Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why, but this all reminds me of when I was in secondary school, and many of us were in IRC channels of local ISP's and sites, and things like being channel operator or admin, or getting kicked, banned or k-lined could all give incredible feelings of power or despair. The political structure in the IRC channels and servers could change dramatically any evening, and some would boast about their mIRC war script skills, or things like knowing the cousin of a server admin, the next day in school

View on HN

That's exactly how Wikipedia operates. The difference is that on IRC everyone was doing it for the lulz. On Wikipedia some editors are trying to improve the encyclopedia while other are there for the power trips. The second group has an inherent advantage over the former group. Improving articles requires one to spend hours researching while undoing that work just requires a few clicks and vague references to POLICIES. This pisses editors off who becomes easy targets for SEALIONING and NPA. Eventually they write "fuck off, moron" which is a personal attack so they get banned and the power tripper wins again.

What's NPA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NPA

I think a lot of what people do in life is for power. Everyone wants to feel like they have power, especially power over other people. It's driven many of the recent social and political movements. Those who feel like they do not have power continually fight and struggle against those who they see have power, until they gain a modicum of power and almost universally abuse it.

I wonder if that perspective is skewed by your current life circumstances.

I've felt the way you described at some points in life, but not the majority of the time.

Not much, at least according to this book[1].

1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game

The idea first really occurred to me when the woke movement gained steam. I saw people wielding ideological positions as a club. Suddenly people who may have felt like they were oppressed and had no power, had a new weapon to oppress and force people they saw as their oppressors to do something they did not want to do. It was almost like a mantra of righteous indignation. "How dare you not agree with my political, social, or whatever position. That makes you a bigot, and I'm going to get you."

The government turned a blind eye to that, and in many ways condoned that behavior. The Internet probably made it worse.

I do not believe that one person has the right, or should have the power, to force their opinions, views, or ideas on another person. Organizationally, that's another story, but as a person, I believe you should have the right to believe and think and feel whatever you want even if it's contrary to everyone else. So long as you're not directly harming anyone. Words alone are NOT violence, unless it is calling for violence, or expressing a desire to cause harm.

The problem with power, and something that's never really been applied to the random individual, is that it corrupts, and the more power one has, the worse it gets.

> The government turned a blind eye to that

That's the First Amendment for you.

The issue is that society’s fundamentally work based on social norms, which are enforced to maintain the society. How narrow or broad the norms are vary by society, but the ‘rails’ have always been there.

That you draw the line at violence (in these situations) is a side effect of the particular rails you were raised in, but most societies draw different boundaries. There may still be some situations that even those guardrails aren’t what you think.

Same position for those advocating for pedophilia? Advocating for terrorist acts? Advocating for overturning the gov’t violently?

Agreed. The social norms change. It was within norms 50 years ago to be a racist, or at least make racist jokes and insinuations, today this isn't acceptable.

What is different with woke I believe is that they basically want to force speed-running this social norms evolution. No time to wait for the glacial pace of change of mindsets (generations), we will call out everyone right now. This provokes strong reactions.

The other issue is that not necessarily all progressive ideas will be actually accepted with time, many were/are/will be sorted out, but there's no real chance for this sorting out in woke, where any doubts about particular idea will get you shouted out.

What I think you’re seeing (and calling out in one group) is cognitive dissonance/protecting delusion, and trying to maintain group ideological boundaries and ‘purity’. When challenged, the lines will firm up and membership ‘policed’. Normal group dynamics.

The US went through similar levels of disruption in the late 60’s and early mid 70’s.

It isn’t just ‘woke’. you see the same reaction in other circles if you bring up vaccines, or gun control, or Jan 6th, or birth control, or religion, or global warming (less so now), etc.

Attempts to bring in information that conflicts with the core beliefs causes something like an emotional allergic reaction. Changing any of these core beliefs is near impossible when someone is in this state, as it pushes them into more overload. With a similar almost allergic reaction.

Most folks in these situations can’t have a rational discussion about them because the reason they are believing them is attached to a fundamental safety thing (deep emotional), not a rational knowledge thing.

Or as I’ve heard before (and seen play out) - ‘you can’t reason someone out of a problem they didn’t reason themselves into’.

As you’re pointing out I think, it’s too much for them to figure out, they get overwhelmed, and start lashing out.

Either ideological ‘belonging’, a need they can’t identify/face, or as a defense mechanism to a weakness or insecurity they can’t admit. All different faces of the same die I suspect.

I do believe they are often very racist themselves. They look to judge, not to understand. They are themselves full of prejudice against those they perceive as the oppressor, however unfounded that perception may be. It is a most fundamentalist black/white thinking.

Sure, there is still a difference to the usual racist subject that is unappologically racist. But overall I think woke ideas only entrench it.

The opposition towards woke doesn't exist because it is racist. Most are just opposed to bad ideas.

Example are development for voice actors. Voice actors apparently were only allowed to voice characters that mirror their ethnicity. Now everyone complains about racial segregation. That is a phenomenon that can directly be traced back to "woke".

There are some global, strictly enforced, norms though. That will likely never change in any possible future where human society still exists. Regardless of any other conceivable combination of events, human personalities, culture, etc...

Such as the prohibition on privately enriching uranium.

Do you mean ‘global super power enforced’ hard lines, or social norms?

I’m pretty sure the opium farmers of Afghanistan wouldn’t give two shits about private uranium enrichment, for instance. And would be happy to keep someone’s secret about doing so if they had an incentive to do so.

And while growing and selling opium would be considered a hard social taboo in most places (and the Taliban, for example, regularly executed folks for doing it in those areas of Afghanistan!) the US was more than happy to allow it in exchange for popular support in the region when they were occupying it.

[https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/afghanistan-opium...]

> There are some global, strictly enforced, norms though.

These two

> The government turned a blind eye to that [and this was bad]

> I do not believe that one person has the right, or should have the power, to force their opinions, views, or ideas on another person.

look like a contradiction.

Is the your objection the narrow only one person should not have power over the opinions of others, but two or more are fine? If even many people should not have power over the opinion of others, how could the government "turn a blind eye"? Shouldn't it be "correctly stayed out of it"?

IRC was definitely all that, if not worse.

>Those who feel like they do not have power continually fight and struggle against those who they see have power, until they gain a modicum of power and almost universally abuse it.

On Reddit there are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands.

Why do they do this, when they are not paid? When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question.

Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People" <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology (/r/politics being an obvious example).

Basically, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill.

Quoting another:

>and for each moderator there are 100 sycophants and narcissists lined up to take their place

Most mods know this, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits during the recent "protest" the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves.

Even worse, a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever.

Bonus: The classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".

The #1 driver for human motivation is prestige. Look into it, the assessment is damning, rending our species an immature little tea party, with death.

> Everyone wants to feel like they have power, especially power over other people.

We only need to look to the comments here on HN, where there are usually several people in each post writing "the government should regulate" or "the government should ban", no matter how minute the issue is. I wouldn't be surprised if people here start requiring government regulations for scrollbar widths soon (apologies if they have already done that).

> Those who feel like they do not have power continually fight and struggle against those who they see have power, until they gain a modicum of power and almost universally abuse it.

The rulers know that, so I think anybody who successfully struggles against powers will start getting higher and higher offers until they cave and join the machine. Most will cave at the first offer, because they were really only out for themselves from the start.

The number of similarities between modern leftism and organized religion is uncanny. You've outlined the "blind faith in regulation" aspect but the more you look the more you find. They have their own scapegoat, epic struggle, sacred figures, sacrilege, science denialism, 2nd coming, it just keeps going. I wonder if it's residual from centuries of religious rules ingrained in us. I strongly suspect there's an intermediate between biological instinct/ evolution and learned behavior. I think the leftists are still chained to the pattern of worship just without the traditional deity.

You have it almost right except the idea this is limited to some subset of humanity instead of all of us.

very likely: we have a "channel" in our DNA to worship, from our ancestry (N-thousand/million years ago) where we were starving to death, chasing woolly mammoths. Those who prayed and concentrated/unified their collective energy to make it 1 more kilometer and finally killed their prey survived. Those who gave it "the ole college try" didn't pass on their DNA because they starved.

Similar big frogs in small ponds politics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com