Hacker News Reader

Comment by baggy_trough | Hacker News Reader

I followed the discussion on debian-vote with interest. I'm glad that the hysterical objections lost, as they seemed quasi-religiously motivated.

View on HN

> ... hysterical ... quasi-religiously ...

I'm beginning to wonder if it might be the case that when my fellow citizens begin to act insane - might it be the result of foreign propaganda.

Home grown propaganda, pretending it's from "the others"

Maybe - who can tell?

The examples I'm thinking of have definitely profited foreign interests, tho.

Look to see who profits.

It would be in foreign interest, yes. But all of this is no different from 50 years of the environmentalist movement. The snail darter was an invented species decades ago. So if it’s propaganda, it’s not invented so much as amplifying what we invented here.

Look to see who profits.

That does indeed make it seem like Executive Directors of environmental NGOs are responsible for this.

Sure - if you believe the Executive Directors of environmental NGOs are actually that powerful - and not just doing the bidding of someone above them.

But it's an """ethical""" argument against it.

How can we use this coding tool amidst the general rising tide of fascism?? /s

I've seen people claim that using Claude Code makes you racist.

https://bsky.app/profile/boxobark.ing/post/3mtr7j3tpok26

I don't know if they truly believe that persons using CC are racist (like they examined the thing logically from bottom to top and came back with that conclusion) or if it's the new Goodwin --pulling the emergency brakes and damn the consequences.

It's as though people want to find the most dubious of non-existent connections and use that as leverage to besmirch something they don't like.

There are many things one can do where a person has no awareness of the tenuous connection but where you can have someone go back and then ex-post make that connection and declare that thing or person racist. It's a tactic.

Like one _could_ make the argument that factory automation in China is racist because without automation they would have to import labor from (some non-Chinese population). However, the Chinese never began automation with the intention of being racist.

Some may express societal challenges in ways that inappropriately and wrongly infer intentionality. We can acknowledge their point while strongly disagreeing with their characterization.

There are significant societal impacts of this AI buildout. Some are concerned externalities weigh more heavily on the poor and marginalized. I think state wide data center holds are part of this civil discourse.

I'd prefer we have more conservative pollution standards along with a reasonable tax on AI use that helps mitigate externalities. That's hard. Reasonable people can have fierce disagreements on what market interventions are indicated, and how extensive they should be.

no, you don't have to make up some non-idiotic argument that's kinda vaguely like the dumb one and substitute it in there. it's not necessary! nobody's making you do it and there's no benefit to anybody from doing it!

Apparently LLMs are fascist technology according to one (now former) Debian developer and using it is supporting fascism.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HQ5MeeaXUAAIMLX?format=jpg&name=...

Somewhat insulting to those that actually lived (or live) under fascism.

It used to be the case that you would see someone posting under an avatar like that and you would dismiss their argument right away without even reading it.

What's interesting is that they are trying to make a larger political point, but after boiling away all the nuance into such an aggressive and misguided statement, it makes me not want to engage at all.

Is there a term for this? Ensnarkification? I see it on X and bsky all the time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com