[tene80i]

Telling people not to be political is a political act – specifically, one that accepts whatever comes, doesn't care about power, is happy with whoever rules whom and how justly. Those are your politics, or at least sufficiently so that you're happy to park those issues while discussing tech. They aren't everyone's. You can turn off the non-technical comments by ignoring them.

[throw10920]

> Telling people not to be political is a political act

There's a place for politics - which is not here, if you read the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Only an extremely socially maladjusted individual tries to insert politics (or, any particular topic) into every forum/discussion that they're in.

[tene80i]

The guidelines do not say "do not discuss politics". They say no political or ideological battles.

And no-one is talking about inserting politics into every discussion. You have no idea how often the people mentioning it on this page are mentioning it elsewhere. The parent commenter is taking the more radical view, which is to ban it from the space entirely.

[throw10920]

> The guidelines do not say "do not discuss politics". They say no political or ideological battles.

Yes, and HN seems to be incapable of following that rule, so advocating for an outright ban on politics is extremely appropriate.

> And no-one is talking about inserting politics into every discussion.

My comment very clearly says "into every forum". You are advocating for the insertion of politics into every forum.

[tene80i]

Well you wrote "forum/discussion". My apologies for not quoting you verbatim.

And I am not advocating for anything. I am pointing out the contradiction of the proposal to ban politics on topics that are politically charged. It is not a neutral act. You can still try to ban politics if you like! But everyone else also gets to decide that.

[throw10920]

> And I am not advocating for anything

Reading your original comment, you're very heavily implying it, and trying to guilt people who don't agree with you:

>> Telling people not to be political is a political act – specifically, one that accepts whatever comes, doesn't care about power, is happy with whoever rules whom and how justly. Those are your politics, or at least sufficiently so that you're happy to park those issues while discussing tech. They aren't everyone's. You can turn off the non-technical comments by ignoring them.

And this:

> I am pointing out the contradiction of the proposal to ban politics on topics that are politically charged.

Is incorrect, as repeatedly brought up, because (1) saying "there is a forum for politics, and it isn't here" is not a political statement and (2) nobody advocated for a ban specifically on topics that are politically charged - that's your moving the goalposts.

[villish]

> advocating for an outright ban on politics is extremely appropriate

This line of thinking makes no sense. If you got your way no one could comment anything critical of Trump or other world leaders. Anytime a new tariff is announced or restrictions on tech, we're just not allowed to discuss it?

I suppose we'd only be able to discuss that one Austrian's paintings and that's it.

[alkonaut]

There is no separation of politics from anything. You can’t discuss sports in a sports forum and pretend it’s possible to keep politics out of it. Likewise with tech. If HN’s guidelines pretend that’s possible, they’re mistaken.

You could moderate it, such as deleting comments, but it would be about as helpful and arbitrary as deleting every odd numbered comment.

[CapsAdmin]

> is happy with whoever rules whom and how justly

This is an assumption. How about neutral, or even hopeless? There's also the position of just not caring because you think it doesn't affect you.

It feels a bit like saying anyone who does not want to fight or talk about a war are on the enemies side.

> You can turn off the non-technical comments by ignoring them.

This also feels like an odd thing to say. If you're going out with a bunch of friends to eat out, and half of them always talk about how immoral it is to eat meat amongst themselves while you're eating meat, I think that would affect me negatively at some point.

[tene80i]

You're right about neutral/hopeless. I meant "happy" in the sense of "OK with / resigned to let exist". Not necessarily "this is great".

The meat-eating morality point I think is also an interesting example. It could affect you negatively, but they strongly believe it to be immoral and are witnessing you committing what they believe to be an immoral act, so should they be forced to be silent on the subject? Why? Whose beliefs and preferences win? If they're your friends, you reckon with the issue and ideally come to a space of agreement or cordially agree to disagree. Or your mind is changed! Or theirs! But if the groups dig in ("We can't let this go", "We just want to eat meat and not feel bad about it") then that's a friendship-ending juncture, isn't it? Or you agree not to share that sort of space/context any more. But it's also different with friends vs an open space, which this is.

[CapsAdmin]

For certain viewpoints that are fundamental ly hard to challenge, a reasonable middle ground to me is to just talk about something else and respect other peoples viewpoints. This is usually how religion is (or should be) treated in open public spaces. But it's by no means easy and I can't really blame vegetarians for being passionate about it either. But I see this more from the perspective of how to behave around other people and not so much what I personally believe, but maybe that's largely cultural. (Norwegian)

For example, I have strong opinions about people believing in things without sufficient evidence, but unless I'm in the correct space or is invited to, I'd rather keep it to myself.

[tene80i]

Yes I'm with you culturally speaking (British). I suppose the difference I see here is this is a forum for the exchange of ideas, not a social space where there are other, more important factors at play e.g. the maintenance of friendships, of having a pleasant evening etc. I think as with everything there has to be some judgment, but if someone brings up Grok, for example, I don't think Elon's politics are _irrelevant_ to the discussion, unless the discussion is literally "Let us all now turn to the question of memory architecture" or what have you. But if it's just sharing a link, then to me the implied discussion space is quite broad.

[spider-mario]

> This is an assumption. How about neutral, or even hopeless? There's also the position of just not caring because you think it doesn't affect you.

Still effectively the same point.

[CapsAdmin]

I think then it's pedantry. I can kind of see how not having an opinion about what to wear tommorow is by itself having an opinion on what to wear tommorow, but that's not what people usually mean when they say they don't have an opinion about something.

[zulban]

> Telling people not to be political is a political act

No. If there's a group to discuss ice cream, but they keep talking about Trump, it's not a "political act" to say "hey guys, aren't we here for ice cream?"

Otherwise every forum devolves into the loudest, most vocal slurry and loses its personality.

I'm Canadian. Let's talk about the tech, not your failing country, please. Or I'll go somewhere else for ice cream, and yall can have your millionth community to talk about the same self obsessed political topics ad nauseum.

[cootsnuck]

But this isn't a thread about ice cream...? It's about SoTA emerging technologies that pretty much everyone agrees is going to have consequential effects on society.

When people say "don't talk about politics" that gets twisted up with partisan squabbles (like your example of bringing up the president during ice cream).

But talking about the quality of your streets, your local schools, your annoyance at the trash pickup service, or the data center in town that is using illegal gas generators and actively spewing methane around poor communities with little recourse...

All of that is "political".

Political means who gets to make decisions about how resources are allocated, at varying levels and scales of society. All the way down to the community level and all the way up. Who gets affected by the allocation of those resources. Where power is concentrated or distributed to or from.

Every thread on HN about open source, big tech, startups, etc. are invariably going to be political.

People caring about a trillionaire's outsized power in the tech industry and society at large is inextricably linked to the technology his companies create.

[zulban]

I couldn't help but note that your comment and mine could have been written by people who know absolutely nothing about the tech of this post. Interesting.

[tene80i]

> If there's a group to discuss ice cream, but they keep talking about Trump, it's not a "political act" to say "hey guys, aren't we here for ice cream?"

Depends who is selling the ice cream.

[fnordian]

So Trump ice cream would be not about Trump at all?

[zulban]

It surely would be here and a million other places online. And there'd be nobody talking about the ice cream. Just Trump.

[unsupp0rted]

Yes yes and when an atheist tells you he doesn’t believe in a god you tell him that’s ok because Jesus believes in him

[tene80i]

No, the parallel would be an atheist saying "I don't want anyone in this room to mention God".

[unsupp0rted]

“Telling people not to be political is a political act”

“Saying let’s leave religion out of assessing this LLM is a religious act”