> If you're going to comment on an inflammatory topic like this, do so with respect for the opposing point of view. If you can't muster any such respect, and only want to smite enemies
So you're saying we should respect the views like:
1. the members of particular ethnicity and religion are terrorists, and
2. that mass-imprisonment of innocent members of an ethnicity is the correct response to the fear of terrorism from them?
Because those are some of the views expressed in this thread:
This breaks the site guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." It also exemplifies what I just asked people to stop.
Why not both? I'm serious. It seems like a good idea to promote competition and put a ceiling on the prices of essential medicines based on the global market. 10% above the lowest price may be a bit aggressive, but something must be done to stop these 10,000% markups we're seeing now.
> This is fantastic news. Science will eventually benefit all of mankind even if the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted.
> I welcome increased science funding regardless of who is doing it
Would you say the same about Nazi science? The world depicted in the Man in the High Castle has some very impressive scientific achievements.
The idea that science and knowledge are an unalloyed good to humanity no matter who develops the expertise is a fairy tale. Scientific knowledge and the technical skill that flows from it are weapons. Weapons are tools that can be used for good or ill, so we want them to be in the hands of those who can be (more) trusted to use them for good and out of the hands of those who can be less trusted.
> If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician.
Or any other regime.
My comment was not hyperbolic, as WWII is pretty much the perfect real-world example of the political ramifications of scientific and technological advancement. Far from "benefit[ing] all of mankind even if the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted," if the Nazi's had invented the atom bomb before the allies, mankind would have suffered more than it has.
Do you equate the Chinese to nazis? Because that's insane and totally fear-mongering, especially if you think China is evil but other countries would use scientific research for only rainbows and puppies.
As bad as the US is in many different ways, China is immeasurably worse. A future dominated by a hegemonic China would be a dark world. Little steps like these are helping to contribute to that possibility in 50-100 years.
Great powers historically have not usually been the largest countries population-wise. That would seem to indicate that there's no reason we should expect the inevitability of all else becoming equal.
No, I emphatically do not. That's the most false and inflammatory misreading of my comment possible. The Chinese people are not villains, full stop.
The point I was making is that political regimes matter when it comes to the desire for progress in science and technology, and the idea that it doesn't is naive. I'm glad the Nazis and the Soviets were technically and scientifically behind the Allies and the West, and I think the world would be better off they had stayed even further behind -- even if that meant that humanity as a whole has its scientific and technical progress retarded for the want of their contributions.
Just to provide some historical context, our space program that ultimately put a man on the moon was largely driven by Nazi science. In particular, Wernher von Braun was a key figure in the design and development of the Nazi's V-2 ICBM, receiving accolades and rewards directly from Hitler himself for his successes. After WW2 he, along with hundreds of other Nazi scientists and engineers, were secretly recruited (see: operation paperclip [1]) to the US where he worked on ballistic missiles before eventually moving onto NASA where he served as the chief architect of the Saturn V that brought us to the moon.
Braun was primarily interested in space travel, but it does lead to a good satirical quote, "I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London."
Exactly my point. Science wasn't neutral in WWII, and it's not neutral now. If von Braun hadn't been part of their regime, they may not have had V-weapons. If Hitler hadn't been such an anti-Semite, Jewish scientists may not have fled Europe en masse and instead helped the Nazi's develop the atom bomb.
Back then, if people celebrated and supported Nazi science in the name of an idealistic concept of politically-neutral human scientific advancement, Europe and maybe even America may be subjugated under a Nazi flag.
Everyone who cares about liberal political institutions should hope that authoritarian regimes are scientifically and technologically backwards, and work to keep it that way.
There is a yin and yang to nearly everything in reality. Without this great evil, it's entirely possible humanity might have remained completely stagnant, or even have begun to regress. Stick 1000 people in a utopia where they have everything they need to subsist and endless digital entertainment. You've now set those people on the path to idiocracy. By contrast, put 1000 people in an oppressive environment where the only path to survival is ingenuity and you've laid the groundwork for creating the great thinkers, and creators, of tomorrow.
The Nazis were a large part of the reason that our technological development accelerated like nothing before, or since. We went from having never even put a man in orbit to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade - which remains what I think is by far the greatest achievement in the history of our species. A great evil created resulted in the most unimaginable good.
The times since then remained dominated by yang. We've had relative peace, prosperity, and our greatest threat was literally just a threat. And so now we are in an era where after decades of technological devolution we struggle to even fly a rocket by the moon, unable to come even close to replicating what we achieved with seeming ease some 50 years ago.
Only one of those links was about Muslims. One was about the terrible conditions in labor camps that even Han Chinese are sent to, and another was about the jailing of human rights and defense lawyers for doing their jobs.
I don't care what nationality advances science, but I do want unabashedly authoritarian regimes to be at a technical and scientific disadvantage to ones that at least pay lip service to human rights.
Lip service indeed. We imprison our own at 4x the rate they do, and spend all our surplus capital on bombs and guns while they build trains and bridges. 2 of the past 3 Presidents had less votes than their opponent.
But hey, we've got lip service!
Not that there aren't problems in China. But people should check their biases and learn some history before advancing radical hot takes.
The US state is officially atheist, yet somehow requires people to be non-atheist to become a govt official. There has been only one avowed atheist in Congress in recent memory, and several more who felt necessary to lie about being non-atheist.
China is officially communist, officially a republic. Actually neither.
As far as atheism goes, the government propaganda under Xi has been including a lot of Taoist imagery and references lately, from what I understand.
What I'm saying is that they're people and demonization serves nobody. I'm also saying that the demonization I've seen lately from the tech industry correlates negatively with actual knowledge of the country.
My main problem with 16:9 is how obscenely long they are. I use my monitors to do work, not watch movies, so I have a lot more need for vertical real-estate.
Tilting them on their side doesn't help, because they're far too narrow that way.
They are harbingers of the computing apocalypse and have shown that progress is a lie. By 2050 we'll be forced to use monitors with the aspect ratio of swords, because the manufactures are going to need to find another ratio to senselessly maximize after they've achieved peak thinness.
> Maybe engaging China is the first step to them opening up their society? Similar to the arguments against the Cuban embargo.
No. Them "engaging China" will not open up Chinese society, because Google will have to implement the exact same censorship regime that all the other Chinese sites do.
The Chinese government doesn't give a shit about Google's prestige in the West. They'll kick it out the second it gives them a little lip or is non-compliant with their demands. Google has zero power to change anything for the better.
Also, China has discredited the idea that capitalist engagement will cause liberalization. They've shown that an autocratic regime can have its capitalist cake and eat it too.
> You realize that automated credit scores are a thing in the US right? China is taking the concept a step further, but it's not unique to them
That's a disingenuous and misleading comparison. Your American credit score isn't going to drop if you criticize the president on twitter, or do investigative journalism that makes a government official look bad.
> That’s the gp’s point I think, the U.K. doesn’t have the the same separation of powers between government branches as the US. With some minor exceptions, Parliament is the whole enchilada.
An example of this is that, until recently, their "supreme court" was a committee in one of the houses of parliament:
Eliminating all the internet bots would be the mundane real life first step of the Butlerian Jihad of the Dune universe. In the stories, they eliminate all machine computers in order to prevent AIs destroying society, and go back to human computers.
The idea that AIs (broadly defined to include simple bots) are net more trouble than they are worth has been kicked around in literature forever. It’s fun to live in the age where we get to wrestle with it in practice.
So you're saying we should respect the views like:
1. the members of particular ethnicity and religion are terrorists, and
2. that mass-imprisonment of innocent members of an ethnicity is the correct response to the fear of terrorism from them?
Because those are some of the views expressed in this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18565634
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18565128
Tolerance and respect of such views is shameful.