I enjoyed looking at some of the interfaces developed to interact with scripts in SecondLife - often they had animations that hooked into the avatar to perform, to give feedback. However most appeared to draw their inspiration from cyberpunk, rather than science fiction or showing new interfaces.
I think it's important to remember that Hitler didn't exactly run with the Holocaust as his campaign. So if you compare the relatively benign climate that brought him to power, and see something similar today, it's worth bringing up.
"If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain."
Note the scale '12,000-15,000' is ~1/1,000th of the actual death total in the Holocaust. It's the difference between 'first shoot all the lawyers' and 'just nuke their city's.'
It's funny that you don't hear Mao's name in many discussions of genocide. Is it that different that so many died one step removed from a direct order instead of on direct orders? Or that he had the good of the people in his heart even as tens of millions perished?
Gas chambers were policy. I guess we greatly forgive incompetence, even as it's forced on people through brutality.
I find it strange that people proudly identify as "communists" without much stigma when the ideology was responsible for more death and suffering than national socialism. I guess it's a lot harder to remain ignorant of the Holocaust than of Stalin's purges.
Communism isn't one ideology. That's why it's called Marxim, or Leninism, or Stalinism, or Maoism, or anarchocommunism, or autonomous marxism, etc...
And furthermore, ideology itself doesn't do anything, it's purely abstract. It's entirely possible for two people to adopt the same exact ideas and do things they mutually disagree about.
There are communists who like Mao and stalin. I think they're gross because of it. I follow communist lines of thought that rejected all those dictators out of hand almost immediately.
Would you extend that same generosity towards someone that identified as a facist? Or would you assume they are a jingoistic racist etc. and associate them with Nazi Germany and company?
That's my point. One suffers guilt by association and its name itself has become a meaningless insult, the other does not and the mere suggestion that one could be against it draws to mind images of Cold War loonies. When in fact, both are (relatively speaking) sound families of ideologies.
> Would you extend that same generosity towards someone that identified as a facist? Or would you assume they are a jingoistic racist etc. and associate them with Nazi Germany and company?
I've never met a fascist who didn't want to seize power and execute people like me.
There are communists who, surprisingly, don't want to be dictators. Fascism definitionally requires totalitarian control over society. So do offshoots of Marxism like Leninism (don't worry it's """"transitional""""), but you'd be surprised how little time i give tankies either.
Nothing in there implies genocide, as far as I can tell. Anti-immigration policies that could be perceived as "racist", perhaps, but no genocide! And that's a left-wing slur, not a label that many would choose to use themselves.
>There are communists who, surprisingly, don't want to be dictators.
How can one take the means of production from the capitalists and give them to "the people" without "seizing power"? More generally speaking, how could you ever expect communal ownership and absence of a state to scale with the size of modern societies? And if you don't have these qualities, is it really communism?
The two of you are putting words in my mouth, when I never claimed to be a fascist or a Nazi sympathizer or what have you. But from my perspective, communist strains range from horrifyingly totalitarian and contradictory, to laughably naive, to so close to the status quo as to be meaningless. At least fascist ideologies are forward and internally consist, and sadly, I think, closer to the true nature of the world than we would like to admit.
If "communism" can mean "whatever the hell I want it to mean when it's convenient" then I think we can speak of neo-fascism and other philosophies in the same breath.
>>>I find it strange that people proudly identify as "communists" without much stigma
Do you also find it strange that white people proudly identify as "Americans" without much stigma, even after centuries of racial atrocities by white Americans?
> That's my point.
Your point - as is the point of everyone who trots out the "Communism" is worse than Nazism old chestnut - is to minimise what the Nazis did. And there's only one reason people do that.
The only surprise here, compared to every other Nazi sympathiser online making the same hackneyed "point", is you didn't claim Stalin killed 50/60/100 million people (any number higher than Hitler will do).
>Do you also find it strange that white people proudly identify as "Americans" without much stigma, even after centuries of racial atrocities by white Americans?
Evidently many do, having experienced no shortage of white guilt and self-hating anti-American sentiment in my life.
>Your point - as is the point of everyone who trots out the "Communism" is worse than Nazism old chestnut - is to minimise what the Nazis did.
I wish to do the opposite of minimizing what the Nazis did. I wish to knock naive Che hat-wearing millennials down a peg.
>And there's only one reason people do that.
If you're going to call me a Nazi, I think all I can do is stick out my tongue, call you a commie, and close the tab.
> If you're going to call me a Nazi, I think all I can do is stick out my tongue, call you a commie, and close the tab.
Call me a commie if you like, I'm not ashamed to admit I sympathise with Communist principles (class and race/gender equality, for example) - unlike you, quacking like a fascist but too embarrassed to openly admit it.
The only people I see online making the effort to argue Nazism was not as bad as "X" are Nazi sympathisers/fascists. I mean who else would bother?
If you want to 'take down' a stupid and ridiculous caricature of what a Communist is ("Che wearing millennial" or whatever) you can do it without mentioning Nazis at all.
Instead you chose to take the 'at least the Nazis weren't as bad as the Communists' route. Your other posts here defending fascism don't exactly scream "Not a Nazi-sympathiser" either, so I don't know who you think you're trying to kid.
What happened after the Russian, Chinese or Cuban Revolutions doesn't negate the beliefs behind and reasons for the revolutions themselves (equality and 'the people'), any more than what happened after the American Revolution - almost 100 years of slavery, aggression and "Manifest Destiny" (cf. Lebensraum), followed by another century of racial persecution and overseas aggression/imperialism - negates the ideas and beliefs behind that revolution (equality and 'the people').
What happened in Germany after 1933, however, went exactly according to the Nazi playbook. What happened in Italy and every other fascist country, likewise, went exactly according to fascist principles.
Nobody becomes a Communist because they believe in purges or gulags; and nobody becomes a Nazi or a fascist because they believe in good roads, advanced rocketry or trains running on time.
That's why Nazis and fascists have a stigma attached to them - because the principles behind both are reprehensible to most people.
>and nobody becomes a Nazi or a fascist because they believe in good roads, advanced rocketry or trains running on time.
Actually, they do. The Nazis were admired both before and after the war for their tremendous infrastructural, technological, and social advances (for the races and classes they protected, obviously).
From what I've been told (certainly not an expert), people thought he wasn't serious at first. Then he took over the country and everyone was afraid of him. They also had a large brainwashing/ propaganda campaign to convince Germans to support them.
Given a choice, do you think Hitler would have taken to a book or off the cuff remarks and Twitter?
Also, how many terrorists are there which the US could assaninate? Multiply that with 10 to accomodate with a family and you may up with a number not far off from the 10000 Hitler proposed.
Hitler and the NSDAP was way more organized than Trump. The party had a well defined manifesto and their ideological bent was pretty clear. Hitler attempted to gain power through a coup before trying the legit route.
Certainly there is definitely some routes of comparison between the rise of fascism in 1920s/1930s Europe and the right-wing-populist Trump phenomenon. However, in my mind the past politician that best approximates Donald Trump is Silvio Berlusconi. ("You never know", of course, but at this time I think some of the right wing political groups in Europe are better targets for 1920s-30s European fascism comparisons.)
Mussolini created fascism in 1919, Hitler was inspired by him and after became much more dangerous. Francisco Franco took power much later. "Fascism" etimology is from "Fasci di combattimento" the political party founded by Mussolini.
the word 'fasces' does not exist in Italian.
From the Italian Treccani dictionary
fascismo s. m. [der. di fascio]. – Movimento politico italiano che trasse origine e nome dai Fasci di combattimento fondati nel 1919 da B. Mussolini
The word "fascism" does not exist in Italian either. We're using English and anglicised words.
The "Fasces" is a group of rods tied together with an axe, dating back to ancient Italian/Roman times, and comes from the Latin fascis ("bundle").
The word fascism no more derives from a political party (which simply pulled the word out of nowhere, did it?) than the words "democrat", "republican" or "communist" do.
Comparing modern fascist movements to the fascist movements of the twenties, for example. The growth of right-wing movements in Europe and America following a steep economic downturn seems fairly ripe, as does the emergence of racial narratives, the use of hateful demagogery, etc.
Trump/Hitler comparisons are fair game, because what is going on bears a strong resemblance to what happened in Nazi Germany.
If we really mean "never again", that means understanding where the Nazis came from, what they are, and who is following in their goose-steps.
By economic downturn, you're talking about the Great War. I mean, there are plenty of people terribly afflicted in the current western world, but it's hard to argue that the scale of the horror even approaches what was lived in those years, for soldiers and civilians alike.
Personal - one of my friends grew up in a crazy-religious family where they'd literally burn "evil" books every week.
Politics - No, Trump is not the same as Hitler, but there are valid comparisons or parallels; see the videos of his supporters confusing Hitler quotes for his (then again, Trump himself tweeted a Mussolini quote)
> see the videos of his supporters confusing Hitler quotes for his
I loathe Trump, but that trick works with just about everyone. You take some famous person (Richard Dawkins is a favourite) and find some Nazi / Communist quote and create an image macro.
I'm mildly surprised a troll hasn't had t-shirts and buttons printed, and given them away at rallies.
> (then again, Trump himself tweeted a Mussolini quote)
I have heard from several fellow HackerNews readers (in other forums) that Godwins Law doesn't apply anymore mainly because of their opposition to Trump, and their own or their allies behaviour in breaking this law. It seems to imply that because we live in the current year, the present day, that previous laws no longer have validity, because of the false assumption that the present day has more importance than any other time, ever. (This assumption ignores history, tellingly). That, and they consider that in Trumps case the comparisons can actually have validity.
The other reasoning given from our fellow peers that I have heard sounds like that this law was made during the era of quiet bulletin boards, made up of people with a shared mind set, with a shared sense of humour, and the Internet now has changed beyond recognition. Therefore any laws made about the internet back then have no validity.
I would like to suggest that when you consider something no longer valid it could give you pause to think about your reasonings for doing so.
1. Godwin's Law says that as a discussion continues, the probability of a Hitler reference approaches one. It doesn't say anything about the aptness of a Hitler reference. It certainly does not say that you should not make a Hitler reference, or the one who does loses the debate. The only way you could "break" Godwin's Law is to refuse to make Hitler references.
3. Usually when I see comparisons of Trump to Hitler, and discussions of whether that comparison is defensible, there's rarely any discussion of how the "present day" changes anything. Godwin does make the point that in 2015, we now have the capability to question poor arguments more effectively. But I've seen basically no arguments that the world is fundamentally different from the past, just that Trump is a fundamentally different demagogue from those we've seen since 1946.
OK, so you're saying that Mike Godwin's integrity has been compromised and he's been influenced by Bezos to denounce Trump? Why did we trust him in the first place -- why should we care about Godwin's Law at all if it comes from a man so easily swayed to the interests of the rich?
(Or are you claiming that Mike Godwin doesn't actually mean the things that the Washington Post published under his name?)
Do hackers seek to make a living off bounties? It seems as if they just want a good, rewarding, motivating experience. To be treated with respect and to get the recognition they want. $50 for a vulnerability appears very low for this. Looking in the hackerone site, some companies publish how much they give to the hackers and most have a much more generous minimum reward.
I'd hope that some people, at least, actually want to fix problems and gain respect in their field. As opposed to engaging in criminal activity and selling out to the highest bidder.
It's easy to say "I do it for the respect, not the money" when you have enough money to get by.
There's plenty of guys out there who are searching for hacks like this because they need to feed their kids. I won't criticize them for selling bugs to nefarious entities.
Bug bounties aren't for guys like us who don't need the money.
People who want to gain professional respect are probably going to stay away from a pornhub bounty - I am not anti-porn, but I wouldn't put it on my resume either.
Also, regardless of good intentions at the start, once the company has screwed you over. I am sure it is tempting to return the favor with the next vulnerability you find.
Anecdotal, but I've heard friends of friends who earn 6 figure salaries worth of bounties for corporations, although some sound more like consultation type gigs.
I have friends that made their living off bug bounties for a few years. Eventually they get jobs at security firms, but sometimes you can't get a job without having some proof of experience.
"Amy is keen to tell you that her ability to schedule your meetings is “like magic,” rather than, say, the end result of using venture capitalists’ money to pay highly trained machine-learning software engineers."
Bots and AI seem to have a conflict or trade off, which seems similar to all computing technologies, namely user experience. We should want to design interfaces which appear like magic, that have less friction to the user. Should bot / AI interfaces seem as easy to use as web pages? Do we really deceive for this class of technology? If we do, then I would suggest that virtual reality would have more ethical consideration. When we live in VR, our immersion levels skyrocket, we behave more closely to our true selves. Combining the two - AI/Bots in Virtual Reality could provide an even greater challenge.
I agree that E-Prime is interesting and so is Korzybski and all that, but novelty accounts and single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN, so we've banned this one.
The threads are supposed to be conversations, and such accounts make them less so. For good conversation, people need to feel that they're communicating in good faith with other individuals. Anonymity is fine on HN but there needs to still be a person, not an abstraction, at the other end.
Without addressing the Olympics question directly, that question has 2 common and somewhat overlooked fallacies:
* That a current year has the most importance compared to previous years because of its sequence. If we consider how people have thought about their own current year we can see that they also have thought that their current year has the most importance.
* That progress has happened and that progress always occurs and moves in an upwards direction. I suggest that looking at history can give insights into how progress does not inexorably increase and improve year upon year. Initially it may appear nihilistic or anti-progress, but I believe thinking this way gives humans more insight into maintaining fragile societies and to ensure that our worlds do get better, through hard work, and not through some automatic procedure that works via the passage of years.
I hope this helps answer the question in a more helpful and better way.
