me? Since when is shooting kids _just shy of_ deleting data. And no the rest of your comment doesn't pull that argument together.

It's just shy of it by the part where people rather than important information die; the structure of the argument is exactly the same. "We should do the thing we want to not have happen so much and to such a severe degree that people will finally get upset enough to want to stop us, but we better do it *a lot* because we know they won't care otherwise" is a truly idiotic argument to make when the thing you're doing can't be undone, and your goal is to not have it happen at all.

Whether it's information deletion or human deletion, you can't undo the damage you're doing, so what the hell are you talking about when you pretend it's something to consider?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com