Nerds Are Taking Your Lunch Money | Hacker News Reader

Nerds Are Taking Your Lunch Money

dilbert.com

13 pointsmagic_haze5 comments

I do find it fascinating that every time someone tries to use historical evidence to show the dangers of a current trend, they are inevitably accused of making light of the historical event and people ignore their actual statements. We seem to be actively hostile to learning from the past as a society and just operate on faith that the injustices and atrocities of our collective past will never happen again.

Obviously anything to do with Nazis or the Holocaust triggers this reaction faster and more severely, but it can happen with any subject. Every argument of "Currently A is happening. When A happened in {time/place} it led to B and then C, and we all agree B and C are really bad" will be met with "How dare you compare yourself to {time/place}! B and C aren't happening now and will never happen again" (with no explanation for what will prevent B and C from happening).

I think it's the equivalent of the middlebrow dismissal we so often see here in HN, rather than any faith in humanity. As you mentioned, it is just too easy to come up with a generic "how dare you" response, which is guaranteed to draw in existing prejudices and pitchforks. I don't think the intent is to drown out rational debate of the original statement -- it just happens to be the victim in the race for clickcounts.

So because I think the rich don't pay nearly enough taxes, I'm part of some idiot mob? I don't know anyone who actively hates rich people. The whole thing seemed like a giant straw man to me.

I agree about the tax issue as well, but I thought this post was particularly articulate about analyzing an issue from a perspective that was unusual to me. I didn't have a good enough counterpoint to his argument, so I submitted the link here to get some discussion going. I don't think the intention here was advocacy or judgement.

You and I may be moderates, but you have to agree, there definitely are more than enough people who would support mob justice (to take a mild example, the attacks on Google's buses recently... the entire situation seems like a powder keg)

Guys, it's just a HUGE COINCIDENCE that the Dilbert guy is a big fat conservative who already believes that the rich are literally persecuted.

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