> If everything is political the label of “political” has no power for discernment, no ability to meaningfully partition the semantic space. It’s logically bunk, mathematically superfluous.
Exactly. Strange how the author just says this and immediately moves to pretending it isn’t true.
Apolitical Tech, is the goal we give machines that gets rid of humanity. That's the only way you make anything apolitical. Where there are two people, there is a struggle for a balance of power.
This article asserts a lot without backing it up. I've been convinced to take political actions as the result of thoughtful discussions with coworkers over lunch for example; even if that's rare acting like it's impossible ignores that work is a large part of our lives and political discussion matters.
I agree with the author that it can take up too much space, but the argument here seems to be that because of that failure mode we must throw the baby out with the bathwater and implicitly assume the politics you infer of your boss.
I don't think the author is asserting that you can't talk politics with your coworkers?
The context is specifically about online sites like HN and the well known phenomenon where the technical usefulness of the site is inversely proportional to how many participants are trying to bring their preferred politics into it.
If you are able to have productive discussions about tech & politics with your coworkers, that might be because you are exceptional humans, or because you were in person rather than online, or because you already shared your co-workers political opinions. None of those apply to an online space like HN.
I’ve also changed my mind because of HN and other technical forum discussions. I brought up the counter example at the workplace because it is a case the article mentions without argument.
I think it’s ridiculous to pretend there isn’t massive overlap between political discussion and tech. Obviously there can be too much of a thing, obviously there are uncurious partisans, but I don’t think that is particularly different from the other kinds of flame wars HN guidelines already discourage.
> Many technical spaces have become extremely partisan, and this has lowered their utility for all parties.
I make a space. I make it for me and my friends. It grows. And then people like this come knocking at my door, make a huge mess, and then whine when they get excluded. Many such cases, a tale as old as time. Ask me how I know.
I mean, even if not everything is political, almost everything tech spaces deal with is political. Usually, removing politics is the cop out, to try and bend compliance to whatever the null hypothesis political ramifications are of any particular technology. "Dont make this political" when discussing like, the ability to monitor office workers, is just an appeal to the politics of the people who gain from monitoring office workers. Therfore "“But everything is political” is a cop-out" is a cop-out
From experience, it seems that "don't make this political" can typically be translated to "I don't want opposition". It's much more likely someone hasn't reflected deeply on the political nature of their opinions than it is that a topic is "apolitical".
I think this is reaching. Plenty of humans are passionate about <x> and completely uninterested in how <x> applies to some current political concern.
Is the problem that some people are like that, or is the problem that they refuse to go along when you tell them that they have to be interested in it?
It’s hard to align the two groups. As someone who used to prefer apolitical discussion I now find it very hollow to talk about <x> without including the societal implications of <x>. Like it’s possible to be interested in nuclear physics without ever considering how nuclear physics impacts politics but it just doesn’t feel complete. As Dr Ian Malcom so eloquently stated: “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”
And there's nothing wrong with that. The question is whether or not it's ok for people like your current self to try to force people like your former self to have the same interests as your current self.
If you could magically make HN "apolitical" it's not that tech political discussion would vanish, it's just that different people with different interests would end up in different spaces. And as you have experienced, many people will move between those spaces at different points in their lives.
I am very interested in tech & politics and I am not interested in trying to prevent either. All I ask for is one site where I can go to nerd out without having to wade my way through 400 treatises about why Marx was actually right when I just want to learn more about hierarchical caching or whatever.
I think it's very telling that the issue at hand isn't a bunch of nerds brigading /r/marxWasRight demanding that political nerds include tech considerations in every post.
"apolitical" simply means "the boss's politics", nothing more. When a CEO tells you to keep politics out of the workplace, he means do not disagree with him. A worker talking about his kids being bullied for being nerds is not political, a worker talking about his kids being bullied because of gender issues... Keep those politics out of the workplace.
Same here. There's politics you can freely discuss - Canada being a "police state" and "mistreating" "protestors", European hate speech laws etc. Perfectly fine and apolitical! Talk about something a little too uncomfortable for Americans and all of sudden, hey! Keep those politics out!
This is terrible.
This is nerds having a tantrum because they can’t just play with their tech toys without having to behave like adults.
That ship has sailed. Your nerdy toys are not just the pure intellectual pursuits, and puzzles, and enigmas devoid of effects on reality you would like them to be.
If you don’t recognize that your penchant for solving software and hardware problems is used by the owner class to promote concentration of wealth and gain power, then you will stay forever a useful
idiot to their cause.
Demanding that tech discussion should stay apolitical nowadays only serves the purpose of the powerful billionaires that control you.
Cop out.
Your contribution to big tech is not apolitical. Go be a monk if apolitical is what you want (and even then, that wouldn’t be fully apolitical).
Men are political animals. If you say you want to be apolitical, you are already making a political choice, i.e. deferring your choices to established power.
Doing the ostrich is a political choice.
> If everything is political the label of “political” has no power for discernment, no ability to meaningfully partition the semantic space. It’s logically bunk, mathematically superfluous.
Exactly. Strange how the author just says this and immediately moves to pretending it isn’t true.
Apolitical Tech, is the goal we give machines that gets rid of humanity. That's the only way you make anything apolitical. Where there are two people, there is a struggle for a balance of power.
This article asserts a lot without backing it up. I've been convinced to take political actions as the result of thoughtful discussions with coworkers over lunch for example; even if that's rare acting like it's impossible ignores that work is a large part of our lives and political discussion matters.
I agree with the author that it can take up too much space, but the argument here seems to be that because of that failure mode we must throw the baby out with the bathwater and implicitly assume the politics you infer of your boss.
I don't think the author is asserting that you can't talk politics with your coworkers?
The context is specifically about online sites like HN and the well known phenomenon where the technical usefulness of the site is inversely proportional to how many participants are trying to bring their preferred politics into it.
If you are able to have productive discussions about tech & politics with your coworkers, that might be because you are exceptional humans, or because you were in person rather than online, or because you already shared your co-workers political opinions. None of those apply to an online space like HN.
I’ve also changed my mind because of HN and other technical forum discussions. I brought up the counter example at the workplace because it is a case the article mentions without argument.
I think it’s ridiculous to pretend there isn’t massive overlap between political discussion and tech. Obviously there can be too much of a thing, obviously there are uncurious partisans, but I don’t think that is particularly different from the other kinds of flame wars HN guidelines already discourage.
> Many technical spaces have become extremely partisan, and this has lowered their utility for all parties.
I make a space. I make it for me and my friends. It grows. And then people like this come knocking at my door, make a huge mess, and then whine when they get excluded. Many such cases, a tale as old as time. Ask me how I know.
A long time ago, there were discussion boards, and there was a section "off-topic" on those boards.
>“But everything is political” is a cop-out
I mean, even if not everything is political, almost everything tech spaces deal with is political. Usually, removing politics is the cop out, to try and bend compliance to whatever the null hypothesis political ramifications are of any particular technology. "Dont make this political" when discussing like, the ability to monitor office workers, is just an appeal to the politics of the people who gain from monitoring office workers. Therfore "“But everything is political” is a cop-out" is a cop-out
From experience, it seems that "don't make this political" can typically be translated to "I don't want opposition". It's much more likely someone hasn't reflected deeply on the political nature of their opinions than it is that a topic is "apolitical".
I think this is reaching. Plenty of humans are passionate about <x> and completely uninterested in how <x> applies to some current political concern.
Is the problem that some people are like that, or is the problem that they refuse to go along when you tell them that they have to be interested in it?
It’s hard to align the two groups. As someone who used to prefer apolitical discussion I now find it very hollow to talk about <x> without including the societal implications of <x>. Like it’s possible to be interested in nuclear physics without ever considering how nuclear physics impacts politics but it just doesn’t feel complete. As Dr Ian Malcom so eloquently stated: “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”
And there's nothing wrong with that. The question is whether or not it's ok for people like your current self to try to force people like your former self to have the same interests as your current self.
If you could magically make HN "apolitical" it's not that tech political discussion would vanish, it's just that different people with different interests would end up in different spaces. And as you have experienced, many people will move between those spaces at different points in their lives.
I am very interested in tech & politics and I am not interested in trying to prevent either. All I ask for is one site where I can go to nerd out without having to wade my way through 400 treatises about why Marx was actually right when I just want to learn more about hierarchical caching or whatever.
I think it's very telling that the issue at hand isn't a bunch of nerds brigading /r/marxWasRight demanding that political nerds include tech considerations in every post.
Apolitical guillotines ftw
Lets just make this nuke apolitical, please
These are our non political fighter jets, engaging non political targets in non political airspace.
"apolitical" simply means "the boss's politics", nothing more. When a CEO tells you to keep politics out of the workplace, he means do not disagree with him. A worker talking about his kids being bullied for being nerds is not political, a worker talking about his kids being bullied because of gender issues... Keep those politics out of the workplace.
Same here. There's politics you can freely discuss - Canada being a "police state" and "mistreating" "protestors", European hate speech laws etc. Perfectly fine and apolitical! Talk about something a little too uncomfortable for Americans and all of sudden, hey! Keep those politics out!
[dead]
This is terrible. This is nerds having a tantrum because they can’t just play with their tech toys without having to behave like adults. That ship has sailed. Your nerdy toys are not just the pure intellectual pursuits, and puzzles, and enigmas devoid of effects on reality you would like them to be. If you don’t recognize that your penchant for solving software and hardware problems is used by the owner class to promote concentration of wealth and gain power, then you will stay forever a useful idiot to their cause. Demanding that tech discussion should stay apolitical nowadays only serves the purpose of the powerful billionaires that control you.
lol the author literally described you:
> If you’re taking political action seriously, you cannot abide fence-sitters. Anybody not on your side is just a laggard enemy.
Cop out. Your contribution to big tech is not apolitical. Go be a monk if apolitical is what you want (and even then, that wouldn’t be fully apolitical). Men are political animals. If you say you want to be apolitical, you are already making a political choice, i.e. deferring your choices to established power. Doing the ostrich is a political choice.
lol the author literally described you:
> If you’re taking political action seriously, you cannot abide fence-sitters. Anybody not on your side is just a laggard enemy.