<story><title>The president is wrong: The NSA debate wouldn’t have happened without Snowden</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/09/the-president-is-wrong-the-nsa-debate-wouldnt-have-happened-without-snowden/?tid=rssfeed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>These political discussions on HN are awkward, and I wish they&amp;#x27;d stop.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not because political discussions aren&amp;#x27;t important, they are, but because I don&amp;#x27;t think this is a useful place to have them.&lt;p&gt;Counterarguments are self-censored, because any moderates calmly pointing out hyperboles tend to be downvoted by the more passionate participants in the discussion.&lt;p&gt;With the moderates bowing out, online voting systems quickly gel into two extremes, maybe a far right and a far left. That&amp;#x27;s not sustainable though, one side quickly gets bigger and wins. The losing side now is best off self-censoring, because why get downvoted when you can just comment on other topics? You eventually get a political monoculture representing one extreme, with no voices of opposition or moderation.*&lt;p&gt;No moderation system has yet promoted any useful political dialogue, because you can&amp;#x27;t convince the 5% of people who are most emotional to rate argument quality independently of personal beliefs.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why, in general, I&amp;#x27;m opposed to the political pulpit of HN, even for positions I agree with. It&amp;#x27;s a bad medium for good discussions on issues of significant controversy.&lt;p&gt;* (What&amp;#x27;s admittedly tricky is sometimes a political monoculture is the correct result. If someone made arguments on behalf of the KKK, we don&amp;#x27;t need a full and fair debate providing a false equivalence between both sides. One side is just wrong. The problem is, with politics, everyone thinks they&amp;#x27;re arguing against someone else who is just wrong, just like the KKK. There&amp;#x27;s no objective way to determine whether or not both sides of a discussion hold merit worthy of a full debate, or whether we should just downvote one side out of the discussion before it leaves the gate.)</text></item><item><author>bambax</author><text>For me, Obama has become inaudible; I don&amp;#x27;t care anymore about what he says.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m more interested in his actions; among these we find (by decreasing order of importance):&lt;p&gt;- use of drones to indiscriminately kill civilians, &amp;quot;suspected terrorists&amp;quot; or their children (cf. the murder of 16 years old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki)&lt;p&gt;- the detention, and ruthless and aggressive prosecution of Bradley Manning&lt;p&gt;- force-feeding Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike, depriving them of even the right to end their own life&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn&amp;#x27;t matter; but he must have set some kind of record in the amount of goodwill he was able to destroy during his time in office.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sage_joch</author><text>Snowden unveiled a horrifying truth about our government: widespread surveillance has been combined with a class of officials who do not face consequences for breaking the law. I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s hyperbolic to say that the Constitution is facing an existential threat. Normally I would be sympathetic to the view that politics should stay off HN. But this feels different. I would hope that people wouldn&amp;#x27;t self-censor their counter-arguments, however. The possibility that things aren&amp;#x27;t quite as bad as I suspect helps me sleep at night. And the truth is, there is reason for hope.</text></comment>
<story><title>The president is wrong: The NSA debate wouldn’t have happened without Snowden</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/09/the-president-is-wrong-the-nsa-debate-wouldnt-have-happened-without-snowden/?tid=rssfeed</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brownbat</author><text>These political discussions on HN are awkward, and I wish they&amp;#x27;d stop.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not because political discussions aren&amp;#x27;t important, they are, but because I don&amp;#x27;t think this is a useful place to have them.&lt;p&gt;Counterarguments are self-censored, because any moderates calmly pointing out hyperboles tend to be downvoted by the more passionate participants in the discussion.&lt;p&gt;With the moderates bowing out, online voting systems quickly gel into two extremes, maybe a far right and a far left. That&amp;#x27;s not sustainable though, one side quickly gets bigger and wins. The losing side now is best off self-censoring, because why get downvoted when you can just comment on other topics? You eventually get a political monoculture representing one extreme, with no voices of opposition or moderation.*&lt;p&gt;No moderation system has yet promoted any useful political dialogue, because you can&amp;#x27;t convince the 5% of people who are most emotional to rate argument quality independently of personal beliefs.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why, in general, I&amp;#x27;m opposed to the political pulpit of HN, even for positions I agree with. It&amp;#x27;s a bad medium for good discussions on issues of significant controversy.&lt;p&gt;* (What&amp;#x27;s admittedly tricky is sometimes a political monoculture is the correct result. If someone made arguments on behalf of the KKK, we don&amp;#x27;t need a full and fair debate providing a false equivalence between both sides. One side is just wrong. The problem is, with politics, everyone thinks they&amp;#x27;re arguing against someone else who is just wrong, just like the KKK. There&amp;#x27;s no objective way to determine whether or not both sides of a discussion hold merit worthy of a full debate, or whether we should just downvote one side out of the discussion before it leaves the gate.)</text></item><item><author>bambax</author><text>For me, Obama has become inaudible; I don&amp;#x27;t care anymore about what he says.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m more interested in his actions; among these we find (by decreasing order of importance):&lt;p&gt;- use of drones to indiscriminately kill civilians, &amp;quot;suspected terrorists&amp;quot; or their children (cf. the murder of 16 years old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki)&lt;p&gt;- the detention, and ruthless and aggressive prosecution of Bradley Manning&lt;p&gt;- force-feeding Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike, depriving them of even the right to end their own life&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn&amp;#x27;t matter; but he must have set some kind of record in the amount of goodwill he was able to destroy during his time in office.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pessimizer</author><text>Politics isn&amp;#x27;t a linear continuum from right to left, and the position between two extremes isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily more rational, even if the positions at the two extremes that you have chosen to represent right and left are both wrong.</text></comment>