We could turn that off so you could post the originally submitted URL, except I'm not sure that there are significant subthreads getting distorted by this change. I already put that URL at the top of the ones I saw, like the GP.
Enforcing banal, insigificant titles diminishes meaningful discussion hinged on the actual point of the submission.
Strangely, but anecdotally, the titles that I see getting changed are ones involving race, state actors, or corporations.
What these moves feel like is censorship of story title that mention, for instance, Black people, the Chinese Communist Party, or multinationals like BlackRock.
It can, which is why I posted replies to the relevant comments in this thread. It's still usually a net win, though, to replace a secondary/derived source with the article it's derived from, especially when the secondary/derived source is adding sensational spin.
> Strangely, but anecdotally, the titles that I see getting changed are
I think you may be getting bit by what I call the notice-dislike bias [1]. You (i.e. all of us) are much more likely to see, and to put emphasis on, the changes that you dislike or disagree with, and to de-emphasize, or simply not notice in the first place, the ones that seem normal or ok. This leads to false feelings of generality [2]. Your comment is well above the median in quality because you at least said "anecdotally"; most users who post general claims about HN don't seem to consider that there may be any bias in such perceptions at all!
From a moderation perspective I can tell you for sure that there's no singling out of any topics over others when it comes to applying the title guideline. Of course, titles on divisive topics are more likely to be inflammatory and therefore linkbaity, and thus 'hit' the guideline, but that's a skew in the data, not the moderators.
As for "censorship", that word has gotten diluted to the point that it seems to just mean "change I disapprove of". You can use it to describe HN title edits if you like, but I think it's a bit of a stretch.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - it would be great to find a less lame name for this, but it's the best I've found so far
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Only the worlds largest asset manager and the leading proponent of The Great Reset.
Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions from [at least] the marketing department of the World Economic Forum. Thanks.
The claim of many is that the WEF wants to bring about a world in which the vast majority of people don't have ownership.
Reuters "fact checks"[1] this claim by saying that it was merely a prediction, and that it isn't actually a goal listed on their website.
I find the fact check unpersuasive. The WEF says "you will be happy" about not owning anything. That they would even think that reveals something about the values of that organization. If that is part of what they would consider to be a happier world, why would they not push for it (in private, if not in public)?
[0]https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/101539205... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-wef-idUSL1N2MR1UU
edit: -4 in 7 minutes, anyone have tips on exactly how you are allowed to discuss any of this without wholesale accepting it?
It is against the rules to complain about downvotes.
Someone else disagreed without receiving similar downvotes.
Your downvotes are probably because of statements like "and refusing to accept any downplaying of it". It's not that I would refuse to accept any downplaying, just that I don't find the ones offered to be persuasive.
If you focus on attacking the argument at hand, rather than on the mental state or character of those you are arguing with, you will have more success.
I'm genuinely unaware what part of the unedited tweet includes the factors you mention, namely questioning mental state or character. Reproduced here, I can't find anything, I'm trying really hard:
It feels like this analysis is missing something, ex. have you had any property rights taken away in the ensuing 5 years? If discourse hinges on a 2 minute YouTube video and refusing to accept any downplaying of it, what hope does discourse have? There's approximately infinite two minute YouTube videos
I recognize that the edits include the factor you mention, those edits occurred enough after an unusually high number of downvotes, and the scored has rebounded since. Note this has nothing to do with anyone else's mental state or character, nor questioning it, or in anyway intended to relate to it.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
As to your question:
> I'm genuinely unaware what part of the unedited tweet includes the factors you mention, namely questioning mental state or character.
For clarification: by mental state, I mean simply another person's state of mind (beliefs, intentions, etc) not mental health (sanity or intelligence).
In this case, saying that people would refuse to accept any downplaying of the WEF statement presumes knowledge about the beliefs of others. As Scott Adam's would say, it's "mind reading". Frankly, you don't know whether I or anyone else would refuse any downplaying. You only know that we refuse the ones provided.
Now, we all have to model the beliefs and intentions of others, but we are often a lot worse at it than we think, and even more so in online communication. Therefore it is best to avoid such "mind reading" language.
Of course, I am making assumptions about the intentions of the WEF! But I'm careful to separate what they actually said from what I infer about their intentions.
What part of that says its "against the rules", as claimed?
> For clarification: by mental state, I mean simply another person's state of mind (beliefs, intentions, etc) not mental health (sanity or intelligence).
Sounds right.
> In this case, saying that people would refuse to accept any downplaying of the WEF statement presumes knowledge about the beliefs of others. As Scott Adam's would say, it's "mind reading". Frankly, you don't know whether I or anyone else would refuse any downplaying. You only know that we refuse the ones provided.
What would Scott Adams say about you recasting any questioning as downplaying, then invoking a general statement from him in service of furthering recasting questioning as "mind reading", then self-assuredly letting me know that you're being frank, not glib, when you tell me I don't know what you'll accept.
All of this, btw, not responding to the question you claim you're answering, quoted as if you were answering, and now you've burdened with further broad claims about _my_ state of mind and what you believe I _think_ I'm arguing
Give me some rope here, let me redirect: you're claiming that the set of following words, bounded by " marks:
"It feels like this analysis is missing something, ex. have you had any property rights taken away in the ensuing 5 years? If discourse hinges on a 2 minute YouTube video and refusing to accept any downplaying of it, what hope does discourse have? There's approximately infinite two minute YouTube videos"
contains:
- questioning a person's mental state (as in beliefs, intetions)
- questioning a person's character
- a statement that people would refuse to accept any downplaying of the WEF statement
- mind reading
Unfortunately, giving you charity here also reads as mind-reading under the extremely broad definition you've given it, so forgive me if what I perceive as normal conversational banter is yet another violation of the rules I missed: I believe you got in over your skis and tried to rope in a discussion of your readings of Scott Adams and what you think he said as an answer to "what's the best way to talk about this so I don't get downvoted?", and you've unintentionally tripled down on explaining that the downvotes are a result of the edit that came after the downvotes.
EDIT: Lordy I didn't realize you were the original person I replied to. You haven't engaged with a single comment I've made in this thread, just meta-explained why you don't need to engage with anything ever. Scott would have your head on a platter for invoking him in defense of this post-modern argumentation style
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA [2]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-real...
I like walking in and out with a clear head from threads, voting behavior changed, and you're always going to get downvoted through the floor for disagreeing. Might as well know it was because of that, than because you were incurious or impolite.
They pulled the Tweet, and they pulled the video, but here, you can read the Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
Right in that first paragraph: "I don't own a car. I don't own a house." The title is "Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better."
Frankly, I don't care if the people noticing this lounge around in period-authentic SS uniforms at night, what's true is true, no matter who picks up on it.
And it's a trend along with the "hey, those bugs, you should try eating them!" articles that are so breathlessly hyped.
Now, it says "You WILL own nothing and you WILL be happy." This wasn't just some rando blogpost, it went through a lot of editorial eyes and hands. Will is very interesting. It's not optional. There's no choice involved.
Related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
A video where futurists predict that you'll rent almost everything instead of buying it, isn't the same thing as evidence that the WEF is enacting communism.
Let's try to be clear about the nuance and details of what we're talking about.
The article was archived shortly after publication [2].
I've not seen anything about buying up existing private homes at a big mark-up, though.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/0d965c11-936e-4467-b98f-f4d34fae2...
Your complaint is the label? Great Reset sounds apt.
I take strong issue with your careful labeling of those with whom you disagree as all leaning in one direction politically.
It kind of reminds me of what was done with "New World Order", which people seem to be moving on from since the conspiracy pundit predictions haven't been realized (e.g. no world authoritarian government yet).
I made direct reference to "The Great Reset," itself, from the very purveyors of it - the WEF. There's no need, nor any value, in trying to conflate my response to you with this strawman group you're forming.
> (e.g. no world authoritarian government yet)
Your interpretation of the world is highly specious. Have you been in a coma for these past 1.5 years?
> One of its least helpful usages
Very interesting choice of words, least helpful. Seems to me like you have a strong ideological alignment with the goals of the World Economic Forum.
See, it's so easy to flip your entire script and end up presenting the exact case being made by the conspiracy theory people. The New World Order fanatics could see the WEF as their fictitious enemies moving on to a new strategy, specifically because there is now an authoritarian government established. And it could be seen as a sloppy form of punditry, overfit atop a very specific and narrowly-targeted interpretation of the world, making the conspiracy people all the more mad that more people don't see things their way. Because there could be "real collective action," if more people did see it their way.
Under those considerations, I would be naive to be any less skeptical of your position, than I am of the conspiracy theory strawmen you're establishing here.
The actual "The Great Reset," pursued by the WEF is concerning specifically because it seeks to align economic interests globally, forcing them into a densely-regulated system through negative incentives. It forgoes and utterly mocks the notion that knowledge ought to be distributed, decentralized, and localized. There are not just huge economic concerns here, but ethical ones as well. Wars will be fought over the disagreements spawned from the aims of these zealots.
But here's some perhaps interesting information on top 5 shareholders of largest US banks [1]:
JP Morgan Chase: Blackrock 6.4 Vanguard 4.7 State Street 4.5 Blackrock 2.7 Blackrock 2.5
Bank of America: Berkshire 6.9 Blackrock 5.3 Vanguard 4.5 state street 4.3 Fidelity 2.1
Citigroup: Blackrock 6.1 Vanguard 4.5 State Street 4.2 Fidelity 3.6 Capital world Inv 2.4
Wells Fargo: Berkshire 8.8 Blackrock 5.4 Vanguard 4.5 State street 4.0 Fidelity 3.5
US Bank: Blackrock 7.4 Vanguard 4.5 Fidelity 4.4 State Street 4.4 Berkshire 4.3
So although yes this does go off the rails a bit, not unreasonable to question the (possibly perverse) incentives banks face given their ownership. Book by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl called Radical Markets explores those incentives a bit.
[1] Jose Azar et. al. Ultimate ownership and Bank competition https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers/cfm?abstract_id=2710252
If you calculated the ownership across all banks in the US Blackrock would not own nearly so high a percentage.
https://austingwalters.com/stagflation-is-here-monetary-infl...
With that being the case and the dollar appearing to be weakening, it makes since for them to buy anything they can.
Those homes they are buying for $300k would cost $500-$600k to build...
Regarding the great reset - here’s a Bloomberg article on how to navigate it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-31/how-to...
It’s real and it’s here.
Or I buy a mill and cut my own lumber. I’ve got plenty of trees I can take down and use.
"same cabal"
Everything is a grand singular conspiracy to someone these days. Happens on HN too, every few bad news type post has some accusation that whatever outcome was because of a conspiracy.
Whether what they did was in any way illicit or undermines the integrity of U.S. elections is of course up for debate, but the fact that a secret coordinated effort of powerful people "conspired" (if you will) to influence the outcome of the election is I think well established.
My point was that, of the conspiracies mentioned by the original user, the conspiracy to influence the 2020 election was openly acknowledged by its participants.
Seems like that's a common refrain from conspiracy theory fans, when they can't find evidence for their claim 'well there was another thing' comes up.... I'm not sure what they're trying to say.
As an aside, this isn't a username I expected to ever see again.
Recent HN article about the SCOTUS and CFAA ruling was full of folks who felt that CFAA must have been some corporatism-ish conspiracy to pass (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) a law back in 1986 and then criminalize basic policy rules as a serious crime. And yet apparently they just chose not to do that at any sort of scale...
Rather, the most logical explanation is that some folks made some bad choices when it came to applying that law, because it was convenient for them.
As far as my username, duxup loves you.
Mind if I ask what you mean by this?
Where is the conspiracy with banks buying houses en masse? They intend to turn every middle class family into a permanent renter and take any profit of the housing market for themselves. This is exactly what’s happening.
We can simply say that this problem is more important than people believe, or that the media does not talk about it enough because it’s difficult to write about. But there’s no conspiracy here.
An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
Like, maybe the Fed is conspiring with the gov. and big banks to fleece the American people of their real estate assets…? Have you no ability to question things?
... but the urge to ignore my own advice is too strong since the extraneous claim is a huge head-scratcher. Doesn't this person realize the person who lost the election is a real estate developer? I realize this isn't the same thing as an investor, but it is close enough in this case.
To put it another way: a lot of religious (particularly Christian) views amount to metaphysical claims that we can't really falsify. That's maybe sufficient to make them "irrational" in a narrow analytical sense, but insufficient to label them as crank-ish.
I haven't made an argument for why the ones I've listed are actually crank subjects; I consider those granted and I'm not particularly interested in justifying them.
What I take issue with is the lack of symmetry. For every COVID denialist, you have a zero-COVID enthusiast. For every election denialist, you have an impending climate catastrophe doommonger. For every great reset conspiracy theorist, you have someone who believes we live in a meritocracy. Each of the latter positions is as merituous as their counterpart, but the former are treated with a disproportionate contempt.
I think symmetry in this case would amount to false balance. Why even bother to frame things this way? It's self evident to most people that crank views run the gamut of social and political backgrounds; like all things in life, we prioritize our discussion of them by their perceived impact(s) on our lives. COVID denialism has more of an impact on my life than an anti-nuclear crank does.
When such a group meets to discuss society-wide changes and pushes their positions publicly, I don't think that's a "crank subject". That's simply a legitimate story that others may wish to discuss and raise concerns about. Critique about WEF/Davos isn't new - it has been described as an undemocratic forum previously, because it's a set of powerful people deciding how they want to shape the world outside of any national or international political process. This isn't conspiratorial thinking, it is literally the way the WEF is set up and operates. See the following paper for a critique, which mentions that WEF members downplay the importance of this forum and that their public exposure hides all that takes place privately: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?re...
Your own Wikipedia link says this neatly:
> According to The New York Times,[1 1] the BBC, The Guardian, Le Devoir and Radio Canada, "baseless" conspiracy theories spread by American far-right groups linked to QAnon surged at the onset of the Great Reset forum and increased in fervor as leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau[1 2] incorporated ideas based on a "reset" in their speeches.[1 3]
Well, I think they're only partly wrong: Of course Davos has always (since long before it was called the "WEF") felt like it's all about "the world order"... But it's made up of the rich and powerful -- so why would it want a new world order, when the old / current one is that the rich and powerful run the world?
Regarding the quote from Wikipedia - I don't agree with how that portion of the article is written or sourced. It is debated on the Talk page, and is a reflection of a growing bias in Wikipedia (https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/). That section starts off by mentioning QAnon, then says Trump amplified QAnon, and never makes a connection between all of that and "Great Reset" (it's a sort of "guilt by association" argument). Additionally, it lists out a number of right-leaning TV personalities and claims they were pushing a conspiracy theory, but none of the source articles they reference show any false claim from those same people. From those sources, it looks like these people complained that the pandemic is being exploited as a political opportunity to introduce and push various left-leaning political positions. That seems not only very reasonable to me, but also easily provable.
From my perspective, I am seeing people take the very small number of people who are suggesting the pandemic was a planned crisis with certain political goals in mind, and using that to discredit others who are not claiming it was planned but just disagree with the political opportunism and the political goals.
> May opinion poll finds that 53% of Republicans believe Trump is the ‘true president’ compared with 3% of Democrats
> About one-quarter of adults falsely believe the 3 November election was tainted by illegal voting, including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll.
But the share of Republicans who falsely say there is solid evidence that Biden did not win has dropped from 58% in January to 50% now
Democrat voters didn't accept that Trump legitimately won the 2016 election: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/334972-poll-dems...
Half of Democrat voters believe that Russia literally tampered with vote tallies to help Trump in the 2016 election: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
Such sentiments continued even a couple years after the election: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll-idU...
Let's also not forget that the Democrats formally challenged election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016 - all the recent presidential elections they lost: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/democrat-republic...
Your fourth link is misleading. You've picked a link from a moment in time when Barr had released his summary of the Meuller report but Meuller's criticism of Barr's summary as being inaccurate had not been released.
As for the fourth link - I am not sure of the timing of that particular poll (I just pulled that from a search earlier), so I'll have to take your word on that. Thanks for pointing it out.
I feel like absolutist language such as x-denier is designed by stupid people to avoid debate.
Over 680,000 additional deaths in 2020/early 2021.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Talk to a single doctor that was on the 'front lines' of this - a family member was signing 20 death certificates per week for people dying of horrible respiratory disease with positive Covid tests. One person at one hospital overwhelmed with the quantity of death. What was it if not Covid?
However it can also be the case that COVID deaths (and hospitalizations as well) may be over-reported. We have recent reports that seem to be pointing strongly to this possibility.
[1]: Alameda County revising COVID deaths downward by 25% - https://oaklandside.org/2021/06/04/alameda-countys-new-covid...
[2]: Research in CA suggests COVID hospitalization in children overcounted by 40% - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/study-number-of-kids...
What precisely do you think was killing all of those extra people who were showing up in ERs with respiratory distress?
But I also do think that those cases of overcounting are very likely NOT the only, isolated ones. The dynamics exposed (how hospitalizations were counted, the basic 'with' vs 'of' question), almost certainly apply more broadly.
So, apologies for attempting nuance, but I think COVID can at once be a) a massive pandemic (and tragic for millions), while also being b) somewhat overblown due to unrigorous metrics that in turn feed more sensationalism than otherwise warranted.
Doesn’t that actually imply that there wasn’t enough sensationalism and that our methods, while attributing some non-Covid deaths to Covid, were actually missing many more Covid deaths?
I don’t get the leap from “we misattributed some non-Covid deaths to Covid” in an environment that had even more deaths that our supposed overcount as evidence that we overreacted.
Another plausible explanation to excess mortality differences is that lockdowns and other measures caused people to engage in behaviors that increased mortality, from putting off necessary medical visits to exacerbated mental health due to social isolation or financial stress.
As an example of why that isn't "crazy", consider that recently a major Bay Area county in CA revised their COVID counts downward by 25% (https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-county-cuts-covid-...) because they had previously included deaths of anyone infected with the virus, regardless of whether the virus was a direct or contributing cause to the death. This is in a state that took the pandemic very seriously, had lots of governmental organization around it, and 'believes in science'.
People have been raising concerns about how deaths are counted throughout the pandemic, but they've largely been ignored, despite it being a legitimate line of questioning. They were always told "there are standards", which isn't really a convincing argument, given that there have been a non-zero number of proven instances of over-counting. You could argue that excess mortality is the metric we should look at, and that may be appropriate in some countries where such data collection is rigorous. But the way excess mortality is tracked is also inconsistent between different nations, and outright non-existent in most nations.
The "Official" death count due to covid in the US so far is 586,000. Excess mortality indicates 680,000.
Believing that "the real" number is somewhere substantially below that is not "skeptical" it's just silly.
/s
Crazy ideas come about naturally, but the political opportunists know when to fan the flames of those ideas if it benefits them. You don't necessarily need a central planning committee to benefit from insanity.
In the case of COVID, the sad tactic that's used to discredit anyone, even highly respected people in medicine, when they depart in the slightest from the flaky "official narrative" is to either silence such people immediately across all friendly channels, ridicule them, or to dredge up some completely preposterous claim and poisoning the well, etc., essentially claiming that anyone who disagrees with the official party line is like the guy who believes that lizard people run the world.
Nothing you can really do about it. You can't pry the scales from people's eyes, especially if they like them just where they are. I'm pretty sure the inner coating on those scales is reflective.
If that's true, that's a major problem that the US needs to solve
>Dearest Friends & Fellow Americans,
The eminent trial of our Age is upon us. Those whose courage fails them now, who shrink from the fight, and sit idly while the very foundations of our nation collapse should sit in shame; but those that stand boldly by the Constitution deserve the eternal thanks of all mankind. Malignant tyranny, like other pogroms of the past, are no simple feat to overcome; Yet we know also through the trials of history that the greater the force of evil, the more august the achievement.
> The Malignant States, the Federal Government, and the Tech Politburo have avowed to create and enforce a progressive establishment that places Marxist Race Doctrine, Anti-American Sentiment, and Western-averse Cultural and Governmental Practices at the forefront of legal and social policy and have declared that they will fully enchain the American populace to this destructive course.
Edit: I hope that nobody thinks that's still "Christian and Republican", right? Even if you're extremely critical of current developments it's certainly crazy to call those a "pogrom".
While I personally disagree with at least one of the statements you quoted and some other ideas held by the author, many of the ideas presented in the posted Twitter thread still stand. Ad hominem attacks are worthless in a discussion of ideas.
Some of the conspiracy theories are part of the twitter thread. It's entirely reasonable to discuss these here, especially if the thread and account get this amount of attention.
>Honestly, these are pretty damn tame.
Comments like this one make me seriously fear for the political system of the United States. If that's "tame" I do not know what isn't.
We can no longer afford to play along, pretending that sedition and lies are acceptable because they are just normal "conservative opinion".
They get disconnected from their origins, repackaged and repurposed like a durable material.
"Cabal" traditionally is a dog-whistle for the antisemitism conspiracy about why the Nazis claim they lost WW1.
It's been durable. Lots of uses of cabal these days shed those nazi roots and repurpose it to just mean "those corrupted by wealth and power". It's still really, extremely close to a very dangerous form of anti-semitism, but it's possible for one to exist without the other.
It's really fascinating how transitive these lies are and how they can be composited like higher level programming objects to form essentially different flavors of insanity. I wish humans weren't like this but eh, don't know how to change it
where's Capitalism and where's Federal Reserve funded institutions that represent the big deep state aiming at controlling all aspects of your life.
> Well, the banks are controlled by and in bed with the same cabal buying everything up. You think this will be corrected by market forces when it is a financial and political pincher movement pushed by the same cabal that stole the 2020 election & hid COVID Truth? You are fucked.
https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024
IMO, weakens the entire 'thread' and makes it much less trustworthy, even though I do believe this about institutional real estate investors. 'Feudalism' might be a bit extreme, but this will definitely impact the middle class in a very real way.