I'm sure there are people who frequent HN who are capable of contributing to efforts to solve the world's biggest problems.
But they are unlikely to be the same people who want to obsess over the the biggest drama of the last 24 hours in the mainstream news cycle, or to bicker over the latest circus act relating to the U.S. presidency.
It might pay to think about the most significant inventors/leaders/humanitarians in history, and try and imagine how they would spend their days in the current era.
If they were spending any of it on HN, would it have been posting flame-bait over U.S. political drama, or would it rather have been spent trying to have more thoughtful discussions, seeking to understand the world at a deeper level?
This is really what it comes down to for me.
I personally do want to help solve some of the world's biggest problems, to whatever extent that a modestly capable person as myself can do so.
I've been on HN for a long time, and have paid attention to public/global affairs for a long time, and I've come to learn quite a bit about the kinds of discussion topics that move me closer to being able to have an impact on the important problems in the world.
You make good points, and I don't immediately see there's a conflict between our positions. But I do think you fail to realize, or just ignore, the validity of the points I make. And I think that deliberate evasion of tricky to acknowledge points is the problem. I acknowledge both our approaches are required, but I'm seeing you only acknowledge your way. Troubling for you perhaps but not for me.
Your cyclops perspective is emblematic of SV doublethink: it wants to save the world, but not introspect its own methods. It's become a cult, immune to learning from the outside.
Everything you do comes from the idea you have. If you've only debated those ideas in private, with your self, or only dared dive into public forums on easy topics, then you don't know enough about your own triggers and biases, and frankly, your arguments, to have good ideas.
This is what troubles me about SV's closed atmosphere of discussion.
The tactic deployed, by you and others, is dismissal, redirection, judo-like re-channeling of the topic into more abstract, less threatening terms. It's face saving and I appreciate that. It feels good. But I'm not going for feels good here. I'm going for "where's the weakness in what I'm saying", or "where's the weakness in the zeitgeist".
So while you're busy dismissing these issues, I'm just trying to understand myself and the issues better, because I believe that, when I actually do make choices that matter for others, I will have thought things through in a robust way, rather than just closing off my thinking because the topic is too triggering, and then hoping for the best.
So the things you want to minimize as "outrage du jour" or the latest spike in a ad-driven news cycle, are not in fact that. That they may be triggering outrages does not bound their importance. It is important to ask why. Tech's encroaching censorship and political bias is well-established, if unpopular, particularly in vain SV. (For the record, I am biased, I much prefer LA as a city).
If you forbid even the discussion of these facts, you curtail discussion that leads to adjudication of the second order consequences. Not thinking ahead, or actively forbidding it, is dangerous, particularly in a "democracy" where informed populations are supposed to exist and be responsible.
You also frame this an issue too big to take on, but that's disingenuous too, I fear. How a handful of paper billionaires are pretending to be liberals while actually creating a cryptofascist surveillance and censorship apparatus that mirrors, not the will, nor free the freedom, nor the benefit of the people, but their own fragilities and biases, is hardly the biggest dish on the table, and it's hopefully one we can start nibbling away at.
Anyway, I agree that I may be having more impact were I running an impactful technology business that was saving the world. Right now, I'm just feeling and thinking my way through that world, before I start trying to save it.
I guess that's one difference between us, I can afford to spend time on this, but you're too busy saving the world. I can stop and think and debate and take the risk to make a fool of myself, but you're too busy emulating the great ones to roll the dice on something so unglamorous as working out how you feel about something, except when replying to me, of course, which greatly flatters me, thanks for descending into the mess of the everyday to grant me the great honor of your rarefied attention.
I suppose I'm in the enviable position of having the great freedom to be unburdened by emulating the great ones from before, I can just focus on being me.
I do intend to reply to this but there's a lot to reply to and it's late at night on a holiday weekend where I live (in Australia). So please check back again in the next 1-2 days.
FWIW, you've made quite a few assumptions about me and what I believe/defend/represent. Though maybe by "you", you don't mean me personally but what you think I represent - though like I said, I think you're way off the mark on that.
There are also quite a few sneers/snarks mixed in there, again, based on wrong assumptions about who I am and what I represent. Perhaps re-read your answer and make an effort to withdraw those if you're committed to good-faith discussion.
You also seem to vastly overestimate how much of the audience here is U.S.-based (and thus, how much U.S. politics should dominate the discussion), and how many of HN’s active participants are part of Silicon Valley’s elite. If you toned down those assumptions to a more realistic level, your comments above might turn out quite different.
For what it's worth I think you're well intentioned and I think we probably agree on a lot more than you realise, but I think you're going about things the wrong way - that is, in a way that's damaging to your own cause.
I'm sure there are people who frequent HN who are capable of contributing to efforts to solve the world's biggest problems.
But they are unlikely to be the same people who want to obsess over the the biggest drama of the last 24 hours in the mainstream news cycle, or to bicker over the latest circus act relating to the U.S. presidency.
It might pay to think about the most significant inventors/leaders/humanitarians in history, and try and imagine how they would spend their days in the current era.
If they were spending any of it on HN, would it have been posting flame-bait over U.S. political drama, or would it rather have been spent trying to have more thoughtful discussions, seeking to understand the world at a deeper level?
This is really what it comes down to for me.
I personally do want to help solve some of the world's biggest problems, to whatever extent that a modestly capable person as myself can do so.
I've been on HN for a long time, and have paid attention to public/global affairs for a long time, and I've come to learn quite a bit about the kinds of discussion topics that move me closer to being able to have an impact on the important problems in the world.