To the "I wish HN would stay out of politics" crew.
You can stay out of politics, but politics will always come and find you.
You can stay out of politics, but politics will always come and find you.
But hey, I only get to enjoy this if the measles here in Texas don't get me first.
That said, I’m for people being idiots. I’m just done paying for it. If you’re chugging raw milk during a bird flu epidemic and your family gets sick because of it, basic insurance and the public should only pick up the cost after you’ve declared bankruptcy.
People who claim a taste difference between raw and pasteurised, I'd very much like to see someone taste the difference on the same cow's milk blind, before and after pasteurisation. I just don't think it affects the taste much, and certainly not as much as fat %.
And for people who claim health benefits, I would like to see a double blind study demonstrating those benefits.
That’s pasteurized. At a higher temp than the supermarket stuff, even.
Pasteurization does affect taste though. Around me there are two different dairies, one does regular pasteurization and one does vat pasteurization and I can tell the difference. There is ultra pasteurization which is just gross. I've never put unpasteurized head to head against equally fresh pasteurized though, and given what I now know I'm not going to.
In Mexico I suspect that almost all milk is ultra pasteurized since it's not refrigerated in stores and has wicked-long expiration dates. It's also some of the best-tasting milk I've had so I think that flavour has more to do with some of the other milk processes (like skimming) and the livelihood of the cows rather than with how it's pasteurized.
[1] In practice this is just milk with the lactase enzyme added at some point during production.
There is ultra pasteurization which is just gross.
Of course the above is subjective. Others have stated they prefer it. To each their own, but I will continue to maintain it makes milk taste gross.
Otherwise I would at least demand it be fermented into kefir so the food microbes can muscle out the bad.
Sickness caused by bacteria doesn't happen as soon as one bad bacteria (bacterium?) enters your body, a certain critical mass is usually required. This is very similar to the concept of "viral load" where a certain amount of viral genetic material needs to be exchanged before the viral infection can take hold.
The "beneficial bacteria" on your skin and in your gut make it harder for bad bacteria to take root in many different ways, one of them simply being they provide competition, "crowding out the bad guys".
Another way is that many, many, many types of antibiotics were originally discovered as metabolites produced by bacteria and fungi (examples include penicillin, streptomycin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline).
And for completeness sake, milk kefir contains many Lactobacillus species that are also a natural part of the mammal microbiome (which makes sense when you think about it; Lactobacillus are named for consuming lactose, an ingredient of mammal milk).
Before refrigeration most milk was made into butter, cheese and other products. Unless your ancestors actually herded the animals themselves they probably didn’t drink much raw milk.
If so, is there a signup page?
not for long
IMHO there needs to be a mechanism for breaking the loop and then we can have civil online political discussions. Unfortunately most places just ban it or ban those who got into the loop, either way its ugly.
IRL when discussing politics and things don't go badly its thanks to 3rd party who will moderate or calm down the heated debaters.
%99.999 of the time its usually trolls or people with good intentions(with wrong solutions based on wrong information or understanding of the situation). Trolls can be fun when they play with hypothetical scenarios and edge cases, conducting thought experiments.
You are also unlikely to change the views of the people with good intentions through discussion but they are very useful to understand what their motives so you can develop beter arguments or solutions. Also, you might find out that on some issues you are one of those with good intentions(but misguided understanding of the situation).
On the other hand:
“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
That word is 'Nazi.' Nobody cares about their motives anymore.”
- Julius Goat
What matters is that the current administration is disappearing people with no legal reasons, due process or possible recourse. Either you agree with them in which case fuck you, or you don't and you condemn them. There can be no compromise or civility when one side is so aggressive and dangerous.
People who voted for Trump are not stupid. They have real concerns that they do not see being met and so they are turning to something that while maybe not ideal is at least a promise of maybe better. Maybe it will be worse, but they don't see things on the right track as they were either.
The economy is shit, eggs are more expensive than ever but those same people that insisted those issues alone should decide the fate of the country don't seem to care anymore. Why?
People who voted for Trump weren't stupid, they've been molded into it by the most expensive proaganda apparatus that ever existed. Ask yourself, why isn't Trump's popularity declining in the face of such incompetency?
Now, what can a nice talk achieve that material reality failed to convince those people of?
I find it really funny that even now, several months into his seconds term, you're still attempting to paint his supporters as regular level-headed people with "real concerns". Yea, that's why in every interview where they cry about lost jobs or crashed market it's "I thought he was going to hurt the others!". Real fine people he's got there.
They have valid concerns, and taking steps to minimizing those concerns is just muddying the water in favor of those using political violence against people who don't deserve it.
There's a lot of counter-intel campaigns flying around all at once, and a lot of them are curated to infect brains of people who are willing to accept fascism.
"Well, they're not completely nazis... so you're wrong for likening them to nazis!"
"Well, you've decided to shut off discussion to people opening your mind about the impending fascism. That must mean you're not fit for discussion"
Do you know how crazy this all sounds once you're outside of a specific left echo chamber? How is the hyperbole I employed any more unbelievable than that of the poster I was replying to? Another sibling comment to yours says that Trump is rounding up political opponents for a gulag. Nevermind that he has only rounded up non-citizen (most of them in the US illegally) because that's all he can do.
If you look at my posting history, it's wildly left-wing as little as 2 years ago. I've become completely disillusioned with the left after noticing how self-contradictory some of those ideas are and how the language of crisis is deployed to constantly smear their political opponents. Everyone the left doesn't like is Hitler and every policy they don't like is fascism. Give me break.
Edit:
For a little more elaboration, look at the speech codes and compelled "DEI pledges" that American universities have employed in the last few years[1]. How is this not speech policing? You might argue that these are private institutions, and maybe that's fair enough, but when the government pulls funding for crap like this the hyperbole and outrage persist.
Or look at Canada's bill C-63[2]. This bill aims to allow the possibility of life sentences for "hate speech"[3]. To me this is authoritarian. To many left wing commentators, it's another day at the office, I guess - meanwhile the Canadian right wing party is regularly called fascist[4][5] despite being basically in line with US Democrats on many issues.
[1] https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...
[2] https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-63/first-r...
[3] https://bccla.org/2024/09/whats-in-bill-c-63-why-are-we-alar...
[4] https://medium.com/pigeons-peculiarities/pierre-poilievres-p...
[5] https://cultmtl.com/2025/02/pierre-poilievre-has-racked-up-e...
Trump does not care about the law. SCOTUS, in a historic 9-0 ruling, commanded him to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. He unsurprisingly did not comply. Yet you're still insisting he can't legally do X or Y so everything is fine. When has that stopped him, like ever?
If that's not fascism, then what is? What would it take for you to say "OK that's too much"?
[1] https://apnews.com/article/trump-citizens-prison-el-salvador...
In the meantime, Trump is actually deporting people without due process to inhumane torture camps run by a dictator while openly bragging about it and defying court orders.
These two things are not the same.
What I'm replying to is the fantastical Kool-aid MSNBC and alt-left media spin. I'm pretty sure the Republicans are not going to be rounding up and killing minorities despite hyperbolic descriptions like "people who literally want to kill me and deport my good friends to guantanamo bay cuba".
Wait, you're saying El Salvador is a dictatorship? From briefly glancing at Wikipedia I don't see any evidence of that. Why the need to smear another country just to make Trump look worse?
In short: it doesn't convince you of anything, it merely reinforces your existing biases.
Trump has a gulag in El Salvador, right now, that he uses to send his political opponents to. And you people are still making up fantasies to play the victim. Absolutely disgusting.
Then you shouldn't talk to Trump supporters as that's exactly what they want to do for anyone that disagrees with them, and last I checked, they're capitalists.
They are planning on abducting people off the street, completely ignoring the courts and denying due process, and sending them to another country where they're being deprived of their rights, again, with no due process and no (effective) judicial review.
I'd expect most right wingers would be against this, but the Orange in Charge's supporters seem to hew to the "well if you didn't do anything wrong you've got nothing to worry about" angle because it's something happening to people they think deserve it.
This is literally the left wing reply when people complain about losing their job or their family for voicing the wrong political belief. "They deserve it, they should 'do better'."
Let's keep that in perspective.
What additional information do they need to get out there other than they want me and people like me dead? What additional information do I need to get out there other than I don't want them to do that?
Therefore, most of the time you can just ignore them and your experience wouldn't any different than the natives who would also encounter a-holes for different reasons. The problem starts when someone in power to affect your life is one of those but in normal times you still can push back by questioning their actions as they still seek approval from the larger society.
The case with Trump seems to be the same with the case with Brexit: Those a-holes(not everyone who support those but a subset of them who are a-holes) start believing that they are in power and the society approves them therefore they can act on their instincts or plans.
I was working in London on the Brexit referendum day, some of our Spanish developers had trouble with people from their neighborhood right after the referandum.
After the infekktion of 2015, moderators of Right-leaning discussion boards started amping up their censorship. Left leaning and moderate discussion boards still tend to be more moderate, letting most discussions in and censoring less.
Most of the time, one side is trying to play an equal field, while the other shits all over it and just yells "Winning!"
It's not that the political topics are unimportant but all my feeds just end up looking the same as each other and the same as a newspaper app. I hate election nights because of this.
Honestly did not believe that people commented on porn forums before this incident.
But look at it this way: I see the us political spectrum melting down into authoritarianism and you’re complaining you don’t need to be reminded of it.
A similar analogy would be if we are at your house, and it catches fire, and you complain that it is interfering with watching Netflix while I’m trying to call 911 for help.
From my perspective you are ignoring your own demise and from your perspective I’m just being annoying.
But I would not consider it a political statement to adopt this policy.
If what you want is a "don't piss off your coworkers by discussing topics unrelated to work that you know will annoy people" policy, that is fine, but don't pretend you are not engaging in politics.
Say your company has a possibility of working with some client company who is directly or indirectly involved with cause X. If it is “political” to talk about not working with them because of X, but it is “not political” to talk about working with them, then you see what I mean.
It doesn’t have to be a destructive conversation: one employee might say we should avoid them, but you might say we need to work with them because we need the money now and can drop them later when we are in a better place. Other employees could talk how cause X is not that unethical for reasons. If someone balks at a point of view incompatible with theirs and is incapable of expressing a viewpoint in a way that respects other views, maybe that someone is not mature enough and next time your HR can avoid that type.
I wish people were at least honest about "no politics" to mean "lets avoid to unsafe, potentially divisive issues relative to our geographic location, and take the basic tenets of neoliberal, capitalistic society to be assumed". And yeah, that is a more than reasonable policy. Its a difficult policy in international spaces, because its very hard to not trespass that line when political contexts differ so strongly across the globe
Well, then any discussion about an illiberal oclocratic executive (such as 47's) should be fair game...
I find someone's heuristics for deciding which category a statement falls into chiefly turns on if they agree with the statement. If they agree with the statement then it is not political, and if they disagree, it's political.
For some (including me), politics are, following the oldest definition: 'how do I and fellow humans organize ourselves to live together' this often leads to a belief that everything is politics (for me it's true, but it's a belief, not a fact).
For other, I think that when they say politics, they think of geopolitics and partisanship, which is fair, because it's how politicians and political journalists themselves define politics. For this group, hopefully, not everything is politics.
So to me, this disagreement about wether or not all is political is often semantic rather than ideologic.
The disagreement is semantic and relevant in the sense people who say no politics at work believe their categories of politics and not politics are obvious.
The disagreement is ideological in the sense ethical concerns about products or customers are designated political often.
Politicians, political journalists, and people who say no politics at work do not define politics as geopolitics and partisanship.
Personally, if I have a personal political position and my colleague has an opposite one, I don’t see why we can’t talk about it. If you have a workplace rule about no politics during working hours, you better have this rule for all non-work discussions at work, or I personally would feel uncomfortable.
— If politics talk happens at work too much and affects productivity, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any non-work topic.
— If it causes heated debate, ruins morale, and makes people dislike each other, then it is a problem, but then it is a problem with any topic that causes heated debate. For some people it’s golf, for some philosophy, for some music. How many topics should be banned?
Work is about making money. Politics is a distraction unless there’s an issue that directly affects the business. Then it’s fair game. Like this one. Many teams of individuals will have to figure out how to navigate this situation so discussing it in context is apropos and can be done objectively.
If someone calls me a racist bigot or a beta cuck, that is a problem. That problem also has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with someone not being emotionally mature enough or equipped to handle a discussion with someone who has different views, or someone having a mental breakdown.
I am not from the US, but I had enjoyed some reasonable conversations with people from the US (among other countries) with very different views, and I was never called names. There are awkward moments when you have to hear something you don’t agree with, but that is most of life if you ever interact with people.
The key is to be like an HTTP server: liberal in terms of what you can accept, but strict with what you put out there.
> Work is about making money.
You have just thrown another political position into the mix, I hope you realize that?
Any moderately sized company is practically guaranteed to have a few people like this. So getting into these discussions has a high risk of becoming an HR issue as tempers flare and conversations become vitriolic.
There's also the issue that the company founders and leadership have political opinions of their own that might inform company policy and any political opinion to the contrary may be perceived as pushback from a "troublemaker".
Here we can forget that IRL face to face people are much less likely to be offensive to each other. If they get to literal name calling and aggression, sure, that’s an HR issue, HR gets paid to sort this out, doesn’t it? I don’t see how politics is different from any other topic on which people can have strong opinions.
> There's also the issue that the company founders and leadership have political opinions of their own that might inform company policy and any political opinion to the contrary may be perceived as pushback from a "troublemaker".
That is why “no politics” is somewhat dishonest. In my view, either blanket forbid all off-topic talks, or don’t censor by topic and handle fights if they arise. There can also be softer guidelines about how to behave at work without an actual ban of any topic.
The silliest part: what was his thesis? Well that using race and gender based quotas during hiring and leveling made Google less competitive. Certainly not a privileged white male tech bro just barreling through the company on a racist bigoted spree leaving tears in his wake. There is more interesting discussion to be had here about how the Civil Rights Act has been weaponized in the US and companies feel they have a legal obligation now to prove that their systems don’t yield “unfair distribution of protected classes”, or whatever the actual wording is. And how that is at odds with a world where you can openly discuss politics at a company without fear of falling afoul of the Chief Diversity Officer (ffs, there are executives installed to maintain the order now). And related: just look at how pockets of people respond to Trump’s second term insisting that he’s a fascist dictator and anybody who doesn’t see it is a de facto fascist. But I digress.
Nobody wants to bet their job on being on the losing end of a kafka traps and thought terminating clichés.
At least now you can say it out now without being downvoted into oblivion.
Only a small percentage of people are able to handle fundamental disagreements calmly and without it bleeding over to other interactions.
Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
never find out about their shared passion is kind of cruel, too?
Maybe at a work function, team party, conference, etc.
> Will the SE and sales guy work as well together if the former knows the latter donates half his commission money to organizations that help kill babies?
A friend of mine is a vegan. Anywhere he works, to him, most of his coworkers not just help kill conscious beings that have self-awareness and feel pain, they literally eat them. Does this mean talking about what you have for lunch should be banned? Does this mean he should throw a fit any time he talks to a non-vegan?
Incidentally, we sometimes have good debates about the nature of consciousness, the effectiveness of individual veganism on reducing suffering, utilitarianism and deontology, vegan food options, etc. I feel being converted and I don’t mind it.
You're making the opposite case of what you think. Your Vegan friend is avoiding taking about politics constantly because they're not bringing up the fact that everyone is consuming the flesh of innocent animals every time they go for lunch. If they started talking about the politics and beliefs of veganism at every meal shared with coworkers, I think it would have a negative impact on those relationships.
What he is doing by expressing his philosophical position simply through his order is turning me subsequently ordering something with eggs into a philosophically loaded action as well. That, of course, shifts my opinion on the question.
I am making the point I am making: if we worked together, we should be free to discuss veganism or paleo diet (which I have discussed with a coworker previously) whenever either of us wanted, and he demonstrated being an adult about it when we do. If he asked to not talk about it because it made him uncomfortable, then we wouldn’t. I do not see why political discussions have to be different.
Politics are across all layers, including at technology decisions.
You can believe something without proselytizing.
New or improved technologies shape communities.
Ignoring that is a political statement as well.
Just see how online media has changed discourse, how Amazon changed retail business, how business analytics change the way businesses work, how always being connected changes relations, ...
When developing technologies one can be Wernher von Braun "(where the rockets land and whether they contain explosives is) not my department" or one can consider consequences.Both are a political position, with consequences.
So what stance does The Art of Computer Programming take on communism?
But a bit more serious there are different angles to this:
One is that the formalization Knuth did, is basis for the way other research on computer science has been setup.
His work on TeX as part of writing the books has great impact on how scientific reports are being written, which themselves have consequences.
And then there is all the consequence while implementing technology. How optimisations by better algorithms enable data mining, replacing manual labor, ...
Now of course impact differs. Not everybody is building V2 rockets (as well as Saturn rockets) like von Braun did, but there are many wheels in the machinery.
I myself am a small wheel in building database engines. The software is used by sports clubs to manage their members, shop owners to manage their inventory, companies to run their ads and air craft carriers to replicate strategic data across the ship, so that if one part is damaged, the other can still operate. If I were to leave, the organisation would continue developing, but the work has impact.
I asked about the book. Everything is inherently HIGHLY political, thus this should be an easy question.
However, yes, some people would say that, for example, almost everything is political to some degree. I don’t know if I agree with them entirely. In case of Knuth, they would probably say that the choice of what to write about in the book (just like the choice of whether to be a computer scientist in the first place) cannot be divorced from his politics. Like the choice of someone to work in nuclear science or environmental science or “anything that pays good money” is informed by individual’s political positions. “Politics is water” is a great metaphor.
You can talk about politics without proselytising. Why should discussing a topic even invoke the words like “belief” and “proselytising”?
Not only stating an opinion is compatible with a constructive discussion that could lead to a mutual adjustment of opinions—in fact, stating your opinion is often a pre-requisite to having a discussion that could lead to it being changed.
The magic happens when person A realizes that another, equally sane person B can think very differently about topic X. At that point, the person A has to either 1) write the person B off as crazy (not so easy when that person is obviously sane in every other way), or 2) realize that there may be something to it and ever so slightly adjust own opinion on topic X, or at least become more tolerant.
Not being able or willing to freely exchange and converge on opinions with people whom you routinely meet in real life, only discussing them online in your respective bubbles, is a sure way to having only more and more wildly incompatible and divisive opinions, and I suspect it is exactly what has been happening in recent years.
Discipline isn’t found in hiding. Someone who cannot discuss politics without polluting conversations isn’t disciplined, they’re unpracticed in conversing and thinking through their views.
I think the "everything is political" statement is technically correct but practically useless. In the workplace the discussion is mostly about allowing or disallowing politics that are irrelevant to the business.
Further, there are entire segments of political groups who just want to assume your beliefs like a political straw man so they can denigrate you.
It’s an unhealthy waste of time and that doesn’t truly hit you until you invest the time in talking to an otherwise rational person, provide the closest thing to proof of your perspective in a situation and then watch them deny it anyway.
What you said can be true if you approach the discussion with an attitude of “I want to change everybody’s mind” instead of trying to get to some agreement and truth.
Not only stating an opinion is compatible with a constructive discussion that could lead to a mutual adjustment of opinions—in fact, stating your opinion is a precursor to having a discussion that can change it.
> It’s an unhealthy waste of time and that doesn’t truly hit you until you invest the time in talking to an otherwise rational person, provide the closest thing to proof of your perspective in a situation and then watch them deny it anyway.
The magic happens when one person realizes that another, obviously sane in every other way person can think very differently about topic X. Repeated exposure to alternative views from other people in your circles leaves no alternative except to adjust your own opinion on topic X.
Thing is, it’s tricky or impossible online. Aside from a handful of well-known people with some reputation or infamy, most of us only know each other as handles with no context. On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog or a basement dweller who lives with his parents and could never hold a job. Meanwhile, access to a group of like-minded people is always at your fingertips when you are online. However, when you are in a company of people who clearly are similar enough in what they achieved, in their choice to work for the same company, maybe good in their software engineering skill, etc., it makes their opinion something that may count.
Not being able or willing to freely exchange and consequently converge on opinions with people whom you routinely meet in real life, and only discussing said opinions in your respective online bubbles, strikes me as a path to having more and more divergent, incompatible, extreme opinions (which I rather suspect might have been happening a lot in recent years).
I have not found this to be true when it comes to politically aligned beliefs.
Over the past few years I’ve even begun to wonder about that though.
I think the issue is that when people debate someone, they want to "win" by having the other side accept defeat. You are right, that rarely happens, especially in politics.
However, as someone who has participated in countless formal debates, I'll share a secret: your goal in a debate isn't to convince the person you're debating. It's to convince the audience. And that happens quite frequently, even if it's not immediately visible to the debate participants.
That said, HN already has an extremely wide range of subject matter, so I wouldn’t say politics should be out of place here. It can, though, become a divisive distraction that disrupts other conversations, so I can appreciate that some limits are needed.
For me, ironically, the worst casualty of "politics" infiltrating everything is... politics. I mean the respectful and reasoned discussion of politics. Not that it was ever in great supply, but now it is non-existent.
Like fish, most people do ignore it until it turns foul.
What we should really aim for is thoughtful, civilized, and maybe even aesthetically pleasing discourse. That’s what educated people strive for.
Trying to “avoid politics” is like collecting seashells while a tsunami is rolling in.
Moreover, avoiding politics is impossible. It's all around you. Labor, entertainment, food, housing. Burying your head in the sand will only get you to have your ass in the air.
Maybe "be polite" should be a better rule than "avoid politics".
People who say "I'm not political" are deflecting to avoid conflict
Disaffection lends itself easily to creating a Russia-style society. This all feels pretty Dugin-esque, and his proposition (return to values, reject interest/hope in politics because it is always flawed anyway, bind together under the state) fits perfectly, and is finding prominence at the perfect time.
Just my opinion, but to me this seems far more akin to Dugin than whatever Curtis Yavin is pushing
A great truth. Even isolating yourself from society like a hermit is still a political decision: you are rejecting society as it is, and prefer to live in your own solo society. That's politics.
That is a nonsensical definition of that term. It implies that literally any action you take falls into the set "political" instead of outside of it. That defeats the purpose of the term. The point of qualifiers is to differentiate between different sorts of things.
Obviously the intention of the person using such a term is to distinguish between things. Thus such a rebuttal amounts to intellectual dishonesty by intentionally misinterpreting what was said.
Appealing to "well everything is connected" I'm not sure is useful. It's interesting from a semantics perspective the first few times you come across it maybe, then swaps around into being plain frustrating, then lands on just missing the point.
Finally, I think people who want to stay out of said party political meta I think are doing a pretty big favor to their mental health, and I really can't fault them one bit for it. No coincidence either.
"Party politics" is ill-defined, and so a "no politics" rule becomes an arbitrary hammer that bosses can use to smash employees. If I say "I'm going to get a COVID vaccine this afternoon" is that discussing party politics? In the UK, where I live, the vaccine was provided by the government, so I'm implicitly discussing the actions of the government. That is under any reasonable definition a discussion of politics.
"everyday party politics are spilling out and overwhelming a project's or industry's individual, internal politics" is how "no politics" rules are usually justified, but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules (37signals, Coinbase). 37signals in particular tried to spin it this way, but it was the actions of a group within the company approved by the founders that caused the problem. (Coinbase was just completely incoherent from the start. Their mission is something like "End economic inequality" which a reasonable person could take to mean anarchist or communist discussion is on topic.)
It is also illustrates the problem with discussing politics in an international forum. The KCL study of covid conspiracy theories (carried out during the pandemic) found that in the UK young people and those who identified as left wing were more likely to believe conspiracy theories. I am pretty sure this is significantly different from the US. Also matches things I have heard (e.g. my daughter met people at university who refused the vaccine because "we don't trust the Tories".
It is pretty common for Americans to assume that the Conservatives are equivalent to Republicans, and Labour are like the Democrats, which is very far from the truth. It has always been far from the truth but the reasons why change - e.g. in the 80s Thatcher and Reagan were not far apart, but that that time Labour were far to the left of the Democrats (actual socialists).
Every artificial segmentation of the real world is leaky. Just like the recognition that politics is everywhere, this too is not actually inquisitive. It's like arguing that stairsteps are chairs. They can be, but that doesn't make the word "chair" ill-defined.
> but this was not what happened in the poster child cases of implementing "no politics" rules
There is no such thing. These may be notable cases in your cohort, for me it's the first time I heard of these. And I've seen my fair share of these rules.
If it's the former, 1) it should be just that and 2) it isn't needed because it's never ok to start shit with coworkers that is unrelated to work. If someone spends all their time starting shit, whether about politics (however that is defined), sports, food choices, clothing, or anything else you can just fire them. No need to have a "no politics" rule.
Some employees either can't or won't see this, hence rules such as "no politics".
It your mental health is harmed while defending your political views it's possible your views are the issue.
For example if my view was that "domestic animals shouldn't be abused and penalties increased for such crimes" I wouldn't have mental health issues discussing this.
The views don't matter as much as how strongly they are held.
it might be reasonable if you have personal close links to Gaza (e.g. you are worried about family who live there), but otherwise it OUGHT to be very unusual.
That's another problem with political discussions at work - you're often not sure why someone has a particular beliefs and so it's hard to know whether disagreement will be taken as an abstract difference of opinion or as an attack on their family, friends, or homeland.
"Wait, you don't give a shit if like 10k families are killed?"
"No, no, it's like I don't care from an abstract point of view"
1. Avoid talking about politics
2. Learn to control your emotions when discussing politics even if you have a strong view.
I think 2 is a better solution otherwise the worse things get the more people will avoid talking about it.
It's worth the effort because, based on your example, if you really cared about the people of Gaza you need to stand up and defend them, not avoid the topic due to how uncomfortable it makes you feel
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty)
Because it would make me pretty distraught, and I don't think that it's because anything is wrong with the idea of not abusing animals.
Even doing this mental exercise for the sake of this conversation is already extremely frustrating for me. And I don't think this should surprise you, or is anything strange or unusual.
Let's just be clear that something can be commonplace while also being a personal issue.
Incidentally, the response you're exhibiting here - a reflexive emotional rejection as opposed to critical thought - is closely related to the phenomenon being discussed here. That exact response is often (but not always) what leads to people becoming distraught in the first place. It's an emotional feedback loop.
Examining the context we see something of a dichotomy. That mental health being harmed by political discourse is likely to indicate a problem with personal views versus that being normal and expected depending on context. I'm presenting a third viewpoint tied to the example you provided. The idea that it is related to an emotional issue which is largely independent of personal views, that this is a relatively common thing to encounter, and that people should not be criticized for taking steps to mitigate personal issues.
In other words, I am largely agreeing with you but going on to point out that it's a personal issue deserving of long term work.
That's what makes working democracies successful. But it seems that it also makes democracies vulnerable because people don't realize they have these benefits because they live in a working democracy. They start to think these benefits have nothing to do with politics and are just the way things are, like the laws of nature.
Authoritarian - leaves people alone in general as long as they stay out of politics. Examples: 90% of regimes throughout human history. Almost all post-soviet countries, almost all of Middle East and Africa, Singapore, etc.
Totalitarian - forces people into actively participating in leader's political goals and penetrates the daily life. North Korea, USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy.
Directly, yes, but their policies still affect people.
For example, if an authoritarian leaders enacts economic decisions that damage the economy everyone is affected.
If I pay more for goods and services due to Tariffs aren't I being forced to participate in the leader's political goals?
So it would be totalitarian leaning for a leader to make a speech (watching is mandatory btw) saying that buying foreign is anti-patriotic and generating social censure, in addition to the tariffs, for people seen with foreign goods.
People literally do this on social media and they aren't even being forced.
As for the remainder, I do see the forced part but I'm not sure of how meaningful that is. If I don't agree with Trump but I'm forced to watch his speeches what does this do?
As for supporting state ideology, while not forced, there are hats, bumper stickers, flags to identify yourself
Imagine Trump forced everyone to wear his MAGA hat. What effect does it have? I don't think being forced to do this and that has much value
I think applying the authoritarian-totalitarian distinction in a democracy gets weird because democracies like totalitarian systems but unlike the archetypal authoritarian system expect the average person to engage in politics. So it's not a straight spectrum from democracy to totalitarian with autocracy in the middle.
And if someone forces everyone to wear their symbols, then it becomes obvious who the open dissenters are, and it becomes hard to tell who is neutral, who is enthusiastic, and who is silently dissenting, everyone looks like a supporter and people may start becoming more supporting simply because of apparent social consensus.
Anyway, here's what Wikipedia has to say. Maybe it clears up
> In exercising the power of government upon society, the application of an official dominant ideology differentiates the worldview of the totalitarian régime from the worldview of the authoritarian régime, which is "only concerned with political power, and, as long as [government power] is not contested, [the authoritarian government] gives society a certain degree of liberty."[6] Having no ideology to propagate, the politically secular authoritarian government "does not attempt to change the world and human nature",[6] whereas the "totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens",[5] by way of an official "totalist ideology, a [political] party reinforced by a secret police, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society."[6]
I still disagree with this, maybe what defines politics is different for you.
>citizens (...) largely don't have to care about politics
I didn't mean that it wasn't harmful if they didn't care; I meant that there was no clear, immediate incentive.
What about tariffs, that causes price increased. What about changes to the law, like congestion pricing in NYC
The citizens elect the government so how can you not care about poltiics?
I don't think there's a direct correlation between the ability to vote and caring about politics. People usually care about politics when it affects them negatively. I would guess that most people in most democratic systems don't have strong negative experiences with their governments and, thus, are not incentivized to care about politics.
Note that I'm not making an argument that they should not care. I think they should, but the very system that allows participation probably also decreases the incentive for most people to participate.
Opinion polls about political parties and leaders seem to always hover near the bottom end, at least in the US [1]
[1] there are always bumps after elections (change), war (nationalism), and tragedy (group sympathy)
And remember voting is not mandatory and a lot of people don't vote. Those people are ultimately letting others decide, and a lot of them are hoping the voters are going to pick well, or at least decently.
Is that what people are worried about? What about the economy, civil rights, wars, etc.
I'm very confused about your argument. Is it that who you vote for doesn't matter because they won't personally attack you and the policies of whatever politician won't harm you?
>lot of them are hoping the voters are going to pick well, or at least decently.
Considering how the popular vote is almost always close to being split (you know like +10/-10) why would a non voter have that trust when from their view it's a coinflip
I meant this more like what people could be worried about. In a functioning liberal democracy, there are things people usually don't worry about, which allows some people to just ignore politics. Sure the economy is an issue, but there isn't a serious communist contender in the election or a candidate wanting to start wars of conquest.
Imagine this election. Candidate A you think will deliver GDP growth of 2+-0.5%. Candidate B you expect to deliver GDP growth of 3+-2% growth. No other big difference between them. Maybe you prefer A, maybe you don't, but in the end you'll probably be relatively fine either way.
Now imagine this other election. Candidate A hates your ethnic group and you are likely going to be fired from your government job or worse if he wins. Candidate B is from your ethnic group and will do reverse Candidate A. Now the point is that this sort of election isn't supposed to happen in a functional liberal democracy.
Consequences are rarely this extreme, and even when they are it's not a product of personal or group targeting just a general policy like "ban fracking", which means even affected people can still carry on with their lives.
And also this is one of the reasons elections "work" at all. If the losers think they will be chased by the state after losing, there's no reason to participate in the election, might as well arm up before the polls and take your chances in the battlefield and/or negotiate directly with the other side's elites.
> I'm very confused about your argument. Is it that who you vote for doesn't matter because they won't personally attack you and the policies of whatever politician won't harm you?
> Considering how the popular vote is almost always close to being split (you know like +10/-10) why would a non voter have that trust when from their view it's a coinflip
My point is that it's a coinflip between two acceptable choices. Some of those nonvoters would be literally undecided if asked who they prefer. It may matter, but not that much. And even if it does, it may matter in a way where the consequences are hard to predict or not obvious.
If someone doesn't particularly care about the outcome given the available options then it follows that how close or far the odds are isn't going to matter to them.
> Is that what people are worried about? What about the economy, civil rights, wars, etc.
It's important to be clear about the context. There's the thing, and then there's the thing relative to the election where only a few outcomes are possible once the ballot has been set. It is possible to care deeply about the former but not particularly about the latter, either because all options are either good enough or pointlessly bad from your perspective. And of course it is also possible to simple not care (ie be emotionally invested in and go about broadcasting your opinion to others) about the things you listed to begin with.
It's also important to keep in mind that "not caring" can be at odds with "ought to care", although that is obviously a subjective third party judgment.
Not 100% sure what I wanted to say, maybe that said politics (and the political as a whole) wouldn't have invaded almost our entire lives without the help of technology.
Not we, some people got reliant on the funds from government. It is always at the cost of someone else. The tax the rich and bourgeoisie mentality is what led to Mao Zedong and Stalin, but no-one wants to learn about history anymore.
That should sound very familiar right about now.
But I think people are waking up, because things they took as non-political god given right is being made political and taken away.
What is the distinction?
People are not dumb. They know that politics is everywhere but they want to live and love and talk about things that are interesting.
Sadly, this crew includes the site's moderation.
I mean sorry but I'm not sure if you're being ironic. It sounds like something you'd read on ngate
Same person: Why is the world organized in such a dumb way?
Trump voters are stupid. This is a fact.
Right or left leaning, that's politics.
No, it's just recognising that it is silly to talk about politics, as certain views are just downvoted.
I'm not going to go into specifics of the topic because I don't want to start another episode, though I do have the complaint that such actions distort the discourse unfairly to one side. And I also understand that political biases are human nature and that they can never be fully eliminated. But at the same time, it would be harmful to pretend that the discourse on HN is apolitical, balanced or that it shields you from that sort of censorship. Imagine making a good-faith counterargument, only to have it flagged and removed because the opposition doesn't like it. And when asked, you get cited a point in the CoC, except that it's not applied uniformly and impartially in that thread. Makes you wonder what the purpose of flagging is at all! That will just put certain groups at an undisclosed disadvantage and lets harmful stereotypes flourish without any challenge. All we can do is to be forthright about this fact and try our best to have a civil debate.
Everytime you discuss politics on the internet, you entrench the current administration.