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This kind of gatekeeping isn’t about knowledge (which is free and should be freely shared — basic hacker ethic), but about social standing.

If the critics don’t respond to facts or data, what makes you think they will once you “secure” the election? Even those recounts after the 2020 election — which found no substantial fraud — did nothing to convince them. The media tells them there is fraud, despite the evidence, and they believe it. If the media lies to this entire part of the voter-base, what you do won’t convince anyone.

Catering to propagandist’s lies is hardly productive or useful; you’ll just sink to greater and greater lows trying in vain to win them over, to the detriment of society.


> If the critics don’t respond to facts or data

The problem is that the US election system is a fundamentally flawed system, and with pre-existing distrust those "facts and data" might as well be equivalent to a "trust me bro".

My country had a similar voting trutherism cult. They sent goons to a whole bunch of polling stations to "prevent it from being stolen". They observed the whole process - as is everyone's right - and reported the counting results back live to the mothership. The outcome? Exactly the same numbers as the official count.

They got to observe everything and saw nothing weird, and with the way the elections are set up there was zero possibility of missing any kind of fraud. All arguments were trivially countered by a "But your buddy was right there, why didn't he say anything?".

The voting fraud cult died because there was no room left for lies. Properly-secured elections are fundamentally incapable of being stolen. They aren't secure because you can't find evidence of fraud, but because fraud is impossible.


The US has poll watchers too and that didn’t stop them from creating more conspiracy theories.

MAGA says that the budget would be 100% balanced if illegal immigrants stopped getting government benefits. This is so obviously wrong based on information plainly available to everybody. There is nothing you can do to stop this.


Just poll watchers isn't enough. You also have to get rid of the extremely sketchy mail-in voting process, get rid of impossible-to-verify electronic voting machines, and automatically register everyone to vote and make sure they have a voter id. Like I said: make the voting process so painfully simple that fraud is literally unimaginable.

While you're at it: you should probably also get rid of the whole structure of first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all systems. The fact that it is even possible to get full power over a country with just 23% of the vote is just embarrassing.


You’re missing the point: These poll watchers made things up about what they saw, kicking off a media circus – which would’ve happened even if the system was different, because it is distinct from reality. The one at fault is the media, not the system.

We also had some recounts in the US, and they found the same results as the original election… but that didn’t stop the conspiracism, either. Because it is impervious to reality.


Ah. And nobody bothered to ask them for the video footage? Because if they saw weird stuff, surely they would've recorded it with their smartphones?

Which country ?

Cult gonna believe what the leader and propaganda ministry say.

Denial is top of the list of cult traits. Also, projection.

These two are blatantly obvious, and the cult members don't see it because it's always THE OTHER GUY'S fault. Everything is. Fascist playbook reads the same almost verbatim.

Cults are very closed systems, and "breaking out is hard to do".


> cede your land to some other people who will

This is an insane way to frame immigration reform. It isn’t “ceding” anything, it just means being OK that not every single person you know is the same race. Having some cultural exchange, growing as a person, learning about the world beyond your borders… these are virtues.


Immigration without assimilation with number as high as required to keep Japan population from falling is unequivocally ceding. Even much more approachable cultures get non-assimilating enclaves. The immigrants won't be considered as belonging by the Japanese and won't strive to become Japanese either.

> the deep psychological truths about human tribalism

… that the races should keep to themselves? Yea, I’m going to have to disagree on this one.

This was pretty handily disproven by the New World. Mixing, sharing, cohabiting… this creates culture and makes us stronger. Isolation, protectionism, and fear makes us weak.


Yep, there is a lot of evidence that says even nomadic tribes heavily intermingled with others because it was seen as a means of building resilience for all.

There is a lot of evidence that didn’t happen all at once and funded by social programs that effectively discourage integration.

How was it disproven by the New World? The countries that mixed (Latin America) are weaker than the country that didn't (USA)

The USA is pretty dang diverse, and definitely mixed. That mixing is a core part of it’s culture and history, actually. And now, the country that mixed (USA) is stronger than the Old World that didn’t (Europe).

Which is to say: There is no inherent psychological tribalism that makes having a diverse country impossible or ruinous; rather, this tribalism is manufactured and spread by hatemongers. The New World is a very good case study, here.


It's culture and values come from the dominant group. It didn't really mix equally between groups. If the dominant groups will shrink and another arises the values and the culture will change.

Crime-rates going up + Immigrants being no more likely to commit crimes = There is no causality

> crime rate hikes.

No, not really. Broadly, immigration has no effect on crime-rates. In case-study after case-study, it’s shown immigration has little to no impact on crime-rates. This was even disproven after the height of the Syrian refuge crisis! But media likes sensationalist reporting, so public perception doesn’t match the statistics.

> cultural demise.

Meaningless, also created by the media. If you listen to the media, Britain is under the fierce grip of Sharia law, enforced by… the 6% of the population that is Muslim. Yes, yes, how scary. I guess English culture was pretty weak, to meet its demise from such a meager blip.


>Broadly, immigration has no effect on crime-rates.

This just isn't true. There are a lot of studies that purport this. There are also a lot of studies that purport the opposite. A quick look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime shows a bit of the field here.

The details get really important when talking about this. Details like:

- immigrant crime rates are often compared to non-immigrant rates, as if the native-born are a single bloc, rather than distinct segments

- "immigrants" treated as a single bloc

- immigrant crime getting controlled for by age, gender, income, and education --- which is cold comfort if the bulk of your immigration is poor uneducated young men

- first-gen immigrants, if immigrating to work, often have lower crime rates. This effect disappears with second-generation. But when they do crime, it is counted as native crime, rather than immigrant crime. That...doesn't quite cleave reality at the joints.

- labor law violations, tax evasion, etc., often not counted as "crime."


Don’t pretend the people you are replying to care about actual facts. It’s all feelings and xenophobia (or worse) for them

For what it worth, your comment have just feeling and xenophobia. No facts whatsoever.

Immigration HAS an effect: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-crime-figures-migrants-refugee...

The thing is very simple: I am really not afraid of police in Germany. Worst thing that can happen is spending a night in jail. In other countries the police can shoot you or seriously beat you up. So basically there is no police. And the jail… well it’s all inclusive hotel compared to other countries. Deportation is anyway very unlikely. So what should stop me from doing bad things?


For one, this article doesn’t claim that immigration increases overall crime.

Secondly, the article hints at a sampling bias we have run into before, during the Syrian refugee crisis: Immigrants are not more likely compared to their peers.

If you compare a block that is predominately young men to the general population, they commit more crime – because they are young men, not because they are immigrants.

A proper statistical comparison looks at the sub-demographics, comparing immigrant and native folk to their peers in age and sex.

Compare 18-year old men from Algeria to native 18 year-old men, and they aren’t any more likely to commit crime. But between 18-year old men and the general population? Well, duh, because one group has more young men in it.

Which is to say: No, immigrants aren’t more likely to commit crimes.


You could block the default DoH services for Firefox, I reckon.


I think it was sarcasm.


What's sarcastic about saying "charge a vacancy tax and allow building more"?


I think they were saying the comment the comment they replied to replied to was being sarcastic, not the comment they replied to.


Given that their reply is on decreasing development fees, it seems that they understood the sarcasm.


s/[Cc]yclists/drivers/g

You have crazy bikers, and you have crazy drivers. I’ve seen way more of one in my life, and that one’s definitely more dangerous.


It’s pretty usual for cars to run straight through a hard red light in NYC

Cyclists quite literally do it every single day

I don’t think the behavior is equally distributed


20 minutes? Try an hour!


Help, it's 1 a.m. and I haven't eaten dinner!


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