useragent86

> Apparently Mark Twain never said it.

The advice has been written and uttered in various forms for millennia.

> If the quote stated "If you are ignorant on a topic it's better not to discuss it" that would be advise. (Though less quippy).

Your quote would be different advice; it doesn't have the same meaning nor implications.

> But I read the quote as essentially saying: "You are so incredibly stupid you should never, ever attempt to speak to another human being ever again, on any conceivable subject".

How many of your personal experiences are you reading into a context-free aphorism of the ages? Friendly suggestion: you may be making this same mistake when interpreting words in other situations.

Friendly, pedantic, hopefully helpful reminder:

> - ideally, the backup process on the home server side should not be more difficult than a cron job running "rsync -avz --delete /mnt/raid user@server:/mnt/storage"

A mirror is not the same thing as a backup.

> IMHO, space is big + satellites are hard to track, if they're highly-maneuverable or designed to be stealthy = possibility of launching untracked microsatellites that couple with space assets and wait for activation

From what I've read, I understand it to be more of the opposite: there's nothing to hide behind in space, and NORAD and NASA track nearly every piece of debris in orbit, not to mention satellites. So it would be hard for an adversary to do anything like that sneakily, even if there might not be any countermeasures (unclassified ones, anyway). I'm no expert, of course.

> There is a very distinct strain of American thought that says freedom means the biggest or richest get whatever they want.

Where did you get this idea? How do you reconcile it with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights?

I like serif fonts, but on page 31 of that document, "List of Design Recommendations," it says: "Sans-serif fonts are usually more legible than fonts with serifs."

Of course, you're right.

At the same time, we may ask why American society seems to be more ideologically polarized now than at various times in recent decades. If the root cause is natural human failing, what is the second-level cause? Could it be that American society has been under a form of ideological siege and sabotage for many years, that is now coming to fruition?

For example, it's documented that, as far back as the early 20th century, the USSR funded programs to demoralize American society through means as seemingly innocuous as making public art and architecture uglier. As well, Marcuse's "long march through the institutions" has now had 50 years to take effect, and polls have shown that American academia is much less ideologically diverse than in past decades, now being nearly entirely formed of those who vote for one party.

There are elements of history that seem like weather, coming and going in cycles, but there are also parties taking active roles to effect certain ends, and we would be wise to be aware of their influence.

Here's what should be an obvious one: any time I see communism criticized, the comment gets downvoted, and often flagged. Even comments written by people who lived in communist states, offering first-hand accounts, without breaking any HN guidelines, get downvoted and flagged.

In the same threads, "conservatives" and "conservatism" and Republicans and "liberty" are freely condemned, mocked, and accused of all sorts of evil behaviors and intent, without even being downvoted, much less flagged.

This happens regularly, any time these topics come up in a popular thread. So it's hard for me to understand how you could be unaware of this de facto community bias.

Thomas Ptacek and Don Hopkins are two examples of very high-profile users who routinely post guidelines-breaking comments without being downvoted, flagged, or chastised by mods.

Even if you were to concede that, you'd probably counter that you can't read all the comments. And, of course, that is so. But that is beside the point that I have made many times before: the community's bias allows such users (and those who espouse certain views) to break the guidelines without penalty, while heavily penalizing others and those with contrary views.

Every time I see you tell someone that moderator bias is an illusion, I can't help but think that you are talking past each other, because the elephant in the room (which I have rarely seen you even acknowledge) is the extreme bias in the community's downvoting and flagging behavior, which naturally results in the official moderation actions being biased toward what is flagged, which amounts to a de facto official moderation bias. (If a community only calls the police when certain groups of people break the law, the police's actions will naturally be biased toward enforcing against those groups of people, because they aren't omniscient.)

> It's awfully hard not to see this as the commenter just taking this as a stalking horse to bring up an opinion they already held.

Isn't this what happens on every HN thread, people expressing opinions relevant to the topic? Or is it only forbidden when criticizing descendants of the Frankfurt School?

No, your premise is flawed. You jump to the conclusion that he made that claim based on a single data point. Just because he illustrated his point with one example does not mean his point is based on one example.

In any case, this is not a statistical argument, and your comment adds nothing but noise to the discussion.

> This opinion has been bought and paid for by fossil fuel companies who paid PR companies to smear these guys. The science stands up very well, but you've bought in and it doesn't matter if 10 or 10,000 studies confirm their findings you will dismiss it as a conspiracy.

If dang were made aware of that comment of yours, I wonder if he would sanction you for it. Readers (as if there are any) will note that I've made no such ad hominem comments about you, but have only commented on the facts and the logic of the issue.

Now, since I claimed that Cook, et al was a farce, you've said:

> Not only was cook right that there is a consensus, but there is even now a consensus on the consensus and the consensus has grown from 97% to >99%. Cook hasn't been discredited. He's been confirmed over and over by independent groups using completely different methodologies.

Again, this claim of yours is false. In fact, the claims of Cook, et al have been repeatedly proven to be misleading, false, and intentionally so:[0]

    Two-thirds of the papers that Cook and his colleagues examined expressed no view at all on the consensus. Of the remaining 34%, the authors claimed that 33% endorsed the consensus. Divide 33 by 34 and you get 97%. But this result is essentially meaningless, because they set the bar so low.

    The survey authors didn’t ask if climate change was dangerous or “manmade”. They only asked if a given paper accepted that humans have some effect on the climate, which as already noted is uncontroversial. It could mean as little as accepting the “urban heat island” effect.

    So a far better question would be: How many of the studies claimed that humans have caused most of the observed global warming? And oddly, we do know. Because buried in the authors’ data was the answer: A mere 64 out of nearly 12,000 papers! That’s not 97%, it’s one half of one percent. It’s one in 200.

    And it gets worse. In a follow-up study[1], climatologist David Legates read those 64 papers and found that a third of them didn’t even say what Cook and his team claimed. Only 41 actually endorsed the view that global warming is mostly manmade. And we still haven’t got to it being “dangerous”. That part of the survey results was simply invented, by politicians and activists.

    Other researchers have condemned the Cook study on other grounds too. For instance economist Richard Tol showed[2] that over three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsing even the weak consensus actually said nothing at all on the subject. And evidence later emerged[3] that the authors of the paper were drafting press releases about their findings before they even started doing the research, which indicates an alarming level not of warming or of consensus but of bias.

Now, rather than assail you with accusations of conspiracy and partisanship, as you have repeatedly done to me, I'll leave speculation about your motives to the reader (as if there are any left here). But we can all see which kind of comment gets upvoted here, and which kind gets downvoted to death. "Science," indeed.

0: https://climatediscussionnexus.com/videos/the-97-consensus-s...

1: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9

2: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

3: https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/09/Warming-cons...

> What are you talking about? Where did I make an end of the world prediction? It is you who brought that up. Of course nothing is going to end. Nice strawman.

What do you think I refer to by "end of the world"? Don't you think I refer to this part of your comment?

> I look at that data and I think to myself, in a few decades we will have problems, many indirectly from more and more troubled nations who will bear the brunt of the climate change, that that silly little piece of software I write seems meaningless if I start thinking about the bigger picture.

Don't you think that I refer to the numerous comments seen on HN whenever this topic comes up, from people saying that they're expecting massive global upheaval in a few years, that they're not having children because they think society will collapse?

> You even try to bring COVID into the discussion?

Do you not see a parallel between the way the media has stirred panic about global warming^W^Wclimate change^Wcrisis for decades, and the way the media has stirred panic about COVID for the last two years?

> What are you doing, and why?

I would ask you the same.

Mind-boggling, Dan. What did he say that even remotely comes close to "ideological flamewar hell"? Is "leftists" the keyword? Is criticism of "today's leftists" forbidden here?

Meanwhile this thread[0] that rants about the supposed evils of the "US right" (burning Harry Potter books? complaining abut D&D and heavy metal? what is this, 1995?) is not flagged, not dead, and not officially chastised, despite being several levels deep and the originator having doubled-down on the flamebait.

And then, when people say that HN comments seem biased toward the left, you express bewilderment. As I've said before, whether or not you personally apply moderation fairly, the fact is that the community does not, and the leftist bias is obvious. It's much like the supposed bias in policing: if people of one group get the cops called on them, and the people of another group don't, then even if the cops are fair in their interactions, which group are they going to end up policing?

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30239153

I feel like we're not communicating very precisely.

> they don't prevent infection or transmission. The vaccines cause you to have less symptoms. By being less symptomatic you're less likely to spread the disease.

You seem to be saying, they don't prevent transmission, but they prevent transmission.

Maybe what you mean is that, while the vaccines don't guarantee that an infected person won't transmit the virus to another person, they make it less likely.

But this doesn't seem to be what the CDC, Pfizer, et al are saying. They're simply saying that the vaccines don't prevent infection or transmission. I haven't seen them qualify that statement with any probabilities; if they had, it would be something one could argue about (productively).

> Yes, I believe getting everyone vaccinated is not political. It's a public safety issue. Yes, I can understand that politicians can be influenced. ... The billions being made by the corporations producing the vaccine are a pittance in comparison to all the negative consequences of letting it spread uncontrolled.

You seem to be saying, it's not political, but it's political.

Maybe what you mean is that, while there are political aspects to the issues and strong political influences, there are other aspects of greater importance that ought to be considered over all other factors.

But how the decision ought to be made is not the matter at hand; we don't live in an ideal world where all of our leaders and experts are unbiased and altruistic. The matter in question is how the decisions are being made, i.e. to what extent politics has and does influence the decisions being made.

And as far as I can tell, recent history has shown that politics has had a tremendous influence on these policies at every level. For just one example, the confession by a former CDC doctor about how the guideline for distance between people in public places was decided on: someone thought that 10 feet seemed like a a good number, but someone else thought it was impractical, so they compromised and came up with 6 feet--but neither number was scientifically sound (e.g. since the virus is transmitted through aerosols rather than just droplets, it lingers in the air, so there is no distance in an enclosed space which could prevent transmission).

So, given that we know that many of these policies--ones which have wide societal and economic ramifications--have been made on a political basis, the question is, what should we think about these policies, and what should we do about them?

> to slow the spread

Wow, I haven't heard that slogan since 2020. Do you still believe it? Because even the CDC and Pfizer execs and European newspapers are admitting that the vaccines don't prevent infection or transmission.

> It’s not political.

It's hard to fathom that you believe that, because even people in favor of vaccine mandates can recognize political influences, like the many billions of dollars being made by the corporations producing the vaccines and the money they donate to political campaigns.

That kind of argument is disingenuous flamebait and ought to be flagged.

By the same logic, are car seats and seat belts injected into the body?

If I'm not mistaken, this comment of yours is itself a violation of HN guidelines.

Have you considered this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29165559

In threads like this, I'm always struck by the absence of discussion from a security-minded, denial-of-service attack perspective.

It seems like, if someone didn't want one of these platforms to succeed, all that would be necessary would be to hire a few people to spam certain taboo words and ideas from various sockpuppet accounts, and then the rest of the world points at it and says, "It seems like everyone on this platform really does just want to scream the N-word in everyone's face all day, deep down. Good luck with your hate speech site."

And, just like that, the new platform is forever known as a haven of hate, never to be used by "respectable" people. Now, back to Reddit and Facebook and Twitter with you, where we can build a profile of everything you've said, cross-reference it with any other accounts you may have, and hide content we don't want you to see. After all, you're not an -ist, are you?

Can you absolutely prove 100% that you're acting in good faith?

So the Democratic Party controls both houses of Congress and the White House, and they're trying to pass bills to give the Attorney General control over all federal elections in the country, but you say that it's "the Republican Party trying to engineer a de facto one-party state."

Classic XKCD: an incredibly tall image that ends in the Hockey Stick. The winky face is what really settles it, though. QED. ;)

Your true fear is that they are wrong (just like the contemporary authorities have been wrong about major things throughout history, like heliocentrism and hand-washing). Because if they are, then we don't know as much as we think we do, and we aren't as powerful as we'd like to be, and we really are helplessly spinning through the universe on this tiny blue ball. It's too much to handle, so we close our eyes and cover our ears and hope that the people in the lab coats are right this time. But in the end, they're still human beings, just like the rest of us, just like the robed figures of old.

For some things we have a process now that helps us discover truth about tangible things. But since we don't have a control planet, we abstract that problem to man-made oracles (i.e. black-box models), which is not much better than ancients who sacrificed to the rain gods--it might even be worse, because we think the models are accurate, whereas no one today would believe in rain gods.

According to whom? This comment[0] says the opposite:

> Chevron was in Ecuador through a subsidiary that had a partnership with Ecuador's state-owned oil company, which owned the majority (62.5%) of the partnership. Chevron's subsidiary completed environmental remediation required by the Ecuadorian government and signed a settlement agreement with the government in 1995 releasing it from all environmental claims.

Seems like hardly anyone here cares about finding out what the truth is. They just want to collectively rage at the oil industry.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29036270

So in your previous comment, you lied:

> Not to worry about Chevron, because they did not give a single cent of the 9.5B$ to the Ecuador government, or indigenous communities who got toxic waste dumped in their drinking water, or Ecuadorians who discovered oil pools on their property. 30'000 people are represented in that case, with 1000 separate complaints.

Then LurkingPenguin corrected your misinformation:

> Chevron was in Ecuador through a subsidiary that had a partnership with Ecuador's state-owned oil company, which owned the majority (62.5%) of the partnership. Chevron's subsidiary completed environmental remediation required by the Ecuadorian government and signed a settlement agreement with the government in 1995 releasing it from all environmental claims.

Then you replied without admitting your false statement, and his comment remains downvoted.

This whole discussion is a prime example of how unfair and biased most people are. It's a wonder any semblance of justice is ever done in this world.

And what does that have to do with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague? And why does a UN working group's opinion on anything matter? Are they a more fair and unbiased judge than the PCA, and was the case presented to them by both sides for judgment?

It can't. The NYT article says:

> After the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute the case, Judge Kaplan took the rare step of appointing a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Mr. Donziger in the name of the U.S. government.

So the real problem here is people not reading the article, jumping to conclusions, and spreading misinformation in the comments (on HN?!). And probably the SDNY being too biased to enforce the law against a lawyer who cheated in a case against an oil company. Anyone who's been following the SDNY in the news for a while shouldn't be surprised about that.

A phrase like "the normal conclusion" is itself propaganda, implying that anyone is abnormal who would have skepticism about whatever SideburnsOfDoom thinks; a thinly veiled shaming of, not even dissent, but mere neutrality and open-mindedness being faced with two parties offering conflicting narratives.

Imagine standing before a judge and saying, after he's heard the plaintiff's and defendant's cases, "Your honor, if you doubt the normal conclusion, it's likely that you have been swayed by propaganda."

Propaganda is everywhere, especially on the Internet. But of all the stories about which to imply that anyone who doesn't immediately choose sides against one party must have been propagandized--a legal dispute? Who's the biased one here?

It's disturbing how this topic is treated like a tribalistic team sport. Comments like yours seem to follow "Rules for Radicals"[0], such as rules 5 and, especially, 13:

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

You practically invent your own enemies to knock down.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals

So you start by accusing him of being purposely misleading. He mentions 60 studies (which he didn't cite specifically, but at least offered a link which one could use to verify his claims).

But then you pull a bait-and-switch in your own comment, complaining about just one study, which you completely neglect to cite (so it could be made up, for all we know). You subtly outsource your opinion, trying to lend it an air of objectivity by saying that it "raised some red flags" (after you accused him of using weasel words). You couch the whole comment in an air of faux fairness by writing as if you are some judge called upon to arbitrate a dispute, who just has to rule a certain way because, of course, that's what the evidence requires. And you imply that your unsourced complaint about one study invalidates all such studies, therefore he must be wrong.

You accused him of being purposely misleading, but at least he offered a link, and he didn't try to trick people into thinking that a criticism of one thing invalidates other things, which you did.

Your whole comment is a textbook example of propaganda techniques. And then you wonder why people don't know what to believe anymore. It's like the whole Internet is a political, psychological battleground for public mindshare, and the truth doesn't matter at all.