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Comment by sennight | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

They are correct though. This is something that requires a societal fix, technology is not the solution.

It isn't in the government's interest, or the interest of corporate leadership, to undo the present state. The government relies on the centralized and all too obliging collection of non-government interests in order to circumvent existing legal protections. So looking to them for help is comically stupid. Technology is the only solution. Do you remember the events surrounding the creation of PGP? You'd be well served by doing a little research into the early writings on the cypherpunk mailing list.

I agree with your first sentence, but Doctorow is saying that the onus is on us to make it in the government's interest. I won't blame anyone for feeling disenfranchised about how much of a democracy we actually still live in, but if you think a vote might still count, we need to make these election issues. Doctorow (and adjacent privacy advocates; please see the DEFCON31 talk on Encryption Wars Part 3) are trying to stoke the fires for a massive public push back. Be cynical? Sure, I get it. Keep being cynical. But don't stop trying in the mean time. There are a ton of ways to support advocacy (either the orgs involved or through individual action) but if you understand the present as a "state", you must know that state can be changed.

I've got no beef with anyone who wants to fruitlessly attempt to convince governments and corporations to act against their own interests, just don't frame it in such a way as to preclude actually productive solutions. Also, don't make it any worse than it already is - which will certainly be the case when bargaining with politicians.

Please edit out swipes like "You'd be well served by doing a little research" out of your HN posts. It poisons discussion, so it's important to avoid going there.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

That isn't a "swipe", that is an opinion earnestly stated - the only way it could be considered a swipe is if you take for granted people being well versed in the goings on of the early cipherpunk mailing list. I make no such assumption. I also strongly disagree with the other guy getting flagged, such hypersensitive moderation is far more poisonous to the discussion than anything yet said.

I'm sorry but what makes it a swipe is that it's a low-information putdown (and even a cliché of those). That's the high order bit, not whether it was an opinion-earnestly-stated, because it's what determines how the comment lands with the other user in the typical case, and that's what determines whether we get more interesting thoughtful exchanges, or less interesting flamewars. This case ended up being typical because we ended up with a flamewar of the tit-for-tat variety. That's not what HN is for!

(As a side note, one reliable indicator of thread deterioration is when people start arguing about what each did or didn't say.)

Instead of putting down the other person's knowledge level, it would have been better to share* some of the specific goings-on of early cipherpunk mailing lists, since you obviously know something about that. That would have gratified the curiosity of the general readers (me included!) and this is more important—it is in fact the purpose of the site—than defeating somebody in an argument.

As for the other user getting flagged, I appreciate your looking out for them—but it isn't about either you or them, it's about the general audience, which comes here hoping to read things that are more interesting than putdowns and tit-for-tats. We have rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) that try to encourage that and discourage the opposite, and when people break those rules, it's good to mark that by flagging the comments because it indicates to the rest of the userbase that concern for discussion quality remains present here.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

As I said, it is only a putdown if you presuppose that everyone is expected to already know the thing. So I'd agree with you if I was responding to someone like Phil Zimmermann - but that isn't the case here (I'm pretty sure). Citing a specific discussion in the mailing list in order to circumvent this interesting definition of a slight presents a problem, first: the entire raison d'etre of the list was to put into action the concept of technical solutions for political problems - so it would be like eating an elephant. Second: the one quintessential thread that immediately comes to mind would severely strain your moderation instincts - considering these flaggings. But since you expressed an interest, I'll provide a hint: one proposed solution, prior to the satoshi white paper, centered around the game theory of a trustless market for assassination.

It is ironic that a discussion about solving political/social problems with technological solutions, on a news aggregator like this one, has taken this turn: self censorship and moderation in the furtherance of discourse quality control.

Your argument is too refined! All I'm talking about is basic internet dynamics at the crudest level, because those are the dynamics that govern large public forums like HN.

Low-information internet putdowns land with readers as swipes, especially with the reader who is the target of the putdown. This degrades discussion, so we don't allow it here.

You don't need to talk down to me, I'm well aware of the encryption wars.

This is not a problem that some upstart technology can handle, it requires a societal act, and society acts through its government. Maybe you are satisfied with defeatism but I am not.

I'm not so sure about that, you don't seem to be aware of the fact that there is an incredibly long list of examples demonstrating that governments and corporations will regularly violate the law if they have the technical means to do so. The only way to prevent abuse from these bad actors is to make such abuse either technically impossible, or immediately detrimental to their own interests (keep in mind that these are amoral actors that are historically never held to account). So what is more likely to succeed: an upstart technology, or a fundamental rework of the incentives undergirding all social constructs? You really should be suspicious of anyone proposing such performative busywork with no hope of success, because they are worse than defeatists - they are actively protecting the status quo. If you are dissatisfied with the present situation, by all means - write your congressman... but if that is the extent of your corrective action, because you've deluded yourself into thinking "I'm really helping with this political act!", then you and everyone else are actually worse off for it.

So what is more likely to succeed: an upstart technology, or a fundamental rework of the incentives undergirding all social constructs

we have technical solutions. they are either not working, or are not being used. (or are misused so much that they get a bad reputation)

an upstart technology will not change anything if noone cares.

the only way to create lasting change is to make people care.

one person at a time.

You need to re-read my previous comment. It doesn't appear that you processed and internalized it at all.

Your account has unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and quite badly. Can you please stop doing that? We have to ban accounts that post that way, and I don't want to ban you.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

You're incorrect, you appear to be replying to the wrong user. Nothing in your link is relevant to what I've said.

You've been posting in the flamewar style, crossing into personal attack, calling names (in the sense that the HN guidelines use that term), and more. In fact you just did it again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37652835. We ban accounts that do these things, so please don't do them anymore.

I scolded the other user as well, but someone else breaking the rules doesn't make it ok for you to.

No, your comment is pretty easy to understand, I just categorically disagree with it - as your prescribed fix hasn't shown any success in living memory. Now compare that to the tangible hardening of the 1st, 2nd and 4th amendments thanks to technological fixes. If all goes well we might even end up fixing the infinite pain train of the monetary policy. Subversive technology has done this, not angry letters.

Technology is a by-product of society (it is inherently cultural and political).

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