If you'll note, I think that engi_nerd and I achieved an amicable understanding of each other at about the same time you were posting your comment.
It's my job to draw the line.
> I never said shill
My comment was addressed to the three of you.
[I deleted an unfair bit here.]
> Gaslighting, astroturfing, and worse are real things that happen on the internet
Yes, I spend my days combating those things on HN and my evenings writing code to combat them on HN.
Something else that's real on the internet, and poisonous, is commenters groundlessly accusing each other of those things, or insinuating them. That affects civil discourse the way salt affects a slug. We're not letting it become a thing here. See https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR... for countless further explanations.
Anyone with genuine concerns about astroturfing on HN should email them to us at hn@ycombinator.com. We promise to take them seriously. We also promise to look for evidence.
> engi_nerd and I achieved an amicable understanding of each other
I hope so. I don't believe anyone meant harm or even did anything very harmful, but we've learned that places like HN are vulnerable to tragedies of the commons: small, unintentional slips add up to systemic toxicity. That's the default, so there has to be a countervailing vector. Also, the ganging-up-on spirit that was emerging there was dismaying.
(I don't know who's right about the F-35, and haven't even read the comments from that angle. My point is procedural: debates here must stay factual and not go personal.)
But you haven't demonstrated why engi_nerd is not gaslighting and astroturfing.
No one is denying that he has experience that's relevant to the topic. What people have an issue with is that he has repeatedly defended major shortcomings in the design of the craft with shoddy reasoning such as "oh, guns won't come into play in most combat scenarios, so it's OK for the guns on the F-35 to not work."
If that's the type of low-quality discourse you want on HN, fine. We'll stop pointing it out. But accusing us of unreasonably calling him out is pretty shitty.
That's not where the burden of proof lies. You can't accuse someone of these things on HN without evidence. An opposing opinion is not evidence.
It's true that working on something professionally biases one. But (a) we're all subject to that, and (b) distance from a situation has biases too. It's a foul to invoke these things as personal weapons, and we intervene when people do it because it tears the fabric of the community.
If what someone says is wrong, refute it. If you're right, you should be able to demonstrate it civilly.
That's what I'm saying: it's not about being right or wrong. Engi_nerd has responded to every criticism thrown at the F-35 by using shoddy reasoning and hand-waving, such as "The F-35 is a complex answer to a complex question, and it cannot be so simply understood." I mean, seriously? That sounds like something a politician would say. Or a company spokesperson. So of course everyone got the impression that he has an ulterior motive.
Anyway, I'm going to stop here, but I want to say that I'm disappointed in the way you handled this. I hope you understand. Have a nice day.
Making wrong and evasive arguments is bad, but destroying civil discourse (which such accusations do) is, to use a good military-industrial phrase, an existential threat. That's why we intervene when we see it.
1) Everything is a system. 2) Everything is part of a larger system (ex. the military industrial complex) 3) All systems are infinitely complex.
The F-35 is an infinitely complex system of systems operating in a system of systems (the MIC) that, to pull an analogy from Cantor, is a higher order of infinite complexity.
I didn't elaborate enough on that original point for you. You could have asked me for clarification and I would have been happy to try, as I have done here (look at my interactions with nickpsecurity -- I don't think I'm such a bad guy as you are portraying).
While I may not be the most fuzzy warm or eloquent guy in the room, I try to stick to facts. I am more or less successful, as humans tend to be. I deeply resent my discourse being called "low-quality" and would hope to correct that impression in the future.
Yeah well umm... Fair enough, you got me dead to rights on that one.
>You tried to dig up dirt on someone from their history. Not that it was dirt,
I was looking to see if the poster ever had anything to say about any other topic. It wasn't dirt, it was a fact. It was the poster's own words. Words to the effect that they are employed in aerospace, which was disclosed elsewhere ITT, and was directly responsive to the parent, and isn't worth concealing in any case.
>but the intent to use it personally makes it so.
Now you're being unfair to me. It's not personal. Authentication and trust are hard in a plain ASCII message board, even harder in Unicode; it's just a condition of discussion boards. Think of it as diligence.
>Indeed, I spend my days combating
Gratzi, and bless you for it. (in the non-theistic sense, or by a deity of your choosing).
>I don't believe anyone meant harm or even did anything very harmful...
No, and you're right. I am grateful to have smart people to argue with, and grateful that this place isn't a wasteland.
>There has to be a countervailing role, and for the time being that's me.
Thanks for reaching out instead of reaching for the banhammer & enjoy your weekend.
In that case, I'm sorry. I wasn't happy with how I worded that bit, and I've deleted it from my comment.
I don't agree with you about diligence, though. There's something not right about searching through someone's personal or posting history for ammunition in an argument. It seems to me a foul in the local sport. But I don't yet know how to express this precisely.
>There's something not right about searching through someone's history
But those are things that the person posted publicly. Why is there anything untoward about browsing a person's public comment history (for relevant posts)? What else is it there for? They can and should delete it if they don't want it to remain. Sometimes a quick check of a comment history is all that's needed to see a pretty consistent bias (or other problems). I'm talking about really obvious stuff. It's a reddit reflex, and not all that useful here compared to there.
I'm a little perplexed. Had this discussion been about the more normal HN fare, it would have been quite different. It's, as another user said, about the miilitary/industrial complex elephant. What would you have me do? You seem to be a decent enough person. Would you have me email you and let us have a discussion there, privately? Even then, you would still have no way of really knowing that anything I told you is true (although I would not lie to you, you have no way to verify, really).
I do tend to comment on aerospace matters. Primarily because that's what I do. I am a recreational programmer and do write some code at work...So my interests overlap a bit with what HN finds interesting. But I don't solely restrict myself to them...
It wasn't coordinated, I can't even recall if I have ever replied to camel's posts before today.
>I'm a little perplexed. Had this discussion been about the more normal HN fare, it would have been quite different.
If it involves politics, surveillance, defense/aerospace, criminal or civil law, securities trading, feminism/women in tech, encryption, Linus Torvalds, etc, there is a likelihood of a spirited debate. I've probably forgotten a few subjects, but the F-35 is not the only issue that people get [perhaps too] excited about.
>Would you have me email you and let us have a discussion there, privately?
No thank you, I have no desire to have an argument in private about the F-35. I'm not even sure why I spend any time at all on the subject other than I like tech and flying, and in attempting to be an informed consumer of government. My email is easy to find if you need to for some reason but I really prefer having these discussions in public.
>It's, as another user said, about the military/industrial complex elephant.
There's more than one elephant. There are plenty who object to the fact that we put any effort into killing people. Various degrees of us who'd just like to kill a lot fewer people. And then those who don't mind killing people, but want it to be done efficiently. And, I think those who are indifferent to the killing of people, as long as they can get rich off of it (no, that's not meant to be a cheap-shot at salary-people who work in defense).
>What would you have me do?
As I said previously. I think you should disclose your association with the defense/aerospace industry, and you should do that when you join a discussion. I would feel the same if you were employed in most any other industry, and commenting in a similar manner. You don't need to reveal your location or employer or anything like that; and frankly, you need to tolerate or at least expect some skepticism about your motives.
>I do tend to comment on aerospace matters. Primarily because that's what I do.
Then you must no doubt be familiar with the fact that the F-35 project is controversial both inside and outside the .mil and the defense industry. The internet is lousy with these kinds of discussions; it's the greatest peanut gallery the world has ever known. In some of these discussions are a few people who'd apparently like to have us all believe that the F-35 is going to win all of the battles against any adversary anywhere, any time, at any place, ever; do it all for cheap, and then precision-airdrop hot-buttered toast and letters from mom to the ground troops on its way home. I'm glad that you've attempted to constrain your posts to facts which can be confirmed, but also remember that the facts are suspect where it involves next-get .mil-tech. The .mil may or may not [probably won't] release info that could damage the project, and they won't release full performance specs, either; under the naive notion/excuse that potential adversaries can't get that kind of information.
Yes, I am an engineer in defense and aerospace. I haven't hidden that fact on HN (as you saw) but I didn't mention it explicitly in this thread because I didn't think it was necessarily relevant. I'm very conscious of "appeal to authority" and I don't want to make it seem as though I am saying that I must be right because of what I do for a living. And I thought I had been fairly tolerant.
Edit: I should clarify "necessarily relevant with respect to the facts". I link to public sources where appropriate. Anyone can do so, no matter who they are. Strictly in this context, my affiliation doesn't matter.
> The .mil may or may not [probably won't] release info that could damage the project, and they won't release full performance specs, either; under the naive notion/excuse that potential adversaries can't get that kind of information.
Why make it easy for them? And yes, I'm very very aware that the F-35 is very controversial. But I see so much misinformation that sometimes I feel compelled to point out where/how the correct information can be found.