Have you seen WorkFlowy? It doesn’t sound like what you’re looking for exactly, but it’s easy to contextualize small goals with larger goals in that app, by just using nested lists
workflowy.com
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You realize the weeks-long “peaceful” BLM/Antifa protests caused orders of magnitude more damage in multiple cities, rather than this one protest in one building that happened for one day?
Also there’s phone recordings of several people at the capitol incident who were actually antifa people disguised as trump supporters. I’d share a link to some tweets to show you.... but guess what? They’ve been banned
Compared to all the other places we could discuss the recent affairs online, HN is a unique place because we are the ones who’ve built the big tech industry. So we’re in the unique position of having to grapple with whether we’re failing the American people, or if we’re actually enabling good moral and ethical decisions
Personally I fall more on the former side. Whatever your stance, the tech industry is going through a deep existential moment right now
I’d throw a note of caution in the opposite direction though: as a group, HN are very atypical users of social media. Every time there’s a post about Facebook one of the most upvoted comments is someone saying they deleted Facebook. Societally speaking that’s super weird.
I still have Facebook but even then, over the holidays I saw the feeds of some older relatives and it was unlike anything I’ve seen before. An absolute mess of corrosive disinformation. Even knowing about it, I still don’t know it well. I don’t live in it. I can’t speak about it authoritatively. And it’s not even like, say, a subreddit. You can’t wander in and take a look, it’s all private to the user.
I don’t know whether the current censorship moves are wise or not, but as a group we’re not exposed to the reason the censorship is taking place. The HN crowd tends to lean towards free speech absolutism (as does the internet at large), which feels like a good reflex in general. But there’s mitigating context here and I don’t know that we (as a group) are the best people to talk to it.
Facebook and YouTube don't target me with political disinformation, but their ads are often for malware like MacKeeper, or Bitcoin scams using fake celebrity endorsements. Even when they're for seemingly harmless merchandise like clothes, they're for Chinese online stores that will keep your money and disappear (wife fell for it once). Maybe my ad situation is so dire because I'm avoiding trackers at all cost, but man it's bad.
I'm amazed that people still act surprised that these platforms are used for hostile disinformation when that's basically their business model. (At least YouTube lets you pay to get rid of ads, although you lose even more privacy on the way.)
Edit: And to add something constructive, I think the only way out is for the EU (where I'm based) to fund a free, public, encrypted messenger service to free its citizens from WhatsApp, and maybe more services later. Social media has become the public space, for better or for worse, and at the very least it needs to be regulated like a utility.
I argue that the "i deleted facebook" is a perfectly typical user of social media. Its trendy to tell that you quit Facebook. Instead "follow me on instagram".
HN is social media, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.
“typical” in the sense that there are lots of examples of it, yes. But “typical” in the sense that it’s something the majority of people do... absolutely not.
My social circle is full of people that deleted FB. But when I step outside that circle not being on FB is very rare.
> I argue that the "i deleted facebook" is a perfectly typical user of social media. Its trendy to tell that you quit Facebook. Instead "follow me on instagram".
I don't think a typical HN participant is deleting their FB account and then telling people to follow them on Instagram.
We can quibble over the definition of social media, but HN is more like forums and usenet dating back to the 80s than it is like Twitter or Facebook. Aside from temporal ranking of submissions, which is both universal and transparent, it's the same.
The big problem with Facebook and Twitter is a potent mix of incentive for controversy, algorithmic amplification, and groupthink bubbles. These problems exist elsewhere as well, so it's not like it's all social media (eg. television news networks in an age of unlimited media choice), but I don't think HN is a useful example to understand any of the macro-dynamics of todays information culture and political landscape.
The forums that I used to use simply made the top shown comments/threads the most recent activity.
The default HN view is clearly based on some algorithm to calculate what is "worth" being on the front page. I read the high comment topics, and there is a ton of groupthink and pushing controversy.
This is also why the HN effect is even a concept. There are enough people here watching controversial topics to hug a modern website to death.
Sure there is groupthink, we're mostly software engineers. But it's a relatively small group, uniform presentation visible to anyone, and very limited reach. Contrast with what's going on in Twitter and Facebook: many orders of magnitude more reach, and it's almost impossible to have any idea what people are seeing or saying in aggregate, and what the many small groupthink bubbles are.
I know you’re arguing this as a note of caution in the opposite direction, but I’d actually argue this as a note in the same direction. You’re essentially arguing that we’re having an effect on something we don’t understand, which is a really bad thing to do in my opinion
> "we are the ones who’ve built the big tech industry"
Some of the participants on HN are some of the those who've build the big tech industry. It's always important to keep in mind that HN is more than just "big tech" and that "big tech" is more than just HN. Just as it's important when we're categorizing or characterizing any sufficiently large community.
This strikes me as insightless pedantry. Of course the union of the two sets isn't the intersection of the two sets! Nobody was debating this.
I am fairly certain what the parent comments meant was that the people on HN are a significant portion of the talent
(note: talent != headcount) of big tech.
HN is a fantastic resource for learning about new tech. And being curious around technology is usually a sign that you're much above average.
When you have so many people talking past each other because they're bucketing groups of people and assigning to them beliefs and behaviors while dismissing concerns with the casual "do all x believe y?" with on-going violent results, I don't think it's pedantry at all.
In less heated times when people are engaged in good-faith debate, we can be more lax with our language. From the discussions of the past few days, that's clearly not the case right now. We're unlikely to get past this without first being more nuanced ourselves.
Watch Chappel’s “killing them softly” from 2002. It is a good reminder that BLM is a product of social media and smartphone cameras. Remember there have been tons of George Floyds before George Floyd. The difference is social media and cameras.
Social media is rough and polarizing, but on balance I expect history will see it as a positive with growing pains.
Also, the funniest line ever told starts with “Open and shut case, Johnson. I saw this once before when I was a rookie.”
> or if we’re actually enabling good moral and ethical decisions
What an unbelievably patronizing worldview.
Personally, I think classical industry should act in kind, and refuse to sell gasoline, clothes, electricity, food, etc. to anyone who gave voice to BLM. Let's see who wins this tiresome war of refusing to do business with anyone whom we disagree.
The best evidence I could find says 7% of the protests weren't peaceful, and those almost entirely after sundown.
You might argue that 7% has already lost an org credibility, but that's still 93% of protests that were peaceful.
Also, if you were black, how many George Floyd-esque videos do you think it would take you to see before you got physically angry? (Note that I'm partially blaming the media optimizing for outrage, here)
And 7% of those protests killed over 25 people and caused > $1B in damage.
6th street in Austin is completely gone. People who live in major metros may not understand this, but rural America is laughing at them. These cities are national embarrassments.
But that's not the point. The point is the sheer arrogance required to believe that they're qualified to control what people are allowed to read.
These same people can't even keep their cities from being burned down, 50+% increases in murder rates, fecal matter on the streets, people leaving in droves... I'm supposed to listen to them? Really?
Disregarding the hyperbole, rural areas have their own set of problems that seem outrageous in turn to city dwellers. It's easy to scorn the speck in your neighbor's eye; removing one's own is more constructive.
They most definitely do have their own set of problems.
But if 90% of Twitter was run by Republicans who lived exclusively in rural areas, would you like it if they deplatformed Biden?
Would that be construed as offensive? Because that exact scenario is happening in reverse. People at tech companies in San Francisco who vote 90+% Democrat have just kicked off the Republican president of the United States. They've been talking about it for years, and this event is just pretext.
As a republicans living in a rural area, I have to disagree with your logic.
The issue with Trump isn’t his politics but his policy. I agree with his politics, we are both nominally Republican after all, but when he goes to implement it the policy is incompetent at best and actively harmful at worst.
For example, both Trump and I support the ideal of strong Republican leadership. I want to achieve that via elections, he aimed to achieve that through illegal power grabs attempts at last 4 years capped off with inciting a violent riot against his political opponents.
He has simply gone too far.
He stood in front of a crowd and told them to seize the party for himself, then after the riot called them patriots and told them they are loved.
Fine, you disagree. But statistically, Trump has overwhelming support within the Republican party, even after this.
Vast majorities of Republican voters believe that Biden stole the election. Scarily huge majorities of Republican voters believe that something approaching Civil War is possible. Similar numbers exist that believe Democrats were trying to invalidate the 2016 election with their calls for impeachment before Trump even took office.
If San Francisco had any diversity of thought at all, it would understand how damaging their petty bans and disclaimers have been. But it doesn't. The perverse reality is that San Francisco has become an echo chamber.
That’s ironic because haven’t you presented your argument in a formal format here? And attempted to build something for a coherent and effective belief system? And passed on sharing the relatable story that would allow others to understand how you’ve come to believe what you’ve outlined?
Just because you haven’t been able to access any truth through philosophizing doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
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