I refused to get on FB for many years, until I was finally convinced to do it. I never did more than post funny pictures I found around the internet.
And then the next political cycle hit and I straight up quit. I found the political ads more offensive than anything, and I've never been back since.
FB is a terrible place, ignore the poster you're responding to because they very well could be putting on airs while you're trying to be more honest about things. That's the nature of social media, of which HN is included.
> There is a great danger with convincing Americans that “they are bad and we are good” is justification enough to invade, kill, or otherwise bring destruction on another nation.
You're right, if the jews start getting gassed again we should attempt to understand Hitler's point of view so that we can claim that we're not falling into the trap of "they are bad and we are good".
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I'm just going to say it now, you are a morally corrupt individual who is putting their own "intellectualism" in front of millions of lives. This is the political version of nihilism. That there is no act so atrocious that you shouldn't stop and try and consider the nuance in the moment. You're the person that will sit down and try and consider the nuance while your neighbors children are being raped in the background by some perpetrator.
The idea of stop the violence, worry about the nuance later flies over your intellectual head.
That's a pretty damning conclusion given the paucity of evidence to support it. Are you so sure you have enough facts to determine that I'm morally corrupt? What evidence do you have that I think there is no act so atrocious that I wouldn't act without considering the nuance? All you know about me is that in the case of Syria I think it's nuanced. I haven't made any statements about other situations so how can such a conclusion be made? Are you sure you understand my position?
But let's look at the historical example you brought up. Did the United States really care about the plight of Jews in Europe? Didn't we famously prevent a ship full of Jewish refugees from landing in the United States? We didn't enter the war to help Jews. My dad fought in World War II. In modern times we'd have diagnosed him with PTSD. The war left him a drunk and he had issues his whole life as a result of it. Should we have fought the war? Of course. Were there costs to it that never showed up in the statistics. Of course and we shouldn't forget or ignore these types of costs when we advocate military action.
Did we invade China to prevent the mass killings that occurred under Mao? Did we invade Cambodia to prevent the Khmer Rouge? Did we really care when Saddam gassed Iraqi Kurds? Why did we support Saddam invading Iran but not Kuwait? Where was our moral outrage at the former? Where was our moral outrage when Latin American dictators brutalized peasants whilst we supported them militarily?
Given our history of exploitation, support of brutal dictators, and active engagement in mass killings are you so sure our leaders' intentions in Syria will be altruistic? You are so sure of the necessity for intervention why don't you go there and fight it yourself? Why are you so quick to send others in your place if you aren't willing to go yourself?
What doesn't fly over my intellectual head is that there is a propensity for those in power to rally the populace with pithy slogans and calls for patriotic action in order to mask malevolent intention.
To send our armed forces to go kill others without any thought is a truly dangerous idea. We don't give carte blanche to our leadership to engage in killing simply because we've been convinced the other person is bad. It should be more.....nuanced than that.
Addendum: In 2005 I was on a light rail late at night on a Friday night. There was a drunk guy on the train and he was pretty annoying. Sort of harassing women on the train. I decided to engage him in conversation. Found out he was a Marine. We talked a bit and then he turned me and said, "I killed kids in Iraq. That's fucked up. I'm too young to kill kids." He repeated it over and over. I didn't know what to say to him. It was very sad. Fuck war and fuck the people who so easily advocate for it.
> Did we invade China to prevent the mass killings that occurred under Mao? Did we invade Cambodia to prevent the Khmer Rouge? Did we really care when Saddam gassed Iraqi Kurds? Why did we support Saddam invading Iran but not Kuwait? Where was our moral outrage at the former? Where was our moral outrage when Latin American dictators brutalized peasants whilst we supported them militarily?
You're citing these as precedents, but really they're failures. How would things be different if the world had taken a stand against them from the beginning?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in the wake of WW2 - it would have been grand if the world tried to live by it.
Let me try to say my position in a different way. Clearly genocide is wrong and it would be great if it were stopped every time it happens. Humans are easily manipulated and in this era of Facebook we can see the result of this fact. Something as obviously stupid as being anti-vaccination has gained traction. If we can convince large numbers of people that something so clearly beneficial as vaccinations are in fact dangerous then how much easier is it to convince large numbers of people that in Country A something bad is happening and we need to invade?
If invading another country can be reduced, in its essence, to “we are good, they are bad” then this effectively gives carte blanche to those in power with bad intent. They just need to easily manipulate the masses into thinking that Country A is bad.
The U.S. has been fantastically inconsistent when it comes to intervening for humanitarian reasons. It has effectively become the case that if those in power don’t like the leadership in a given country they just need to drum up moral outrage in order to unleash our military forces. This is a bad state of affairs because it is so easy to paint a given country in a bad light. Since thoughtful consideration is not a requisite for military action we tend to engage in military conflicts for dubious reasons and for short terms goals without considering long term implications. This is bad as I see things.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Obviously you can't post like this here, no matter how wrong the other person is or you feel they are.
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.
You appear to be upset. I'm sorry that what I wrote made you think that I'm immoral and that I'm a piece of shit. This exchange exemplifies what started all these threads. That is, that it's better off for people to quit social media. Had we discussed this in person I'm certain you'd not think I'm a piece of shit.
What's missing in internet discussions like this is the assumption we make about people when we first meet them in person. Namely, that the other person isn't bad even if they have a different opinion. It's too easy in faceless discussions like this to paint an incorrect picture about the other person.
I have not written anything to suggest that I advocate standing by while children are raped or that the U.S. should not have fought WWII. Indeed I specifically wrote that the U.S. should have fought WWII. How does one draw such wild and clearly false conclusions? You should try reading what I wrote without already forming a conclusion. I didn’t even say that intervention in Syria was wrong. I just said that the situation there was nuanced and suggested that in depth analysis was warranted. How does that imply anything about my beliefs on WWII or the rape of children?
You’ve committed numerous argumentative fallacies. It behooves you to reflect on your responses and reflect on how it came to pass that you think a person who claims the situation in Syria is complicated implies they are a piece of shit and implies that they would not try to stop Hitler.
Where have I suggested that inaction is always the best course? Where have I suggested that intervention is never warranted?
I didn’t say that Assad isn’t evil enough. I didn’t say that intervention in Syria is not warranted. I never said that it’s wrong to think in terms of good vs. evil. I never indicated any of the things you accuse me of. Where do you get this notion that I think it’s wrong to think in terms of good vs. evil?
You’re clearly very passionate about Syria and ridding world of Assad. Why don’t you go there and fight his regime? Does your moral outrage stop at the point of actually getting involved? Is your moral compass so weak that anger and invective at an internet stranger is enough to feel you’ve done something good in the case of Syria? You are quick to send others to kill for you but it appears you lack the ambition to go yourself.
It’s fascinating that you can be so firm in your conclusion with so little evidence. Despite never having said or even remotely implied the things you think I believe you have an unshakeable certainty that I’m a piece of shit. Despite directly stating twice that U.S. involvement in WWII was the right thing to do you persist in the delusional belief that I’d not have been opposed to Hitler.
> People have been complaining about what you're complaining about for thousands of years. What I find truly puzzling -- given the supposed madness of crowds -- is that things are going so well.
The people doing the manipulating are generally getting what they want, why would they try to pull the system apart?
You render a UUID into the browser form and send it along with the submission however you want (post input, http header, etc). Then the server both requires the UUID to be there and passes it along to stripe.
Stripe will not allow an idempotent key to be reused w/i 24 hours.
You can use anything for the idempotent key and Stripe will actually track that along with the charge object so you can use something more meaningful if it's useful for your business.
edit: and if you generate a key that's more meaningful I'd be careful about leaking important/private data.
Yeah, but that should only prevent duplicates due to technical errors, but not duplicates because the person actually made a number of distinct purchases my mistake.
I think it's more about recognizing that structure is like cement in that once it's laid down, it holds things in place and can be a pain to pull up and change.
For this reason, it's better to prefer as little structure as you can reasonabley get away with, not more. Now, this is a nuanced view, a senior person can absolutely insist on more structure up front and avoid issues, but they'll have a good reason for doing so that doesn't involve "it's clean code".
But in general, you want as little structure as you can get away with. It's a lot easier to change something that hasn't been abstracted to death with guesses about what the future is going to hold.
I think part of the issue is a perspective thing. If I spend a day throwing something together and it sits for 6 months, great. I got ROI from that code. If 6 months in new requirements come in and I decide I need to rewrite it, who cares. It worked day in and day out for 6 months off a days worth of effort.
Too many people view code as needing to be long lived and unchanging.
I totally agree. It's hard because management relentlessly pushes you to get things 'done', to move onto the next thing. That thing is done already, why do you want to touch it? Why is this thing going to take so long to do, didn't you do those other parts already? Sure, you can have some maintenance time later.... Maybe, I guess. No sorry this new feature is a higher priority. Also why aren't you quicker?
There's a lot of social pressure that pushes people to view code as a thing that's either done and permanent, or not done, unfinished and therefore unacceptable.
Bjarne has explicitly refuted this opinion.