Censorship is generally the territory of petty proceduralism, not grand political gesture.

"It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone is."

That's a direct quote from PG. Take it for what you will.

That being said, I do see some issues with our youth habitually living in gaming ecosystems rather than in the real world. For instance, a couple studies lately have noted empathetic behavior sharply dropping among millennials, [1] which I would think comes from spending far less time interacting face-to-face with anyone during their formative years -- their emotional attachments are probably not as strongly imprinted when staring at a screen all the time.

Internet and VR are still a huge net win imo. Real-life, positive social outlets are crucial as well though.

[1] http://www.ipearlab.org/media/publications/Changes_in_Dispos...

I wouldn't even care if that chain of businesses made much money, I'd consider it a public service.

Flamewar material could basically be any contestable subject people get passionate about. Of course people online will disagree about contentious ideas, that doesn't automatically make it a "flamewar topic" as you seem to think, unless you plan to flag and remove all impassioned speech here.

Typically for forum moderation, flamewars involve a slew of personal attacks, which are simply not present in my quote. I said something ideologically controversial, but I didn't flame or personally attack anyone.

My statement also wasn't casual. Since the BLM movement was founded on the Michael Brown case, I've put a fair amount of time and consideration into an analysis of what happened in the case and how I should feel about it and the ongoing protests -- protests that shut down the freeway here in SF for hours yesterday, I might add.

My overall conclusion is as stated, and that directly relates to the initial post about empathy online -- it's an completely valid example where displaying a lack of empathy on a given subject is very controversial, which you have certainly reaffirmed here. To you, it's such a controversial (read: not politically correct) opinion (to refuse to show empathy towards a perceived victim) that you, as a moderator, felt the need to denigrate the perspective and flag the comment as off-topic (which it wasn't).

>Tedious ideological posturing

I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, and for what it's worth you've labeled this quote more accurately, but it's still extremely subjective (bordering on facile name-calling) to label what I said that way. What you find tedious others might find empowering, in that they don't have to put the world's problems on their shoulders and feel sad about every victim narrative bandied about on the news. Or people could have a slew of other emotions.

I feel like you're 100% okay with ideological posturing when it's politically correct and aligns with your worldview, and 100% not okay with it when is is misaligned with your worldview. That's the definition of bias. You also tend to resort to tone policing to justify acting on your biases when any argument rubs you the wrong way. That's not good moderation, imo.

Removing personal attacks is fine, sure. Calling anything you don't like "tedious" or "acrimonious" and then flagging and removing it -- that's disappointing to see on HN. Especially when PG has written articles specifically about how much he dislikes tone policing.

Not to mention Google+ was truly asinine about forcing users to merge their YT and G+ accounts (and even gmail, iirc), it was all just very confusing and obtuse. I don't want a SSO. I don't want a G+ account for every Gmail account.

I didn't want to have to fuck around with merging my accounts, tethering each YT channel to my social network, etc. I want -- and have business needs for -- a division between the sites I use. I frequently need several different usernames and identities on different sites, even if the sites are owned by the same company, as sometimes I am creating social accounts for clients.

Google was, IMHO, trying to be shady and act like every youtube comment was actually Google+ activity, simply so they could claim, "We have XXX million active G+ users each month!!" They weren't and you don't. I'm glad their shady network and backhanded business practices failed.

To me, "flamewar material" sounds like "stuff many people would disagree with" [1] and "tedious posturing" sounds like, "Unfortunate realities I don't like discussing," so if you could quote [2] the specific part that breaks the rules it would help.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

[2] http://paulgraham.com/okung.html

Or, more accurately: Might muddies the waters enough to do whatever it wants regardless.

People can simply be uninterested in certain types of work..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

Are applied sciences grad programs not "creative work" in your mind? Standardized tests statistically predict success within those programs.

http://portal.scienceintheclassroom.org/sites/default/files/...

Did you ever take the SAT / ACT?

The people who seemed the sharpest in the first two weeks of training usually excelled, most others didn't. Some were simply unable to learn fairly basic concepts. It mostly came down to raw intellect. I'm sure the same would be true for aspiring developers.

Hire an IT guy and have him setup network shares, done. But obviously there seems to be some need I'm overlooking, considering the revenue these companies are making.

I mean, I think you buy into and identify with a concept that is explicitly, by definition anti-white..

Is that not racist?

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>This is exactly why I don't want to write about race issues.

Because everyone needs to agree with you about them 100%?