Hacker News: benched

New comment by benched in "Mozilla boss Brendan Eich resigns after gay marriage storm"

benched — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 01:50:38 +0000

Today, I learned just how trivial people believe gay rights are. I'm actually surprised by it. That's much sadder to me.

New comment by benched in "The Next Mission"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 23:47:51 +0000

It has proven to be a much more popular opinion, at least on Hacker News, than I ever would have thought possible in 2014.

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 23:22:19 +0000

Ok. Sorry. We'll all use the exact right level of rhetoric from now on.

New comment by benched in "Why is a highly ranked, recent story being buried?"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 22:39:17 +0000

The Hacker News community wants to discuss this story much more than the Hacker News mods want to allow it to be discussed. They think they've reasonably allowed the community to discuss it "enough", already, so they're intervening. Not annoying at all, is it?

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 22:29:44 +0000

I don't think you and so many others would say the same thing if the issue was inter-racial marriage, today. Is it really so hard for people to get a little bit ahead of the progress curve for a change, instead of digging in and dragging heels behind it? What is it that makes it so hard?

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich resigns as CEO from Mozilla"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 22:26:43 +0000

Really? Is there a rash of this sort of thing going on that I don't know about? Or is it pretty much just Brendan Eich right now, reaping the consequences of expressing bigotry publicly?

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:48:48 +0000

I'm sure I wrote what I did on purpose. Thanks for the invite, though!

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:29:31 +0000

Oh for fucks sake. Whether or not every Christian is pro-life doesn't change what I said, but thanks for the tangent. Every Internet argument can use more pedantic tangents!

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:27:19 +0000

Do you even know that you are playing meaningless word games, of the form, "This statement is a lie" or "atheism is a religion"? You really think that "In order to be tolerant, you have to tolerate intolerance!" is a good argument, and not just self-referential verbal nonsense?

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:23:09 +0000

"Sure, you could say it's a human rights issue."

Are you sure you don't want to give this possibility a little more weight? Maybe a lot more weight? I mean, what if it is a human rights issue?

Of course not, that would be silly.

It would not be "silly" for Christians to target people for being pro-choice. That would be right in line with being Christian.

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 21:13:32 +0000

I like to think of this issue in the most specific terms possible, rather than the most sweeping and abstract.

If, for just a moment, you can set aside the bluster, it's just one guy named Brendan having a chance to evaluate whether it was really worth it to him to donate $1k to prop 8.

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 20:37:58 +0000

On a scale of 1 to 5, how strong of an argument do you believe you're making right here? That an individual assuming a position of high leadership being pressured to leave that leadership position, is equivalent enough to people withholding civil rights from a minority group, to use the word "oppress" to refer to both, to make a rhetorical point? Do you feel like you're really nailing the issue here?

Also, now I have to take back that line anyway. Maybe it does take the ability to categorize well.

New comment by benched in "Ketamine 'exciting' depression therapy"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 20:31:36 +0000

Aw. And to think, you could have just thanked him!

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 20:18:54 +0000

"for his political views"

In this case, you cannot speak generally like this. In this case, it really matters exactly what those political views are, not just that they are "political". And that's why there was such an uproar, and why he's stepping down.

People seem to be willfully misunderstanding this. It's not like, "Whoa! Guys! We can persecute people for their ''''political'''' views now? What's up with that?" No, it's more like we're sick of having to liberate all the people that some people find too 'othery', one group at a time. We've seen this before. We know how it goes. We know how it ends, and we're less inclined than ever to play nice with the oppressing side.

And it really does not take a genius, or an orator, to see which side is the oppressing one.

New comment by benched in "Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO"

benched — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 20:07:59 +0000

Half of the people in this thread are deeply confused about the relationship between civil rights and popular opinion. The latter is a perception of the former, not the cause or definition.

New comment by benched in "Suspicious Minds – Why No One Trusts People In Authority"

benched — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:43:32 +0000

I have no idea what you're saying, so I'll just add to my point. Did authority originate as 'the people' purposefully vesting some of their power into one or more leaders, in order to organize society more effectively? Or is that how we post-rationalize the state we're born into?

New comment by benched in "Suspicious Minds – Why No One Trusts People In Authority"

benched — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 20:59:44 +0000

The entire concept of authority is inherently suspicious. It's so easy to confuse it for people with advantages using their advantages to enjoy their advantages.

New comment by benched in "The value of an engineering degree"

benched — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 01:03:00 +0000

Eh. I think a lot of this is in your head and can be got over. It sounds nothing at all like my experience.

New comment by benched in "OkCupid/IAC Employees Donated Thousands to Anti-Gay Marriage Politicians"

benched — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:23:23 +0000

It absolutely does have the same status for those who are on the right side of the argument (the one that will certainly be vindicated by history). The people who are in the right don't have to wait until the slow people catch up, in order to be right.

New comment by benched in "OkCupid/IAC Employees Donated Thousands to Anti-Gay Marriage Politicians"

benched — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:18:27 +0000

I'm liberal, and I believe society should be as permissive as it can stand to be with regard to behavior, choices, and the kinds of lifestyles we can create. But I'm not an idiot. Abortion is perhaps the only thing you could have used as an argument here. It's obvious to me why people have a problem with abortion. Even people who had one probably didn't like it. But I don't care enough about it to try to prevent anyone from having one.

Gay rights aren't abortion. Enough people believe it is exactly like every other precedent for civil rights, that you can't really seriously hold onto this argument anymore. Sorry. And absolutely nobody said it had to be about voting, so where did you pull that out of?