Over the years, HN slowly replaced proggit for me. The are subs on reddit I really like such as r/lisp or r/politics. And those two sections have much improved over the time, in my opinion at least.
But there are sections in reddit I find hard to accept up to the point that I feel ashamed visiting the site. And sometimes when I browse through some of the top level threads, I'm not sure if someone copy-pasted the discussion straight from youtube.
HN on the other hand has fostered a very civilized discussion culture, particularity in the last 2 years. Good job guys.
I've once gave a lecture about one aspect of Hegels philosophy of law (inside his political philosophy). Hegel died in 1830.
No matter how do you evaluate Hegels work, his ideals etc., it is absolutely stunning to see on which level he and others discussed this matter. And the "others" where especially important, because the role of the state and a nation where discussed not only in the ivory tower but also in broader public.
Fast forward to now. We made huge progress in applied science and technology, but how do we discuss and think about things like our freedom today? Compared to 200 years ago a cnn/fox/whatever discussion is nothing more then the mumbling of a patient in his terminal stage in dementia.
How did we loose all that? Why the degression?
The person who declared and showed how to destroy the state, the establishment and burn everything down was Hitler. His first target was to destroy the political apparatus, and he did.
After the war most european countries where politicaly weakened. So the U.S. was left with basically one true opponent, the soviet union. But this system was more of a dictatorship so it wasnt really a competion between states, but more a (cold) war led by nuclear threat.
So in the end, America won and showed an groth rate in global economical power unparalleled in history. And where money is there is power. So in the end the role of the state was very much diminished, and this laid the groundwork for Reagan.
And lot of the things the U.S. struggle today are the result of Reagans tax revolution.
Ok, I see, I dind't phrase it carefully enough - sorry. I meant what happend in Europe, not in the U.S.
Here's my very very very unhealty simplifictation of how the lack of public funding of public services and the events in europe are related.
underfunded schools > public spending in general > fiscal quote > "washington" > elections > cultural reflexes > "socialism" > libertarianism/Reagan > Europe > cold war > socialism > WW II
Honestly, I don't like this kind of condescending comments. I'm european too and I hear this kind of statements all the time.
We Europeans in general and particular Scandinavians have it very easy to judge in our warm and cuddly nests.
A lot of what is wrong in the U.S. today goes back to our own absolutely unparalleled failure in the roughly 40 years between 1940 until 1980.
I think the American people could be far more powerful and demanding if they weren't hindered by their absurd notion of "socialism". And the reason why the politians can pull this term out of the cage in order to scare and control their folks is rooted in our continent.
> Earth will go on for billions of years after we are gone.
I used to use this phrase too, but now I think there is a lot of overestimation in such understatements. It basically says that you are thinking in time scales much bigger than centuries: You think in billions of years.
Besides that I'm not sure anymore if this is really true from a factual point.
I mean - where are we after we burned all fossil and nuclear resources? This would be a very new situation for humanity but also for the rest of the living system on this planet. What happens with all the CO2, what happens with all the plutinium?
In a relatively short timespan of 2-3 years almost half the bees in my country died. Nobody saw that coming, nobody want/cant do something about it. Thinking that further, what would happen to our biosphere if pollination would stop working withing a short period of time? All living life is reciprocally developed in a long running evolutionary process.
So, I think this phrase is used a little too careless, we simply don't no how Earth react on fundamental changes that are happen quickly.
If you look at Xah's website with the eyes of business owner it could be a problem that that it handles a lot of exotic stuff, that is almost never a subject in a small to medium IT companies, but is written and fostered with great passion and care.
So there might be concerns if he would fit in to company with all its mundane day to day problems.
I think I would be helpful if he could do an internship or some sort of a program, where he can prove his capabilities to do
- "boring" stuff
- follow orders of his boss
- working teams
Once this is approved, he might had better chances.