Well if I can't tell what side you are criticizing with your broad quotes then my point is they aren't really effective. Which is why I said posting vague quotes about totalitarianism doesn't really do much.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Do you consider the original quotes "unsubstantive", too, seeing how it's flagged yet upvoted? Because like it or not, you have a lot of that on this website, most recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112777
I'm afraid I don't understand your question. I did take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112777 and can say that yes, that's definitely a flamewar comment that breaks the site guidelines and that we ask users not to post here. I've replied to that commenter elsewhere.
Unfortunately your reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43113282) also breaks the site guidelines. If you keep doing this, we're going to have to ban you, so it would be good if you'd please stop doing this.
Telling me "if you think this is some kind of roast against one side" that's not saying it's unclear, it's telling me what the quotes were supposed to achieve in my mind, and that it failed to achieve that. Hence, straw man / goal of their own making. Second reply doubled down on that with "if I can't tell what side you are criticizing" -- that's not asking me to explain either.
> random nobodies speculating in public (likely incorrectly), and people are repeating their speculation because they like how it sounds
That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions" [0], that's the first quote. The second one elaborates on why it must be that way, because the fish stinks from the head. That's all, really. It was mostly for the person I replied to, because they were the one wondering about something that reminded me of Arendt. I thought maybe they might get something out of it, and if anyone else does too, cool.
And they're too long, admittedly, but if I just quoted the exact bits, that would not even make it clear in what context she wrote it, instead of just stealing her phrasing.
[0] I put that in quotes because I think it's different from ignorance, or deception out of selfish motives. As Arendt put it in the second quote, "simple-minded trust in the salvation value of stubborn devotion without regard for specific, varying factors" to me is exactly what we are seeing. People not missing a single beat when their claim is refuted. Nit-picking, or shifting the goal post, or just not acknowledging it. All that varies, but the not seeming to mind, at all, that is what sticks out to me.
Of course that applies to all sorts of "sides". In this case, the American left and right both have flavors of it. Why wouldn't they? And I guess cults or extreme religions probably do, too. That is, outside their dogma, everything else can be just made up on the spot and said and/or believed when it's useful, and everything can be sacrificed, including the world and factuality itself.
And that's the key point, I think: there are movements that "just" seek to bulldoze all opponents, without being also at odds with factuality itself (oldschool religions were convinced in the truth of their claims, which is far cry from the cynicism of "totalitarianish" stuff, which will tell you something entirely different tomorrow than today, that's the only constant). But probably with mass societies and the rootlessness they foster, this new, even more lethal thing came into the world.
> > random nobodies speculating in public (likely incorrectly), and people are repeating their speculation because they like how it sounds
> That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions" [0], that's the first quote.
Allow me to clarify what I was saying: there is no inherent problem with “random nobodies” speculating about things - I am myself a “random nobody” in this context. The problem is when people start talking about those pseudonymous speculations as if they were coming from genuine life experience with this particular computer system, or closely related computer systems-which is what I interpreted the comment I was replying to as claiming (or at least it could be read as implying it). Furthermore, while both I and the sources for these speculations are “random nobodies”, I’d say I’m a much more informed random nobody, because I’ve read enough COBOL documentation to realise that what they are saying is of dubious plausibility, whereas it appears they haven’t.
That’s not to say I’m endorsing Musk’s claims about “150 year old social security recipients”-I don’t know what the actual truth behind them is (and I don’t think anyone else publicly discussing them does either), but I think more likely than not they are an exaggeration, distortion or misinterpretation - so I do think they are probably (at least partially) wrong - but (outside a small cohort of current and former government officials and contractors, who likely are restrained by confidentiality obligations from participating in the public debate) nobody knows exactly how and why they are wrong - but I know enough about COBOL to know that COBOL-centric theories about why Musk is wrong are very likely themselves wrong.
And finally, replying to someone’s comment with quotes - without any explanation of why you think the quotes are relevant to the comment you are replying to - isn’t a helpful communication style. Rather than leaving people guessing at what you are trying to say-or leaving them with the onus of asking you to clarify-much better to just explain it explicitly in your initial reply. Plus, I have the suspicion that your reply was triggered by a misunderstanding of my position - that you were reading me as saying “Musk is right”, when what I’ve actually been saying (not explicitly in that particular comment, but I think it becomes clearer if you read my other comments on the topic) is “Musk could well be wrong-indeed more likely than not he is-but not for this reason”
> That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions"
That is genuinely all. If that is not welcome here, fine, but this "what are you trying to say?" as if there has to be some other layer I just don't get, or this flagging spree against me now.
> much better to just explain it explicitly in your initial reply.
"this made me think of" is implied to me. I could have put some specific phrase in italics, but other than that, just flag the thing. Any reply I make just gets used against me anyway, so do whatever.
