Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by inglor_cz 992 days ago
For people who downvote Bostonian for his comment, how would you like it if that announcement, say, contained an abortion-related proclamation that you don't agree with?

"Share our food, Share our homes and Share our countries" is quite a big demand on everyone else. I am certainly not willing to do so without limit and without regard to context (e.g. the Muslim gang war that flared up in Sweden).

6 comments

> how would you like it if that announcement, say, contained an abortion-related proclamation that you don't agree with?

"If they said something else wouldn't you feel different?"

A key insight is that the poem doesn't contain an abortion-related proclamation that you don't agree with.

Sad, I guess in 2023 sharing isn't caring.

It's a statement about immigrants being people, that the hateful stories we tell about them are false that we have responsibility to them as fellow humans. It advocates for no specific political action, you can hold these beliefs and still be against immigration for whatever reason.

> It's a statement about immigrants being people

It's also a statement against rational thinking and discussions because it portrays both sides to an almost satirical level: "no borders" vs "all migrants are thieves/murderer/bombers"

There is 8 billion people in the world, with the number increasing still. You will always have to choose whom you feel responsibility towards, because all 8 billion are beyond anyone's capability.
I don't know about you but my answer is "the ones standing next to me that I have the means and ability to help sustainably."
The point is, regardless of individual answers, there is always a person that doesn't make your cut.

Same applies to entire countries; their capabilities and societal will are greater than an individual's, but still limited.

Declarations of very broad commitments towards the rest of humanity may sound noble, but wise(r) people should stay away from them.

I feel like you're applying programmer brain to statements that aren't actually commitments but north stars pointing us in the direction of how we should try and do better. Or phrased differently, "We might be the greatest country on earth, but an even greater country would ___"

And in this case to me the blank is "take on the world's tired huddled masses and set them up to be just as self-sufficient and successful as their native born." And I think that's pretty actionable, just about anyone could probably think of more than a few things that would push us closer to this.

We can't even help the current homeless.
I'm not sure _can't_ is the right word. I think we could all imagine some type of system or incentive that would help them.
"Can't" as in "don't want to"
If anything else, as is, this statement could be used by both sides
>"Share our food, Share our homes and Share our countries" is quite a big demand on everyone else. I am certainly not willing to do so without limit and without regard to context

Neither are a lot of the people who initially advocated for the policies, ie NYC, as we're finding out.

Immigration is great. Unfettered illegal immigration is not. It puts pressure on social infrastructure and causes social strife. Look at us here in Canada. Most of our immigration is legal, and yet our wealth-per-person is shrinking because we can't build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with population growth.

There certainly is an equivalent of NIMBY in Western asylum politics.

A lot of Green/Progressive voters in Western Europe live in affluent neighbourhoods where practical effects of current migration waves are very limited, and often positive (e.g. cheap workforce for your household, but your kids' school does not suffer from any gang activity).

Voting patterns across income groups tend to reflect that discrepancy.

That seems to misrepresent reality. Generally speaking in all elections that I am aware off, rural regions are leaning right while urban regions are leaning left. In fact in general it seems anti-immigration/foreigner stances are almost anti-proportional to the number of immigrants/foreigners a person might encounter during their day.

Just 2 counter examples (anecdotes but I'm sure a bit of searching will reveal numbers to back this up): the first electorate that directly voted a green candidate Was the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg electorate in 2002, likely one of the places in Germany with the highest proportion of immigrants (when it was still not gentrified like it is today.). Another anecdote, this map of the French elections https://img.lemde.fr/2022/04/11/0/0/1051/1674/800/0/75/0/869...

Showing that the anti immigration party of le pen is mainly winning in rural areas, and the urban centre of Paris is in fact voting the most left candidate

"In fact in general it seems anti-immigration/foreigner stances are almost anti-proportional to the number of immigrants/foreigners a person might encounter during their day."

That is an egg-and-chicken question. "White flight" is a thing and people who moved away from ghettoizing cities/neigbourhoods into the surrounding suburbia will likely vote against further immigration.

But that's typically not happening either. I fact usually the opposite happens, the urban areas with lots of immigrants get gentrified, because everyone wants to live there.

On top of that, we are now seeing that outer suburbs which were guaranteed winning electorates for right parties are now becoming more and more left leaning because young urban dwellers are moving there because they can't afford the cities.

Show me the evidence for "white flight" it certainly doesn't happen in most European metropolitan areas (the map of the French elections certainly didn't show that any of the areas surrounding the big cities were right leaning, in fact like e.g. Sachsen and Thüringen, the regions in Germany with the highest support for right wing parties, experience lots of people leaving, not moving there). That's one of the reasons why cities have become increasingly unaffordable.
> In fact in general it seems anti-immigration/foreigner stances are almost anti-proportional to the number of immigrants/foreigners a person might encounter during their day.

Maybe rurals are well aware of what's happening in urban regions and don't want it ? Maybe these people like their environment as it is and see no point in change ? I don't know, just guessing. :-)

Fortunately you can read it either forwards or backwards to support your views.
The intention of the text is quite clear. It looks down upon people opposing immigration. The arguments from top-to-bottom and from bottom-to-top are quite different in tone.
As if these two views were the only views available...
IMHO there is nothing "fortunate" about dragging politics into programming, regardless of your or mine views.

I would find it fortunate and valuable if at least certain human activites stayed out of political culture wars entirely. If, instead of "my side, your side", there simply wasn't any need to think of a side for a moment.

I already deleted my FB and TW account to get rid of incessant political flamewars and I feel aghast that they are now following me to Python release notes of all places.

I’ve always considered the no-politics at work rule to be a neutral zone in an armistice. It’s been in effect for so long people have forgotten why it existed and see nothing wrong with resuming agitations. The ‘politics is personal’ and ‘bring your whole self to work’ shift is an intentional reinsertion of politics back into work and like the Chesterton’s fence parable I think we’ll rediscover why that rule was there in the first place.
You're both correct, I was too flippant with my reply. It is out of place.
The people advocating for bringing politics to work forget that people with opposing views will also do the same, and then you end up with a hostile, polarized and distracting work environment.
Brotherman, behold the wonder that is the sqlite code of ethics https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html

Or Terry Davis of Losethos/TempleOS fame https://streamable.com/ty65k

And you know what? Most people are kinda chill about that.

Perhaps there's a reason the anti-abortion guy isn't releasing Python.

I think the idea is you are welcome to read it top to bottom or bottom to top. Whichever fits your needs.
> Whichever fits your needs

So the only choices are "let's abolish borders and live happily ever after" or "all migrants are killers/thieves/bombers we should build a wall". How diverse and subtile! If you frame problems like that it's easy to think you're in the "good guys" camp

In context of Python 3.12, neither fits my needs. Wouldn't it be nice if culture wars didn't infect every single attribute of our everyday lives? What this guy did was to spread useless political flamewar from the hell that calls itself social networks to a random professional webpage. Why exactly? Isn't there enough of flamewar out there?

It is positively totalitarian to drag politics into everything. The very meaning of "totalitarian" is that nothing is allowed to remain non-political.