What a bunch of sophomoric blather. "Politics" is just how large groups of humans organize themselves. It can be done well or done poorly. It can be done with a thought to the most vulnerable, where minorities have rights and where it's not simply mob rule.
I see this type of post every week, every month… no it’s always been political. Tech politic — or government politic is just analyzing power structure.
I think it's actually appropriate here, and I'll try to articulate why. (Disclaimer: former history major here. I might be biased by my own interests.)
I'm reading "A Hacker's Mind" by Schneier and it makes a fundamental connection I've been trying to reason about for a long time. He looks at hacking through a very broad lens. He defines it essentially as the manipulation of a system using its rules to take actions that are allowed by the system but undermine its intent.
The key thing he says is that systems exist within and connected to broader systems. He gives the example of an ATM. Fundamentally it's a computer connected to a box of cash. You can hack it by manipulating computer rules. But it also exists within the broader monetary and legal systems, and while the computer's rules might allow you to execute the hack, the legal system will always treat that as an illegal action and prosecute you.
So what I'm basically saying is that as a matter of systems thinking, politics makes sense here on Hacker News. I think where people might object is that it can devolve into arguments about values and black-and-white thinking (arguably this essay does that, although I think the Burroughs quote about the bull in the ring approaches a systems theory aspect). Personally I enjoy thinking about this stuff though. Macro-level socioeconomic systems are the largest things we can think about aside from planetary-level concerns like geology and universe-scale stuff like cosmology. Their dynamics are very interesting and interact in many ways with the stuff we think of as more traditionally "hacking."
It's always been political. What's changing is the level and maturity of the discourse. Rarely do I see conversations where both sides are trying to be amiable and understanding. I could have rose-tinted glasses, but I strictly remember conversations here being a lot more nuanced a decade or so ago.
> If only I had a dollar for every Redditor that has tried to explain to me how "everything is political."
That phrase may be an oversimplification, but I think it is important for people to recognize that politics is going to happen whether you are involved in it or not and the results will impact your life.
If you detach yourself from it, the results of politics will happen upon you regardless of your involvement, likely in ways that you do not like.
Given this, it is a good idea to be involved even if you don't really want to be.
> It means that politics is not the art of life. Politics does not sustain life or serve it. Rather politics is the organization of power, and power is the enemy of life. For the measure of power is its ability to make life what it would not be; to break, bend, control, crush, direct and destroy life.
This smells like anarchist writing to me. I never heard of this writer before, but a cursory search doesn't indicate they're an anarchist, but they are a "counter culturalist," a term I'd also never heard before but I can grok the meaning.
I guess this site thought is about "panarchy," which seems to be to be anarchy which lives in peace with other ideologies for the purpose of experimentation and full expression of humanity?
> In those notes the basic idea of Panarchy, namely “tolerance for all our tolerant experiments” is spelled out in the most convincing and rational way. Personal and social life is seen as a continuous experience in living where everyone learns from his own or other people’s actions and efforts and in doing so each person advances and develops. Without the freedom to experiment we lack the basic pre-condition for a rich and meaningful human life.
> In other words, Panarchy advocates full tolerance and freedom of experimenting in one’s life everywhere and for everyone.
I find that when I talk to people about the basic tenants of anarchy as envisioned by someone like Kropotkin, they're often surprised. They're expecting men in black balaclavas throwing molotov cocktails, and I'm telling them instead about sharing your extra food with your neighbors. There's quite a few anarchists in this tech scene, most prominent and likely known by readers here would be Moxie Marlinspike, creator of Signal.
If you vibed with the idea of the article here, namely that for some reason politicians seem to always be insane and doing mad things, you might enjoy some overviews of anarchism. Keith McHenry is local to people in SF, you may have seen the Food Not Bombs tables out and about, he rewrote the anarchist cookbook to be far more useful: https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html (skip the absolutely atrocious vegan recipes at the end. I respect the man as a thinker but my god not as a cook) or Kropotkin is probably the most readable historical anarchist https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-anarc.... And of course David Graeber, whose frequently gets mentioned here, though his books are often quite long and academic.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 20.8 ms ] threadI'm reading "A Hacker's Mind" by Schneier and it makes a fundamental connection I've been trying to reason about for a long time. He looks at hacking through a very broad lens. He defines it essentially as the manipulation of a system using its rules to take actions that are allowed by the system but undermine its intent.
The key thing he says is that systems exist within and connected to broader systems. He gives the example of an ATM. Fundamentally it's a computer connected to a box of cash. You can hack it by manipulating computer rules. But it also exists within the broader monetary and legal systems, and while the computer's rules might allow you to execute the hack, the legal system will always treat that as an illegal action and prosecute you.
So what I'm basically saying is that as a matter of systems thinking, politics makes sense here on Hacker News. I think where people might object is that it can devolve into arguments about values and black-and-white thinking (arguably this essay does that, although I think the Burroughs quote about the bull in the ring approaches a systems theory aspect). Personally I enjoy thinking about this stuff though. Macro-level socioeconomic systems are the largest things we can think about aside from planetary-level concerns like geology and universe-scale stuff like cosmology. Their dynamics are very interesting and interact in many ways with the stuff we think of as more traditionally "hacking."
If only I had a dollar for every Redditor that has tried to explain to me how "everything is political."
That phrase may be an oversimplification, but I think it is important for people to recognize that politics is going to happen whether you are involved in it or not and the results will impact your life.
If you detach yourself from it, the results of politics will happen upon you regardless of your involvement, likely in ways that you do not like.
Given this, it is a good idea to be involved even if you don't really want to be.
This smells like anarchist writing to me. I never heard of this writer before, but a cursory search doesn't indicate they're an anarchist, but they are a "counter culturalist," a term I'd also never heard before but I can grok the meaning.
I guess this site thought is about "panarchy," which seems to be to be anarchy which lives in peace with other ideologies for the purpose of experimentation and full expression of humanity?
> In those notes the basic idea of Panarchy, namely “tolerance for all our tolerant experiments” is spelled out in the most convincing and rational way. Personal and social life is seen as a continuous experience in living where everyone learns from his own or other people’s actions and efforts and in doing so each person advances and develops. Without the freedom to experiment we lack the basic pre-condition for a rich and meaningful human life.
> In other words, Panarchy advocates full tolerance and freedom of experimenting in one’s life everywhere and for everyone.
https://www.panarchy.org/debellis/onpanarchy.html (the same site)
I find that when I talk to people about the basic tenants of anarchy as envisioned by someone like Kropotkin, they're often surprised. They're expecting men in black balaclavas throwing molotov cocktails, and I'm telling them instead about sharing your extra food with your neighbors. There's quite a few anarchists in this tech scene, most prominent and likely known by readers here would be Moxie Marlinspike, creator of Signal.
If you vibed with the idea of the article here, namely that for some reason politicians seem to always be insane and doing mad things, you might enjoy some overviews of anarchism. Keith McHenry is local to people in SF, you may have seen the Food Not Bombs tables out and about, he rewrote the anarchist cookbook to be far more useful: https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html (skip the absolutely atrocious vegan recipes at the end. I respect the man as a thinker but my god not as a cook) or Kropotkin is probably the most readable historical anarchist https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-anarc.... And of course David Graeber, whose frequently gets mentioned here, though his books are often quite long and academic.
https://jruohonen.hcommons.org/2026/10/10/eukidsact/
And, yes, "we must call madness madness wherever we see it". But it gets kind of tiring because the insanity show just goes on and on.