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Comment by esrauch | Hacker News Reader

I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.

That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?

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Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.

I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.

So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.

It's because you sounded like a sealion. That and whataboutism are just adding refuting noises without substance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.

I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.

I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.

The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.

The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.

You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.

You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.

Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.

I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.

Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.

Because you sound like a concern troll/sea lion. Ask your question better.

Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.

> Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?

Obama didn't need to demand it, the Universities went ahead and did it on their own.

https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...

So not a comparable situation.

In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.

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