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Comment by popalchemist | Hacker News Reader

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We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49884880 and marked it off topic.

Don't post vile comments like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is it literally the one word?

Because you could just change it to "stupid" or "asinine" and the comment remains completely on-topic. Feels rather like censorship, I think you're being disingenuous.

This is a site for people who have higher standards of themselves than this.

This is just me continuing conversation - not a refusal of your right to moderate how you want. So don't take it as me trying to flame you. Hopefully you can take it like an adult. It's opinion and a direct philosophical exploration that you may find confrontational -- but the difficulty is not the point; the point is to speak the truth.

I think you're being disingenuous again. I have incredibly high standards of ethics and morals for myself. Those standards do not only include some idea of conformity to norms but a commitment I made to myself to always offer a public rebuttal of norms which I have come to understand are harmful and -- increasingly -- various forms of insanity which have become normal themselves. One of those forms of insanity being the fellating of the billionaire-class whose actions, ethics, and systems/architecture of power have exceeded Bond villain status and gone right into unimaginable depravity. Alexander Karp gleefully bragging about killing people automatically with his code. Elon Musk gleefully doing a Nazi salute, signaling that he believes in racial superiority, murder, and authoritarianism as long as it benefits himself. Peter Thiel just this week making an argument in about 5 sentences that the best way to be good is to be evil. Literally his words.

These are not normal times, there are BAD BAD BAD things happening, and despite the utter level of lunacy - sometimes manifesting as literal atrocity as when another billionare, Trump, glibly murdered 160 school girls in an elementary school, in an attempted show of bravado... despite all this, people walk around on autopilot like this is all okay, and that sometimes takes the form of unthinkingly parroting the billionaire class's "company line" - that AI is actually completely harmless.

To such sleepwalkers, I have decided, that strong language is a good tool in the campaign of waking people up.

I say all this to illustrate to you that what may look like juvenile word choice is in fact coming from a high standard -- beyond conformity, I dare to rock the boat BECAUSE that is what is needed.

So your challenge/accusation dies on its merits. My commitment to excellent standards of ethics is higher than yours. Your pearl-clutching analysis of the behavior as instantly and incontrovertibly wrong or low-standard is predicated on a juvenile sense of right and wrong that can only be characterized as both authoritarian and puritanian. And furthermore it is a mask. Those "standards" are not ethical in nature, they exist to serve YC.

YC, who we know has been in bed with every single one of the insane people I've just mentioned. (And Sam Altman who I didn't name drop - but he is not only leading the charge on the technological dismantling of the middle class and so many norms via OpenAI, but he also raped his sister.)

So, don't presume to lecture me about ethical standards, you are plainly in no position to do so.

What you are ACTUALLY doing is maintaining an image of this community that serves your/YC's commercial interests.

On principle I’m not reading this.

Your comment I replied to began with “Retarded fucking take.”

I don’t care what opinion you’re expressing; most of the time, including this time, I barely even know what opinion is being expressed. It doesn’t matter. My role is to uphold the guidelines and a comment like that is the most straightforward guidelines breach we ever see here.

Disagreement and vigorous debate is fine here; it’s one of the main purposes of the site. HN has existed for almost 20 years, entirely because we have guidelines and uphold them evenly.

Stop deflecting and sermonizing and find a way to express your points without that kind of filth.

It's not deflecting. You're moralizing. You're not the thought police, Tom. How did you get to this point?

But you do you, I already knew this place is an exercise in authoritarianism, you're just proving it.

This isn’t difficult. You can think what you want and argue for what you believe in vigorously. We work hard to make this a site where everyone can do that, no matter what they’re arguing for, and we take criticism from all sides and from all kinds of people for the way we do that.

The guidelines are simple and are designed to stop this place from going up in flames daily. They are here to protect you just as much as anyone else.

Please stop acting like an entitled jerk and have some respect for this community if you’re expecting anyone here read the ideas you want to express.

Then why not just edit the one word and give a warning shot instead of censoring the rest of the post, which was entirely on topic and argued well, and in good faith?

Like I said, you need to stop acting like an entitled jerk. It’s not our job to clean up your mess and besides, if we went around editing people’s comments there would be uproar. So, enough of this carry on, thanks. Just follow the guidelines like almost everyone else does. It’s really not hard and basic respect is not an unreasonable expectation.

I am not a jerk for using language you don't like. For me, it is a civic calling.

You would know that if you read the post I thoughtfully constructed to enlighten you on that point.

Legitimate conflicts deserve to be met with legitimate resolutions. Your ban-hammer attitude is the thing out of line here. That's why I keep calling you authoritarian. You are acting like the sole arbiter of what is good and acceptable and the rigidity with which you do it has a cooling effect on real, legitimate discourse. Which is anti-human of you.

Your comment was downvoted and flagged to an extreme extent by fellow community members. Responding to community expectations is central to what we do and this community expects comments opening with “Retard fucking take” to be killed, any day of the week.

Own your poor behavior and stop fixating on me. You could have written multiple substantive comments in the time you’ve spent on this.

The r-word policy is noted. The effect it has had is a cooling effect - I am less likely to contribute to this community now than I was before; this is how the site leans more and more right-wing every day, by the way.

What matters to me is people who are robotically enacting policies that are anti-human in the name of capital come back to their humanity. That's why I took the time with you.

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