It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have an upvote Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance.
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
I could understand if both the parent and grand parent were equally down voted, but they're not. Instead the parent is downvoted without any explanation as to why they're wrong, and a culture of pointing out why someone is wrong before downvoting them is the only reasonable dividing line I can think of between the 2 comments, thus seemingly proving the parent right...
It's different in a way that makes an important point.
Could it have be put differently? Probably, but another rule of good discourse is to play the argument not the man (or the presentation), so you again seem to be making the parents point.
Maybe I'm missing something but the text is nearly identical except to show how forums might provide similar motivations. That's pretty redundant.
HN is pretty strict about low quality content and such, that's not "proving a point" it's just a question of local traditions.
Personal I've little regard for "you're proving my point by down-voting me" kind of arguments, it's always almost self serving and either a question of that user's ignorance about the local forum's policies or they just don't care.
So we're on the same page, I understood qwsxyh to be making reference to hacker news. In view of that the up/down votes clearly aren't what make twitter what it is, or else HN would be the same, and I hope we can both agree that it isn't. So what is the difference? Id say culture, you're saying traditions (potato, potahto), so what is that culture? I would say at minimum communicating a reason for downvotes, rather than than just the blunt instrument of the downvote alone. Another cultural trait is frowning on ad hominem attacks, because its the message that should be debated, debating the form of the message seems closely related to me.
So it isn't about "you're proving my point by down-voting me"
I think culture plays a part, but the medium does to, I'd argue a great deal.
The differences between HN's system, and twitters is pretty obvious IMO.
Just at the most obvious twitter limits the amount of text. I doubt the average HN post would even fit on twitter. That's a pretty significant difference just to start.
>So it isn't about "you're proving my point by down-voting me"
I was fully explaining my point of view, because I don't think it boils down to that.
I would argue that HN's voting system tends to encourage shorter comments. I personally find it annoying to write a well reasoned 10 point essay and get downvotes and no feedback, is there one particular point you're disagreeing with or what? So I would argue that long comments survive despite the voting system.
Could you suggest other differences in medium that you think make the difference? Moderation?
This is a parroted response used every time someone attempts to meta-analyze the method that allows discourse to propagate. Someone going "ha, you just want to feel superior," is pretty ironic, isn't it?
Examining and critizicing communication mediums is an important and valuable thing to do, especially with respect to the internet. Do you truly believe that sound-bite length tweets that focus more on trying "burn" the opposing side instead of making cogent points are the best way of having rational discussions? If not, then what the OP mentioned is important - the format of Twitter just _doesn't_ lend itself to good discussions as much as it does to fanning flames and coming up with good quips. It promotes the worst parts of discourse, and viewing everything that comes out of it through that lens isn't an attempt to feel superior - it's a _necessary_ thing to keep in mind. In order to fully appreciate a message, you have to fully understand its medium. And Twitter is a shitty medium.
Yet I find the discussion focusing on the meta level of the conversation medium, and not on the higher-order level of society in general, and how a paid collective of actors can overwhelm the power of the individual, to be disingenuous, and potentially a distractionary measure from the far more important conversation around the role of large corporations controlling narratives in our society. It reeks to me of the same debate-club nonsense, where someone can be arguing about some human atrocity, but the second someone makes some sort of named argumentative slip up, the conversation gets recentered completely on semantics or the medium of debate, completely destroying the discussion of the actual higher-order issue effecting the meta-connections between humans and the structures we deem permissible in governing us all...
If the medium is so bad in practice that it does nothing to address the larger issue you're talking about. I think that is very relevant to both aspects, the medium and the actual issue.
I refuse to believe HN users are this genuinely ignorant about such a basic website. It's really nowhere near as hard to read as anyone here makes it out to be.
The first tweet when I scroll up is an answer in the middle of the conversation. The actual start isn't visible. And if I need to scroll up in order to understand anything, why not load the page from the top instead of jumping to some random place? It's almost like any basic website does this better.
I took your advice, and the fifth message in the list (by "@amazonfcrafael") starts with "(2/2)". I don't see the (1/2) of that message, so it seems parts of the conversation are missing and I'm looking at some kind of automatically generated subset of all the relevant tweets. But I guess I'm "ignorant"...
It's buggy, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Looks like the redesign still had some issues to shake out. No need to suggest that the commenters are ignorant.
> If there is a backdoor, it is almost guaranteed China, Russia or any other country will eventually break it and potentially use it for blackmail to get their hands on corporate or national secrets.
> Michael Winterhoff’s Deutschland Verdummt claims that German children today “have no tolerance for frustration, and they avoid all exertion.” By the time they graduate, half of them still “have the psyche of a small child.” The author of eight previous books on childhood development, Winterhoff’s primary concern is that children today have become “tyrants.” They don’t know proper boundaries; they have not been taught how to submit to parental and social authority. And this, Winterhoff says, is entirely the fault of parents themselves. Beginning in the 1990s, they have treated their children like friends and partners instead of acting like authority figures and moral guides, preferring to allow children the freedom to develop and move at their own pace instead of submitting to the adult order of things.
>> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Plus there is "professional speech" vs off the cuff. "Please pass the salt. - Barrack Obama" would probably technically be an accurate quote even if it wasn't documented.
There were accounts of cringeworthy even for the day dressing up in a dirty short cloak in immitation of Spartans.
You can probably release this book every 30 years or so and have a bot replace contemporary parts and jargon.
He says that the development of children is negatively affected by adults, who lack authority by elevating children to their level. Information technology had further enabled children to fortify this power imbalance.
Maybe he has a point, but as a psychologist for children you probably get a warped image after a while. Job hazard probably.
He recommends adults to take walks in the park for example to get distance and perspective from the horrible stuff younger people post online. That can align with my wishes to ban all politicians from Twitter at least.
But I think it should be pretty controversial to say that younger people form some kind of tyranny while keeping demographics in Germany in mind. Well, easier to take advantage of people that believe you a fool.
Still, younger people are the end of civilization as we know it, as is tradition. I believe there never was a metric or any empirical evidence but it might just be one of these timeless classics people seem to love. Maybe there is a hint of truth in a way that people drawn to these stories do indeed feel overtaxed.
It is perfectly possible for younger generation to be less capable in something, to be more violent then previous generation and so on. And these developments can be objectively measured too.
Kids who are being raised in communism are bound to behave differently then the ones who are being raised for capitalism/democracy. For that matter, generation that grew pre-WWII and during it was raised completely differently and towards different values too - especially in Germany. They were in fact taught to obey much more. You was not in fact supposed to think for yourself, while in todays world it is more of an advantage.
The real question is how much of this complain is "real" and how much is just politics to push for changes author would like. And how much of what is real change is bad and how much is actually adaptation to more competitive more free world.
"not been taught how to submit" And a bet he wrote that unironically.
I remember a documentary on Berlin and Berlinners have a slang term there that basically means "you have been controlled" when one of the many petty bureaucrats, pulls you up over some trivial infraction
You may be mistaking "kontrolliert werden" for "being controlled" when it actually means "being checked".
Reminds me of when American friends were SHOCKED by a political poster that quipped "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" - they thought it meant "Trust is good, control is better", but it actually means "Trust is good, but checking things is better"
I assume you're referring to "Deutschland über alles" (Germany over everything).
It's no longer the first verse due to the Nazi history, but it doesn't come from that time.
It actually comes from the mid 1800s (IIRC) when Germany didn't exist as a unified state. People lived in many different kingdoms and principalities and many yearned for a German state.
The anthem comes from this time and this line is supposed to mean that Germany is preferable to the various smaller states of that time.
This phrase probably uses the verb kontrollieren, which means check/control/examine
It's not about petty bureaucrats and trivial infractions, it usually is referring to someone getting checked on the subway for tickets - and sometimes not having the proper ticket (or maaaaaybe being asked for id due to anti-social behaviour)
On the u-bahn everybody is checked. As for anti-social behaviour, it's usually the ones with certain clothing, possibly depicting some symbols or personal appearance that are often targeted.
The wording is clearly implying there are two valid sides, when there is not. The protestors are the valid side and they do not need to give a shit about the opinion of the CCP about full integration.
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.