altruism?! organizations like amnesty and human rights watch, regularly employee people in and out of western governments and are part of the governing western elite. no wonder that while they are always quick to call out and denounce some third world authoritarians, and adversaries of west, they are far more muted when it comes to rights violations by western leaders(even in minority of cases where they don't simply ignore).
factually, greatest mass criminals and rights violators of 21st century, are presidents and other leaders of usa and it's allies. but you wouldn't know that, if your sources are amnesty and co.
that is in fact extremely muted (and mostly about things that are not in line with ideology of west's elites) compared to their condemnation of 3rd world authoritarians or adversaries of west. especially so because west is now the biggest rights violators, including biggest mass murderers and perpetrators of illegal wars.
statistics always involves selection and/or generalization of data. both of those acts always involves some kind of bias (even random selection) in what, how, and why, criteria used in process
A crappy piano brings little joy. The high standards maintained were what made the victory piano noteworthy. The tool does matter, albeit not as much as the person using it.
however well intentioned, this boils down to people deciding for and controlling others. disrespecting them, treating them less than fully human, less than themselves. that is the underlying evil in all evil actions.
No. That's a very cynical interpretation of the events. In fact, it was the human instinct to protect those that need protection (elderly, children) that was the driving force.
American Life had a podcast about a Chinese family that hid their elderly matriarch's terminal diagnosis from her. The story is similar in spirit to this one. Whatever you may think of that decision, it was not an evil act. In another podcast, the adults shielded their girlscout troop from the harsh realities of a POW camp similar to 'Life is Beautiful'.
Sometimes, people will decide to carry a burden on behalf of others, and in general that is a deeply admirable quality.
It only really works if you can keep it up, because once the curtain drops you could be looking at a level of deceit or betrayal that becomes incredibly difficult to reconcile as the lie becomes more complicated.
I don't think you can call it a burden in that sense if the other person is totally oblivious to it. That's purely a burden of your own creation, because they had no say in it, and you're basically deciding that you don't like the truth, so they won't either, where in reality it could be quite liberating.
In that sense, I don't feel that's quite as compassionate as giving someone the truth and then supporting them through that if they need it; carrying that burden together if indeed it is a burden to them. It might not be.
I'd generally agree for functioning humans, but am less sure about older people with deteriorating mental functions. There is likely no getting though it, and I can hardly handle it.
Not when meeting my grandpa on one of his last days before he ended himself a few years ago in what was probably one of his clearer states of mind. Apparently they mostly shielded us from how bad his state was and honestly, I'm fine with that lie. Knowing would probably lead to something better, like some magical cure.
Now my grandma a fall, following operations and a re-occurring delirium/confusional state that doesn't seem to go away. She wants to go back to her home, but that's no option in her state. If a little lie would help keep her stable...
As for myself, I obviously hope medicine & science will make enough progress in the next few decades to spare me something like that. Or to be lucky and not have that problem in the first place. But if it comes to that... I don't know. Maybe just try to keep me happy.
>It only really works if you can keep it up, because once the curtain drops you could be looking at a level of deceit or betrayal that becomes incredibly difficult to reconcile as the lie becomes more complicated.
Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on the situation.
>I don't think you can call it a burden in that sense if the other person is totally oblivious to it. That's purely a burden of your own creation
So we can call it a 'burden' - why argue semantics if you agree?
>because they had no say in it, and you're basically deciding that you don't like the truth, so they won't either
Another cynical interpretation. No. That's not necessarily the consideration. That's not necessarily the right interpretation.
> where in reality it could be quite liberating.
Maybe. Maybe not.
>I don't feel that's quite as compassionate as giving someone the truth and then supporting them through that if they need it;
I’ve suffered people who think they’re mind readers and know what’s best for me. Whatever burden they thought I was carrying, they couldn’t have got it any more wrong. Those people stopped being a part of my life when I realised what was was going on, because what
I felt was betrayed. My own feelings didn’t matter, it was their feelings about what they assumed about me that were more important to them.
As such, I would favour open communication instead of being ‘protected’. That requires serious trust. And a lot of these games that we play depend on a lack of trust.
There’s nothing cynical about this, we’ve all done things with good intentions in mind only to get bad results. Oftentimes it’s because we’re acting in our own interest and not the person we’re putting it on.
That usually means that someone "vouched" for the specific comment using the vouch link on the individual comment page. This turns off the "dead" flag for that one comment.
given how restrained the government response has been, given the protesters' violence and property damage, i doubt this was coordinated by either gov. other cleverer attritional responses like boycott and pressure on businesses sympathetic to protesters (eg. cathy pacific ceo was forced to resign today for not readily firing few pilots and employee participating in protests) is more likely way they will go, as ordinary people inevitably get tired of rather aimless protests.
wikipedia is now under the effective control of limited number of entrenched editors, mostly subscribing to western establishment's "liberal" ideology, with almost absolute power over content.
a prime example of this bias, is the article about british empire. comparison of that article with articles about other brutish regimes(ussr, mao's china, etc) is telling, even though it's atrocities far exceeds any other regime, in terms of both quantity and extent.
I did not get your comment and I would like to understand it better. Isn't "whitewashing" the process of forgetting about the contributions or tribulations of non-white people in our history? Acknowledging atrocities committed by western civilizations seems like the opposite of that (and I do think we should hold ourselves to a very high standard and being aware of these atrocities is part of that).
What I mean is that Australians sweep the details under the rug about the genocide of the First Nation people that occurred in order to make their modern nation .. its not at all near as well acknowledged as it should be, and Australia continues to build tourist traps on sites of mass murder as if its nothing.
Australians prefer ignorance over acknowledgement, generally. Its not something we should be proud about .. in fact, there is a lot of shame in being an Australian with NO CLUE about the civilization that was swept away to make way for White Australia. Australia's first inhabitants were far more advanced than we care to admit.
EDIT: some things all Australians should know about the first people:
* They have been on the continent for at least 65,000 years
* The current biosphere is a result of their management of the land and wildlife for the duration of those 65,000 years
* They used cryptographic techniques to keep the peace between tribes
* They have the oldest confirmed oral history of any human society, ever - scientifically proven to stretch back 40,000 years. (We in the west can't keep our oral traditions sane for 100 years, by comparison..)
* They had a version of the Hippocratic Oath long before European medicine
* Their medical culture had an understanding of antibiotic and antiseptic materials in their environment and were using them to great effect at a time when European medicine still believed in miasma theory
.. and there is much, much more. Alas, the hubris around what has been done to the First Nation people (see for example White Australia policies continuing into the 1980's... forced castrations... forced re-settlement of children... etc.) has resulted in a general ignorance of the situation among current Australian culture...
I was looking this up just now. It seems 29 million died in India alone under British rule due to famine. [1] However there was widespread crop failure in the late 19th century. [2] I don't know how much control they had over what and how every set of deaths occurred, so it's not yet clear to me you can just directly compare number of deaths between empires without taking into account the surrounding context.
While it wouldn't be wise to attribute all those deaths to the British Empire, it's important to note that British agricultural practices led to widespread famines and crop-failures. Diversion of food crop land to grow Opium and Indigo led to famines[1]. And the risk of crop-failures was often beared by the cultivator[2].
The Bengal Famine is a well-studied case where, AIUI, the current consensus is that imperial policies contributed significantly to the suffering and death toll:
>so it's not yet clear to me you can just directly compare number of deaths between empires without taking into account the surrounding context.
This is true, but perhaps in a way you weren't anticipating; this point was made decades ago by Herbert Marcuse in response to people attempting to compare, for instance, Nazi death tolls with Soviet ones. This mode of argumentation reduces concrete matters of policy and motivation (quality) into mere numbers to be thrown about (quantity). But authoritarianism is not a quantitative matter - a nation with harsh laws under which only few are convicted is still an authoritarian nation.
While I agree with that assessment, I don't really think it has much to do with Wikipedia itself, it's just how things are in the entire Western culture. History is written by the victors and all that.
Consequently, it feels a bit unfair to put this on Wikipedia editors. Kinda like blaming a random restaurant manager for forcing waiters to rely on tips. Yes, if they have enough profits, they can pay people more and fix a small part of the problem. The general issue remains systemic though.
> Consequently, it feels a bit unfair to put this on Wikipedia editors. Kinda like blaming a random restaurant manager for forcing waiters to rely on tips. Yes, if they have enough profits, they can pay people more and fix a small part of the problem. The general issue remains systemic though.
Systemic yet oddly restricted to a particular area.
I think you mean “English-language Wikipedia”. Try switching to one of the other languages and then putting the article through Google Translate. They’re not the same article semantically! Each language has its own set of editors putting its own spin on things. It’s only to be expected that each language’s editorial policy will be dominated by the cultural hegemony of that language’s speakers, if one exists.
(For example, even without government interference, you would expect “Taiwan” to have different first-sentence descriptions in the Chinese–Simplified, Chinese–Traditional, and English Wikipedias.)
> For example, even without government interference, you would expect “Taiwan” to have different first-sentence descriptions in the Chinese–Simplified, Chinese–Traditional, and English Wikipedias.)
I agree with your sentiment, but that's not the best example. There is one Chinese Wikipedia, and articles are machine-transliterated between simplified and traditional forms (plus a few more forms using region-specific vocabulary).
Well, besides Mandarin there are also articles about Taiwan in Cantonese, Eastern Min, Gan, Hakka, Literary Chinese, Southern Min, and Wu. They all seem to be able to agree that it's an island in the Pacific, but differ in the degree to which they mention that the Republic of China controls it. The Hakka article prominently displays the national flag, while the Southern Min one doesn't mention it in the introductory paragraph.
At least one Wikipedia should maintain close to facts approach. If you prefer authoritarian "rewrite history" approach then you can consult Russian Wiki, where they rewrote all political and history pages, and I assume Chinese Wiki is the same.
Basically any mention of unfavorable or outright bad mention about current country of a dictator or about any preceding country from which they claim inheritance is censored or obfuscated or buried in a flood of "alternative" opinions.
1) Some freak repeatedly vandalized a Wikipedia page. Editors reverted the vandalism, perpetrator stopped trying. If I understood all of this correctly, why is it not simply Wikipedia working as intended?
2) So, Russia and USA & Britain are involved in some recent and ongoing armed conflicts (all of them near Russian borders, I'd note). There's some difference in coverage of said conflicts between Russian and English Wikipedias, sure (though I skimmed the linked articles and didn't immediately notice blatant censorship on either side). And you cite that as Russians rewriting "all political and history pages"? Seriously?
3) The "lol" one is the coolest. "Ukrainian armed forces: 232,000 … 15,000 defected to Russia." Didn't see the figure before. If Russian Wikipedia was a worthy piece of pro-Russian propaganda, of course it would also have this figure in a prominent box. Alas, Russian Wikipedia is worse than English one at almost anything, including pro-Russian propaganda.
That's not what GP means by "liberal"; "liberal" in this sense refers to the belief and support of the current "democratic" establishment, the right to private property, the idea of human rights, and freedoms defined as matters of separation between people (i.e. the assumption of the person or people attempting to take them away rather than a positive conception in human community). In this view, both US 'liberals' and US 'conservatives' are both liberal. Thus, what GP means by 'non-liberal' includes the critics of liberalism, most notably ones on the left.
Whenever Wikipedia is mentioned in hackernews, it's always the same comment. Have you got anything new to add, or any substantial argument to support your position? As it stands it's a pretty serious accusation and a pretty thin argument.
I've rarely seen this comment on hackernews about wikipedia. I think you may have been thrown off by the use of "liberal" to think it's a right-wing critique. Incidentally, the complaints I'm used to are that "they keep deleting the thing that I'm involved with that I think is notable" "they won't let me edit myself even though I'm an expert on myself" and "weird editors squat articles."
This is a "wikipedia is completely western and whiggish" critique.
"american home"?
even in terms of content of article, it is clear this is confined to a very small section of society. even that is purely based on anecdotal claims.
almost no valid evidence, but broad nation wide conclusion.
If you are looking for a "standard" American home you aren't going to find it. It is a large country, and there is a ton of diversity. People mentioned in the article are as American as anyone else.
HN is not a historical archive, much less one of how used programming languages are. Rust is interesting to a lot of people because it's fundamentally different in a few aspects than most other languages, and that difference also happens to coincide with some people's complaints about how hard it is to program safe systems.
I'm not really sure what you're expecting. Haskell gets a vastly disproportionate amount of time here compared to it's actual usage also, and PHP gets almost no coverage at all, but we all know it's out there in force, and so are the people that program it. Should we be pushing for a lot more PHP content? What about COBOL content? That's still in use, and I can't remember the last time I saw a submission about that.
Your comment isn't useful. Anything that ever becomes something was at one point nothing. Rust gets attention because it's doing new things. Important new things.
www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
In Python Paradox, the author argues that it's a signal of quality that someone would take the time/effort to learn Python. (Python is new and wouldn't land them a job).
Now in 2019, Python is popular. But I think it's fair to say instead that Rust wouldn't be a good choice if you wanted to get a job using a language which is popular in the industry.
From my experience people learning Rust are not people who are learning a language to get a job. They are usually experienced developers with jobs who know at least couple of languages, and learn Rust to expand their toolbox.
1. I want to add a low(er) level language to the ones I already know and use.
2. Though I did some C/C++ in high school, getting really into depth with C++ at the moment seems really daunting.
3. I don't need it for a job at this point so I can afford to learn a less popular language that can potentially have a future and which exposes you to new ways of thinking about code.
How common is it these days to hire for languages, anyway?
In my case with the devs I hire the only thing I care is that they want to work in a class of languages, like frontend or backend, and that they're not super picky.
I'm hiring people to solve problems for a living. I have full confidence that anyone I hire can learn any language I throw at them. My job (when hiring) is to make sure they'll want to work in the area, maybe a footnote about the language (if even known), but that's all.
Why does language matter so much to some people (as far as hiring goes).
This is a peculiar comment. Why would you think readers are seeking a balanced 'view of the industry' here? HN is much less bland than that. The guidelines have a view on what's relevant content here: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Do you have some particular animus against Rust, or do you think it's some sort of general rule that developers should learn only the 'top 5' 'industry' languages?
I've started learning Rust, for a few reasons:
- I read a couple of chapters of Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols' excellent "The Rust Programming Language" a while back and enjoyed it so much just as a book that I promised myself I'd read the whole thing when I had time. Now I do, so I am.
- Rust instantiates some concepts that I'm familiar with but only at a vague hand-wavy level. Learning it is educational (for me).
- Rust is used in some open-source projects I'd like to contribute to if I can.
- I have a couple of personal project ideas in disparate areas (wasm, embedded) that Rust seems well suited for
It's quite likely I'll never use Rust in a job. So what?
non recognition of subjectivity of terms like "journalist", "annoying", "off topic", etc., used in description, don't bode well for success of this project.
The term "journalist" is no more subjective than "author" (literature) or "programmer". As with many things, the line is normally drawn where people start to making (wholly or partyly) a living from the activity or not, i.e. whether they are professionals.
Those words can have different meanings in different contexts; one can be talking about jobs and say "I'm a journalist", and mean that they earn their income through journalistm. One can also, in a conversation about hobbies, say "I'm a programmer", and imply only that they enjoy the act of programming and do it in their free time.
I think it's dangerous to set hard requirements for such labels, specially ones like "journalist". It's not a given that journalism is considered worth protecting and, while in most western countries there's a sort of public agreement that "journalists" deserve protection, this often seems to be associated more to the word "journalist" than the act of journalism itself, and taking that label away from someone may also leave them defenseless, as they no longer "deserve" the protection of a "journalist".
> The term "journalist" is no more subjective than "author" (literature) or "programmer".
It's more contentious than that. Journalists supposedly deal with "facts", but there's often considerable disagreement over facts or their interpretation. No matter your political persuasion, I'm sure there are "journalists" making a living on this, as per your definition, but who operate on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you and from whom you'd want very badly to strip that title of legitimacy.
