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yters commented on Show HN: Redbean – Single-file distributable web server   justine.lol/redbean/index... · Posted by u/jart
dang · 5 years ago
You have a long history of taking HN threads into ideological flamewar and we've asked you to stop many times. The slack we cut users may be large, but it is finite, and this was the last bit. I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. I know you know where they are, but in case anyone is curious, they're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

yters · 5 years ago
Aren't most discussions on HN an ideological debate of one form or another? I think my error is being on the wrong side of the popular view here. Oh well, you cannot please everyone all the time :). In parting I thank you for the great, and not appreciated enough, work you do as HN mod. My best to you, sir.

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yters commented on Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, 150 Years Later   daily.jstor.org/charles-d... · Posted by u/Hooke
disconcision · 5 years ago
i guess i'd argue that the more abstract something becomes, the more its original motivations tend to be obscured. this is the nature of abstraction, for better and worse.

i'd hesitate to say though that this means more abstract ideas are less culture-bound in the sense of being value-neutral. an abstract idea still carries at least the implicit assertion that this is an idea worth paying attention to, at the unavoidable opportunity cost paying attention to others. and ideas which seem entirely free-floating are probably worth paying special suspicion to.

yters · 5 years ago
I would agree with that. There is often a practical question motivating comp sci and mathematical discoveries. The difference from Darwin's case is the mathematical conclusions are never wrong, regardless of the underlying motivation. That is what I mean by culture free. Change in culture cannot change the validity of mathematical deductions. On the other hand, Darwin's conclusions in Descent of Man are wrong, and he appears to have drawn these conclusions due to his cultural bias.
yters commented on Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, 150 Years Later   daily.jstor.org/charles-d... · Posted by u/Hooke
ska · 5 years ago
You are making a category error here. Culture doesn't produce a theorem (or a work of art, or a [fill in the blank]), but the people that did produce it necessarily operate in a culture. Among other things this affects what work gets done supported, what people do it (and get supported), how the results are communicated (and if) etc. As a student it effects what you are taught, what you are told is important, and what areas you are pointed towards.

You can't tease this stuff apart. Part of the process of becoming a scientist is to become acculturated to that science.

yters · 5 years ago
Yes of course there are cultural influences. But it seems some branches of STEM are fairly immune to the opinions of the surrounding culture. E.g. what can we say is victorian about any mathematical conclusion? Yet Darwin's supposedly scientific conclusions in this work appear to be very culture bound.

u/yters

KarmaCake day3268August 21, 2007View Original