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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Don't need for book references, that is how it is today in many countries, and it has been always in less democratic societies.

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When you see a phenomena described in literature, you have some emotional distance to it. It may be more easy for you to accept the possibility that such a phenomena can exist.

Sometimes people cannot bear to see the phenomena in real life even if it is very clear for many people. Life is complex, so there are always many opportunities for weave a narrative to explain away phenomena that you cannot bear to see.

Having been born as the first free generation on a post ditactorship Portugal, I definitly have another relationship growing up to stories from PIDE/DGS and colonial war survivors.

And I should note, compared to some countries, things were relatively soft on our case.

Yes, I believe you. However, other people may react differently from you, and they may react even more strongly if they have been living in the dictatorship themselves. I have spent some time in dictatorships, and it is not uncommon for some people to admire the strength of the dictator. Living in a situation changes how you think, and the more stressful the situation, the more you become emotionally committed to how you think, making it difficult to change it.

Yeah! How dare they, referencing literature.

That wasn't the point, no need for literature references when you can enjoy that kind of life today when living in less fortunate regions.

Draconian IT laws mean that in many countries you could be persecuted for threatening national security as a blanket rule with indefinitely the long harassment called investigation.

They are already in place in such countries, plenty of people suffer through them daily.

Or, just dealing with FAANG

Your sarcasm has been noted and recorded.

Everything you do has been noted and recorded. We'll determine later if it's something we don't like in the future.

This concept scares me more than most.

The fact that is scares you has been noted. Someone will contact you shortly.

The fact you noted that has been noted.

It's not that somebody might contact me shortly.

It is that somebody might contact me in 10 years, and at that point I'll have no idea about the context or how to "defend myself" because I won't know what they're talking about.

Maybe it's far fetched, I don't know, but it's a possibility. An interesting thought exercise if nothing else.

Referencing 1984, Brave New World and that quote about freedom of speech that Voltaire never actually said make up the holy trinity of pseudo-intellectual posturing on the internet.

Yeah it was Voltaire's biographer who was describing what she thought was Voltaire's thinking at the time. Still a good quote though regardless of source.

“1984 was dystopian, and anything I don’t like is dystopian, therefore anything I don’t like is straight out of 1984”

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