The European Union is updating its electronic signature laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/30/12066886/eu-european-union-electronic-signature-laws-eidas <comment><USER2> E-signature is great. I am not sure what service level is across Europe, but in my country it is half-baked due to:

1) software or plugins for signing should be available for free

2)All authorities have to accept same key (here in my country is huge problem with this. Governement offices and institutions accept different keys. Banks doesnt accept anything at all.)

3) Connected systems needs to be automated. its not acceptable to have manual verification and 12 hours sync between e-private-mailboxes (not fully related to esign).

4) if i can send form signed with e-signature it has to be delivered with appropriate automated feedback (meesage delivered,accepted,rejected)

5) they force users to use windows, internet explorer and expensive software, timestamps.

<comment><USER3> What's your country?

<comment><USER4> Sounds like Australia. The government forced business owners to use AUSKey for all goverment-business online communication. It was exactly as he described.

[https://abr.gov.au/AUSkey/AUSkey- explained/](https://abr.gov.au/AUSkey/AUSkey-explained/)

<comment><USER5> It's a real joke down under. Considering Chrome's market share: "Chrome and Edge browsers are not compatible with AUSkey."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually pretty neat. In Sweden our "BankID" digital signature system is really popular (using digital signature files or 2FA to do your taxes, log into your bank or apply for credit cards), and it's always kinda odd when I notice the kind of backwards half-assed solutions used in other countries. Having it all work intra-nationally would be really cool!

<comment><USER7> > Having it all work intra-nationally would be really cool!

You mean _internationally_, right, or did I miss something?

<comment><USER8> It wouldn't necessarily mean _internationally_ because countries outside of the EU wouldn't be required to work with the system.

It would only work intra-nationally (scoped to the member states of the EU (as an oversimplification)).

<comment><USER7> Just so that we are on same page:

\- "international" = "between nations"

\- "intranational" = "within a nation"

Right?

<comment><USER9> Correct. Which is strange, because both "intern" and "intra" mean as much as "internal". I never understood why "externational" isn't a word.

<comment><USER10> it's not intern, but inter, which does not mean internal at all but "between"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Part of eIDAS is e-signatures for things like documents, the other part is interoperability between the eID systems of the member states so that e.g. Dutch farmers living near the border can use their eHerkenning[1] account to log in to Belgian government services and vice versa.

[1]: [https://www.eherkenning.nl/english/how-does-it- work/](https://www.eherkenning.nl/english/how-does-it-work/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think that means that my Estonian e-residency card will actually be on equal footing with the (expensive) "qualified signature" cards issued by some German trust centers.

</comment><comment><USER12> On the one hand, eIDAS (the e-signature part) is definitely a good thing as it will replace a lot of weak national signature laws with something modestly safe. On the other hand it will also replace strict signature laws (e.g. german) with something much weaker. In the core of e-signatures is the so called human-machine transfer (Schneiers term). A human expresses his legal declaration of intent through a machine. In germany this required a (certified) qualified signature unit and software which de-facto meant certified smartcard from certified trustcenter with secure pin entry (on the card-reader, not the computer).

According to eIDAS this can be replaced with much more weaker forms like server-side keys and signature after 2FA. And this is where folks from DocuSign (and others) will come in and place cryptographic signature on documents exchange for username+password+click (maybe with 2FA, I doubt that).

So you formerly needed smartcard (possession) with PIN (knowledge). Now you may only need username+password (knowledge) and maybe a second factor like mobile phone. I doubt that having control over a smartphone is on the same security level as control over a class 2/class 3 smartcard reader.

<comment><USER13> eIDAS has different levels of _trust_ and a service (from a country or company) can require a _high_ level of trust to perform an operation, for example using a smartcard.

For German speaking people, you have some pretty well put together documentation on the new eIDAS directives here: [https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Themen/DigitaleGesellschaft/eIDAS...](https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Themen/DigitaleGesellschaft/eIDAS/eIDAS_node.html)

<comment><USER12> I didn't read anything about the notion of trust levels in the directives text. Can you point me to the law?

As far as I can see, any signature that is/appears to be qualified (regardless how it came to life) is considered equal to a signature under notary oversight (at least in germany) and shifts the burden of proof. This is heavy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know exactly what this is in technological terms? I'm thinking maybe it's a PKI that assigns an ECDSA private key to each EU resident?

Then their talk about timestamping makes me think maybe there's a blockchain involved?

<comment><USER15> Many EU states are already issuing keypairs to their citizens, usually in a smartcard that is their national ID. This initiative is supposed to get states to recognize each others' keys.

There's not blockchain; entities can simply sign a timestamp to a document, and then people and other entities can either trust it or not. From what I understand, a private company can be licensed as an "verified" timestamper, and then sell its services to other companies or individuals.

<comment><USER16> Every country that is issuing machine-readable passports is effectively issuing a keypair (stored in the passport's machine-readable chip). See: [http://www.icao.int/Meetings/TAG-MRTD/Documents/Tag- Mrtd-15/...](http://www.icao.int/Meetings/TAG-MRTD/Documents/Tag- Mrtd-15/P_Butler.ppt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think they should only be allowed with HSM's, from cheap smartcards to full- on tamper-resistant, if it's anything of significant value unless someone opts out of them. The amount of compromises of PC's, servers, and web apps means I trust an electronic signature way less than a physical one. Need extra security especially on the RNG's, timestamps, keys, and signatures.

Note: It will probably help that the best providers of inexpensive, secure IC's are European and already all over those markets.

<comment><USER18> If the host PC is compromised, does a cheap smartcard help? Just capture the PIN (like you would a password when they logon to their bank) and replay at will? Maybe if the user is very careful to only keep their smartcard in for the minimum time required it helps.

So long as other bank protections are in place, it shouldn't be a step backwards. If it's used to move all liability to the consumer though, then it's a problem.

<comment><USER12> If you use a smartcard, you should use a class2/class3 card reader with pin- pad and never enter the pin on you computer. So the machine can replace the hash that is to be signed, but cannot intercept and replay the PIN.

<comment><USER17> It's not always possible but should be whenever possible. The concept is called a trusted path: an unspoofable, un-interceptable interface between the user and the security-critical part of the system. Was required for all high- assurance security under the Orange Book. Still used in some HSM and payment sectors.

Example for other readers on p4 under Luna PCI and Igenico reader that looks like it's a kid's pocket calculator haha:

[https://www.keyon.ch/de/Produkte-Loesungen/SafeNet- HSM/HSM_T...](https://www.keyon.ch/de/Produkte-Loesungen/SafeNet- HSM/HSM_TrueHardware-basedKeyManagement_NextGenPKIApps_FB_-EN-_web.pdf)

[http://www.smartcardsource.com/contents/en- ca/Ingenico_myleo...](http://www.smartcardsource.com/contents/en- ca/Ingenico_myleo.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Genuine question: how do companies like DocuSign, HelloSign, etc. provide eSignatures without any kind of key authentication? Are they really legally binding?

<comment><USER20> The first time I was researching this some time last year, because a client wanted this, I almost fell off of my chair.

The recommended "solutions" all of which were being used at least somewhere in the mortgage industry were convoluted processes around people either drawing their signatures with their mouse, uploading a scan of their signature as a picture, or, the most ridiculous, just typing their name and then (optionally) choosing a cursive font so it _looks_ like a fancy signature.

This, of course, is robbing the signature of all of it's original intent of reproducability by just a single person to, you know, prove that you signed yourself, and replaces it, usually, with the ability to receive mail to a certain email address and might as well just consist of a "secure" link to the document and an OK button.

All of these solutions were claimed to be legally binding according to the ESIGN act [0].

I am really glad we ended up not integrating.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Globa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Global_and_National_Commerce_Act)

<comment><USER21> If you want to verify the identity of a signature, get a notary or a witness. Signatures were never intended for that.[fn]

Signatures became common as a legal formality in an age when many people were illiterate and signed their name with an "X" (which is still legal in the US). As with everything else in the US, there's a ton of racial history around the "X" signature that isn't relevant here, other than it's been known for hundreds of years that a plain signature isn't enough to verify the identity of the signer.

Instead, the signature came about as a formality to make clear to everyone involved that the person signing a document intended it to have legal effect. It's the difference between writing a note saying "I'll sell you my house for $100" and a signed contract --- there might be a question whether you intended the note to be binding, but there's no question that you intended a signed contract to be binding.

[fn] By contrast, things like signet rings that were able to produce easy-to- verify but hard-to-copy wax impressions have been used for identity verification. Same for name stamps in certain parts of the world.

(edit: stray formatting)

<comment><USER20> I'll readily admit my ignorance on the finer points of signatures and what you wrote makes sense to me, but using the hope that an email address will reach the intended recipient, and the intended recipient only, as your trust anchor, the whole system is basically no better than sending an email that says

> If you agree to buy this house for $100, just click reply, type your name > and then hit send.

All the fancy PDF displays and contract-signing-skeumorphisms just create a fuzzy-warm feeling, but don't actually do anything.

Which seemed a little odd to me as a way to authorize parts of a mortgage.

<comment><USER22> Not sure how these companies work, but what if you could click a link over SSL to view signing details, IP address and what email address the user had validated, etc.? If you combine that with your own validation process before handing them over to the e-signature folks, wouldn't that be enough?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Austrian version has a horrible UI. I really hope that with this someone goes in and makes it look less crappy.</comment>


YubiKey – Making secure login easy - <AUTHOR> https://www.yubico.com/ <comment><USER2> I use the Yubikey Neo as a smartcard + gpg for ssh private key logins[1], U2F with Google[2] accounts, and their OTP for things like LastPass[3].

I wrote some patches for KeepassX to use the Yubikey to derive the encryption key (completely offline)[4] but unfortunately the maintainer has zero interest in merging them.

[1] [https://www.yubico.com/2012/12/yubikey-neo- openpgp/](https://www.yubico.com/2012/12/yubikey-neo-openpgp/)

[2] [http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/10/strengtheni...](http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/10/strengthening-2-step- verification-with.html)

[3] [https://www.yubico.com/products/services- software/personaliz...](https://www.yubico.com/products/services- software/personalization-tools/yubikey-otp/)

[4] [https://github.com/keepassx/keepassx/pull/52](https://github.com/keepassx/keepassx/pull/52) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7801131)

<comment><USER3> The GPG applet only does keys up to 2048 bits :(

Other than that, this is cool and I generally really like my YubiKey Neo

<comment><USER4> Maybe you will like the FST-01? It's a free hardware device that can run gnuk, which is a free software smartcard over usb implementation. While it also supports RSA 2048 by default you can upgrade it to use RSA 4096 or even Ed25519 keys with GnuPG 2.1.

Both, the FST-01 and Gnuk are made by one of the GnuPG main developers, gniibe :)

I suggest this as I discarded a Yubikey NEO for one of these and i'm pretty happy.

[http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/FST-01](http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/FST-01) [http://www.fsij.org/doc-gnuk/](http://www.fsij.org/doc-gnuk/)

<comment><USER5> Yubikey is FIPS-140 certified -- unfortunately, I haven't found anything else usable and/or reasonably priced that is, and the only other usable thing that's actually a smartcard, in the sense that in the absence of bugs you need some very unavailable hardware like a FIB machine, is the PGPcard.

<comment><USER4> I didn't notice any difference in the usability of Gnuk and the Yubikey NEO. I mean, i had to do the same things for both to configure and use them as they are both are "smartcards". What issues did you found with Gnuk?

I'm interested as for our local work (activism related) Gnuk showed up as the best alternative for price, openess and the possibility if something fails to not have to buy new hardware. Yubikey did the right thing with their latest "put your yubikey in the trash bug" giving a new one, but we don't live in the US and time can be a factor.

But still, Gnuk is far from perfect and the better it gets the better for us. Can you tell me about the issues you had so i can talk with gniibe to see if there are solutions for them?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER5> I didn't try gnuk - This is the first time I hear about it.

I was comparing NEO to other tokens I've seen and used - it's not worse, but non of them are as simple as I would like (and no, I don't know how to describe the simplicity I'm after).

Looks like the gnuk is a software implementation - do you trust it not to disclose the private key if it is physically accessible? If you do, why?

I trust the NEO to require more than what your average hacker can use at home - though, of course, I don't trust it against state actors, who probably have the fund and equipment to make any smart card apparatus "talk".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use a Yubikey for my Google accounts. They did a great job integrating it as a multi-factor auth option. It's a lot easier than punching in numbers from an SMS/Google Authenticator.

My Yubikey feels like a natural member of my key ring! I love it.

</comment><comment><USER7> FYI anyone can integrate yubikey u2f logins on their website. It's easy, try it out:

[https://developers.yubico.com/U2F/Libraries/List_of_librarie...](https://developers.yubico.com/U2F/Libraries/List_of_libraries.html)

<comment><USER8> It's only supported in chrome, with other browser support at least 6 months away (guess). After getting a test webapp to work with u2f tokens on chrome I wouldn't say it's easy. YMMV.

You need to include this js: [https://demo.yubico.com/js/u2f-api.js](https://demo.yubico.com/js/u2f-api.js)

... which isn't really mentioned anywhere. That js file loads an embedded chrome extension and handles all the heavy lifting.

The documentation (if there is any?) fails to mention that your appId has to be https; any http appIds will fail with an obscure error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I bought a YubiKey so I could use it on my laptop with LastPass. Works fine. One day I grabbed my iPad and opened the LastPass app and it hit me... how am I going to authenticate with a YubiKey on an iPad. It took my password and then just worked.

I guess I misunderstood. I thought that once I enabled two-factor auth for LastPass, it'd require that no matter what. Nope, just open the iPad app and no two-factor required.

<comment><USER10> That depends on your configuration. LastPass supports per-device exceptions, so that you can allow login from devices without USB ports. I'd suggest checking for the device settings in your LastPass vault; mine are reasonably restrictive :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> See also: [https://developers.yubico.com/PGP/](https://developers.yubico.com/PGP/) \-- OpenPGP/GnuPG support [https://developers.yubico.com/PIV/](https://developers.yubico.com/PIV/) \-- PKCS certificates

</comment><comment><USER12> I own a YubiKey Neo. My plan was to use it with KeePass/OATH HOTP (I used it with master password only on my three main devices). Turns out the OtpKeyProv plugin won't work on the OSX version I used before (MyPass Companion, switched to MacPass since because well it's on github). So for now I'm using the non- native Windows version with Mono.

Alas synching between different machines isn't easy (counter gets out of synch) and I'm not all that comfortable with keeping the databse in my owncloud.

If anyone has a good suggestion for a crossplattform (Xubuntu, OSX, Android), synchable and FLOSS OATH HOTP password storage solution that doesn't rely on 3rd party cloud storage I'm all ears. Not exactly a security expert but I feel that's the setup I want :) I could fallback to challange/response and that would fix some issues but be less secure.

[The Yubikey itself is pretty cool though]

<comment><USER13> I'm in the same boat; didn't work at all on OSX when I tried. In fact, even on windows the plugin somehow failed to install properly, and I never even managed to 'register' the key. The support helpfully told me to raise a ticket (thanks, I'm a /customer/ not your beta tester)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Compared to Google Authenticator app, YubiKey (a) makes hardware-based OTPs as opposed to time-based OTPs (does that offer stronger security?) and (b) can be used as smart card in GnuPG solutions.

It being a separate piece of plastic might arguably be another advantage, if we assume that most people are more likely to lose their phone than their keyring.

It's interesting: apparently[0], YubiKey is Google's initiative and the company itself uses YubiKeys internally.

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2013/11/30/google-w...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/amadoudiallo/2013/11/30/google- wants-to-make-your-passwords-obsolete/)

<comment><USER15> > Compared to Google Authenticator app, YubiKey (a) makes hardware-based OTPs > as opposed to time-based OTPs (does that offer stronger security?)

If I understand the various OTP implementations correctly, they are essentially the same, trading a time-counter for use-counter.

The non-time OTP will give you ds1, ds2, ds3 -- where dsX ("derived secret X") is derived from shared-secret+X, while the time-based OTP will give you dsT1, dsT2 ... derived from shared-secret+TimestampX.

The former is a little more secure, as you need to allow for _some_ drift. And having a proper 128 bit shared secret is probably more secure than something derived from a crackable password/pass phrase.

But AFAIK they're both vulnerable to the shared secret being compromised on the server-side and/or cracked (if it's possible to brute force).

I don't recall the exact details of the TOTP-spec, but in general I think the derived-secret/otp essentially boils down to: truncate(hmac(shared- secret,counter)) where counter is either a timestamp, or a sequence.

If the counter is actually a sequence of used passwords(1,2,3...N), the server can store just N passwords (usable for N logins), and cross them off after use -- so no need to store the shared secret on the server. For TOTP the server needs the shared-secret in order to generate a few +/\- values to match against what the client supplied.

In both cases you could use a sniffed one-time password to try and guess the shared-secret, if you can know/guess the counter. The risk for a 128 bit random key is obviously somewhat less than if the shared secret is "hunter2" (modulus stretching etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)

I use too the Yubikey Neo as a smartcard, but not with the GPG applet, rather with the PIV applet. As such, to connect to my most secure servers, my Yubico is mandatory and as such it's just impossible to bruteforce your way in. I use the GPG applet ...well...for GPG.

However, I'm still looking for a cheap way to do fingerprint (rather than typing your PIN) authentication. Does anybody have heard of a fingerprint token which works with Linux AND Mac OS X ? Or is it possible to have a fingerprint reeader as some sort of proxy ?

Second question, I wanted to use the Yubico NEO as a smartcard token with a TrueCrypt fork, but the Truecrypt source code has really specific requirements for the object they can store on a smartcard (buggy requirements if you ask me) and as such it's not possible to use the Yubico as a physical decryption key for encrypted volume. Does anybody have a suggestion for an other working solution ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Just got some of these to secure ssh login to our infrastructure. Work great but be prepared for a bit of a hassle especially if you've never used anything like a smart card before. Finding simple answers to how to use as an rsa smart card device for ssh took a few hours and getting it into the right mode took some obscure commands.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like you got some nice material for a blog post about the subject?

<comment><USER17> I might put one together, but I shouldn't need to. Yubico should have a docs for common use cases like this. Great product but terrible web site and terrible "enterprise" UIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thanks but no, google auth can be installed on any mobile device. Why bother with some "keys"

<comment><USER20> If you have to get an OTP multiple times a day—say to ssh into a prod server—you quickly learn how laborious it is having to take your phone out of your pocket, unlock it, find the Google auth app, find which OTP you're looking for then finally transcribe it without any errors. Pressing a key combo/tapping the yubikey (depends on the model you have and its settings) is _much_ faster.

To me, not having a yubikey would be like not being able to use cmd-C/V to copy/paste and having to use the system menu every time instead.

<comment><USER21> The 2FA interaction from Duo is superior here.

<comment><USER22> Are you referring to Duo Push, or something more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happens if you lose or break this thing and you have it configured on lastpass or google login?

<comment><USER24> You can associate multiple U2F keys with a Google account. Since the Yubico's U2F key is really cheap (I think ours were ~15 Euro a pop), it doesn't hurt to associate another key and put it in a safe somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My biggest issue with YubiKey is I have to be mindful when picking up my laptop or else I eidlioustrioutnasdillkaoei all over the place.

<comment><USER26> I am going to go out on a limb and guess you have a YubiKey Nano?

I have one vltjjenelhnhhkvrnft also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't see a good way to use this with an iOS device and 1Password...

<comment><USER28> The have a NFC version. I wish Apple would be on board...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This looks interesting, but I don't totally understand how it works. How is the key changed every time on the server? It looks like it requires server side support.

<comment><USER30> I have a few of their basic model keys. They have implemented OATH-HOTP as well as their own OTP scheme and HMAC-SHA1 challenge-response. You can also embed a static password. The keys have two slots and both of them can be used for any of the supported schemes.

They have some fancier keys that support a 'universal 2 factor' standard which I think they may have had a hand in creating.

I've used mine in OATH-HOTP and HMAC-SHA1 along with KeePass to do two-factor on my password db. You do need a server-side or peer component to initially sync with to do OTP or challenge-response.

<comment><USER31> The new U2F protocol removes the need to have a central authentication server - the authentication process is just between the U2F device and the authenticating service. For more details, you can see: [https://developers.yubico.com/U2F/](https://developers.yubico.com/U2F/)</comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank launches $100m minorities startup fund - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank-group-investments/softbank-launches-100-million-fund-investing-in-people-of-color-idUSKBN23A1RK <comment><USER2> Class is a problem, but the class issue isn't "poor Black kids from broken homes" (to quote some comments here) vs upper middle class FAANG employees and MIT grads. Being poor and uneducated is a barrier to being an employee in tech, but it's not the only barrier to getting funding. Anyone that can leetcode can get a job in tech. Raising requires a strong network, involves quite a lot of signaling and bias and gut feeling.

You have to be rich for class to be a major advantage when starting a startup, middle class isn't enough unless you're willing to expose yourself to a lot of personal risk. For various reasons middle class Black people with the skills to start a startup are more risk averse than white counterparts. For other reasons those same Black people get less funding than counterparts of other races.

I say this as a Black engineer from a middle class background that has been a founder, worked at FAANG and personally knows many Black founders that tried to bootstrap and failed to raise, even with strong pitches and profitable products. It's possible that these companies are fundamentally worse than all white founded companies that raise, but I rarely see Black people given a chance to fail. Class is not the only issue and it's not the main barrier for most Black people.

<comment><USER3> A lot of investors aren't actually interested in profitable products. Companies get over funded to the point where it is impossible to make a return by simply offering a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > SoftBank also runs the $100 billion Vision Fund, which is headed by Rajeev > Misra and invests amounts larger than the entire new fund in startups around > the world.

Neither Rajeev Misra nor Masayoshi Son sound like "white" names. I find it fascinating how Asians in general are excluded from the term "people of color".

<comment><USER5> Asians do not have a historical baggage in USA. Do they face similar racism/bias in general (ignore temporary surge like now by Corona)?

<comment><USER6> You'd be surprised at how wrong that is.

Asians used to face a lot of discrimination in the US and very institutionalized one, not just of the "making fun of them by calling them Ching Chong" variety. There is a long and storied history, but it is never brought up because it provides some rather uncomfortable cognitive dissonances when trying to explain how Asian-Americans today are so much better off but other discriminated-against groups aren't. So you see the common trope where Asian-Americans and Indian-Americans are just passed over when talking about historical injustices because they don't fit the narrative.

The link below has a full history but, one of many points—

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years. The "Chinese Must Go" movement was so strong that Chinese immigration to the United States declined from 39,500 in 1882 to only 10 in 1887.

[https://asiasociety.org/education/asian-americans-then- and-n...](https://asiasociety.org/education/asian-americans-then-and-now)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Limiting initiatives like this based on skin color, implies that the reason for them needing help is their skin color. What about white people that come from low-socioeconomic backgrounds? Broken families? Didn't finish high- school? Abused as a child/teenager? Single parent family? Aren't these the real reasons why people are disadvantaged? People of all colors come from these backgrounds.

I'm sick of the hypocrisy of people saying "Black people aren't more likely/less likely to x, it's their education/family/etc. that affects them" ... and then immediately turning around and giving help to people based on their skin color, rather than these other traits.

EDIT: What about somebody who is black, and comes from (yes, one of the rare unfortunately) a rich family or well off family? While not a majority, many POC work for FAANG companies. Are they eligible for this money purely because of their skin color, but disadvantaged people of any color are not?

<comment><USER8> That's a valid stance. But reflect on why it matters to you. So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their skin color, or their gender? There are plenty of special opportunities to go around for all of us.

I think you'll get a lot of flak for this sentiment. But I used to feel the same way as you. What helped me change my mind was to realize that no one is taking away opportunities from me by giving them to someone else. "Opportunity" isn't a fixed pie. If we believe that wealth isn't a fixed pie, why not apply that same logic to opportunities and initiatives like this? It's worth thinking about, and deeply reflecting on.

And, you know, if someone was giving out special opportunities to certain people while denying them to us, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Parents have been doing that for their own children since people were people. It's their money; they can put it toward whatever causes they want.

<comment><USER9> > So what if someone is giving special opportunities to someone based on their > skin color, or their gender?

Because it's racist.

<comment><USER10> Say there was a disease that predominantly affected a given race. Would you then object to a health system producing a tailored response to that group based on group characteristics?

e.g. [https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi- genet...](https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genetic- diseases/)

<comment><USER7> Of course not, if race was proven to be the actual underlying factor. The point in the OP was that the underlying cause is not race, but other group traits (low socio-economic status, poor family background) - which people of all races can and do possess.

<comment><USER10> I'm not replying to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious, how are all these initiatives defining who is eligible? Are half black people permitted? 1/4?

</comment><comment><USER12> Based on past threads, I think that a majority of HN views startup funding as competitive, and acknowledges the risks from a lack of funding - some from first hand experience, and that adversity is not evenly distributed among non- minorities, and that for technology product adoption nobody looks at the team just the usefulness, so anything other than a level playing field will be frowned upon here.

I am an immigrant where I live, so i will take the liberty to ask:

\- Do the behaviors we have been seeing on television from law enforcement in the US extend to offline business relationships in the US in more subtle ways? For example would a minority with a new product be given a lower preference to demo their stuff at a technology meetup? Would they be passed up for a promotion at work because the boss preferred someone who looked like him?

\- Is there a systemic variation in the quality and accessability of human relationships for some groups? (vital for recruiting, selling, partnering, fund raising, launching, ecosystem and user community building). For example would it be harder to sign up beta users for an enterprise product?

Those are the core issues they could face, and they are very real in some places in the UK.

If this is a case, perhaps it is warranted or you will have capable people unable to contribute.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a good idea; it makes sense to test for opportunities to profit from racism and pick up high-value entrepreneurs of colour.

The HN title should be changed though, it says 'minorities' while the original article says 'people of colour'. I assumed it would be targeting Asians from the HN title.

</comment><comment><USER14> Japan is not known for having senses finely tuned to the shifting winds of American race relations.

<comment><USER15> Japan can issue a special Visa for Black Americans immigrate there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like it. Very clever. If there are founders out there who are capable but underserved sorely because they're not in the right social circles then this is a good attempt at capitalizing on that.

I love watching the market in action. Wonder if it will pay off.

<comment><USER17> Isn't YC this too? Anyone can apply. I don't get the impression it's about who you know.

<comment><USER16> Well, the theory is that they think YC's selection process drops capable people for whatever reason (insufficient room, poor selection criteria, etc.). It's definitely worth a tiny bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Heh is there a better canary to do a 180 and run away than SoftBank investing in something?

</comment><comment><USER19> I hope the venture fails. It's just racism under another name.

<comment><USER5> A person snatched stick of a blind man and threw it, another helped him cross the street. Both treated him differently because he was blind. Only one of them was asshole.

<comment><USER6> Try this argument the next time someone calls you racist for assuming all Asians are good at Math.

Maybe the blind guy did not want to be patronizingly helped with crossing the road. Maybe he would have asked for help if needed it and could have done without a sighted knight.

If these arguments sound perverse just swap out some other 'issue' and they will start sounding familiar.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure I understand your counterpoint analogy. Regardless, I take issue with your second statement on the blind person asking for help if needed. Minorities do ask for help, I think it's disingenuous to imply that minorities have never requested assistance in being treated more like the majority. I think many times we push responsibility for achieving equality onto those who are treated unequally, the old 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'. Martin Luther King Jr: "it's a nice thing to say to people that you oughta lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he oughta lift himself by his own bootstraps."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How about $100m in the pockets of impoverished people who actually need it, regardless of race/skin color? :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Why jornalists write "minorities" and not "Black and Latino"? This is what they are doing, they are promoting two ethnicities. Even more, when White America is becoming a minority in many places in the US and soon in all the US.

</comment><comment><USER22> The CEO of Softbank is an ethnic korean that grew up in a largely racist country (Japan).

</comment><comment><USER23> Trying to launder their reputation by using minorities as an excuse, shameful and transparent

<comment><USER24> These past few months have been endless blunders and bad news for SoftBank. They're definitely not putting $100 million into a goodwill and equality fund. They're putting 100 million into PR and advertising with the benefit of getting some returns.

But companies do this because they know it works, so I guess I can't say it's a dumb financial move.

<comment><USER25> > with the benefit of getting some returns.

I've never understood this argument in the context of investing. If there was an opportunity to get outsized returns by investing in the people this targets, then investors would already be going after these opportunities, motivated by the returns alone. They wouldn't even need the social signaling aspect of announcing a fund like this. If anything, they'd probably keep such details of these good deals to themselves to avoid having too much money chase after such deals and raise the price of the deals and make their investing terms worse.

<comment><USER24> If maximum returns meant picking people based on race, they'd do it. If it doesn't, they'll announce that they're picking people based on race as a good- will move. They're probably not burning money with this decision, but they'd probably make more if they picked based on some other metric. The PR is the important thing here, which is why they're making a point of announcing it to the world.

<comment><USER25> Yeah. I wasn't disputing what you're saying. I'm just disputing the point I was replying to where they talked about getting returns.

That thesis makes sense in some markets such as lifestyle products and services catering to a market segment. Fashion and entertainment are a perfect examples.

In the context of technology however, there's nothing about building the next platform as a service for example that would lend itself to be more successful if it were built by a specific demographic. If that were the case, investors would already be chasing those opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a cute little gesture, but it is ultimately bound to fail.

The root cause of the problem of poverty for minorities, is far beyond the scope that this idea can even solve.

We effectively need a reset in our capitalistic system.

For far too long, we have used GDP as the measure of wealth of a country. But we now live in a world, where money essentially has no bounds to reality anymore. It is tied to nothing, but it is the driver of everything.

The Fed and other central banks, are used to print money out of thin air, and give it to banks, to lend out, or to buy back loans from corporations.

People blindly believe that this will not cause inflation, but instead, it drives up asset inflation, which drives up the cost of everything else. This is the hidden inflation, that takes money out of your pocket, and is beyond your control.

This is where the government needs to step in and put in policies to protect the people.

Instead of GDP, we need to measure QOL, or the Quality of Life.

This is the measure of how well the median person's quality of life is, in terms of how much they earn, and how much their rent and mortgage is. As well as other factors like, access to modern basic necessities: electricity, shelter, clothing, healthcare, transportation, communication, and food.

No person, should be required to spend over 50% of their income on housing. There is just no money left over afterwards to pay for anything else. You will forever be, bound to a life of poverty and destitution, as well as your children.

Additionally, we need to remove housing as an investment vehicle. Instead of creating wealth for all, this has become the driver of massive inequality.

Housing needs to be for people to live in, and not for speculation. The government should mandate the building of more housing, to increase availability, and to drive down costs. And people should be able to afford and own their own homes. And maybe to kickstart a post-industrial society, the government should back the mortgage, where you just need to work a meaningful job in society, for 20 years, and the house is yours. The government will pick up the remaining tab on the house afterwards.

This will give you a home, and the security you need to be safe and whole. You can raise your family and your children, without the fear of poverty, or crime, or a lifetime servitude of debt.

And for things like food, the vegetables and fruits, can be grown in massive automated vertical farms. And one day, tended to by robots, for monitoring and harvesting. No more need for back breaking labor performed by humans. Let the robots do all the work. The software for it will be developed by programmers, and the fruits and vegetables will be monitored by using adaptive machine learning software.

These are bold challenges, and we need bold leaders to think beyond their myopic economic view of the world, where they only think of enriching themselves and their cronies, and actually do their job to govern, and to lead and guide the people.</comment>


Keep Your Identity Small (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html <comment><USER2> > "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise > for expressing an opinion."

I agree that this is how people tend to see it. But it isn't really true. Like JavaScript or auto mechanics or animal husbandry, there is indeed a threshold of expertise for expressing a _meaningful_ opinion.

The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. This is true even if they subscribe to political ideals diametrically opposed to your own.

Personally speaking, this is why I have been so sad about the political discussion on HN since SOPA and Snowden. I thought it might be one of those rare forums where empirical facts and "evidence-based" thinking prevailed -- but it really hasn't. People still seem mostly trapped in their private little jihads, just like they are in the youtube comments section.

To me that's disappointing because government is something so fundamentally amenable to hacking, and the stakes are so incredibly high. The state of the art is so so sad and primitive, with so much low-hanging fruit. (The state of the art in governance, that is, at least if you accept at face value the objective of representing the interests of the electorate; the state of the art of getting elected is actually incredibly advanced, but rarely publicly talked about in earnest.)

<comment><USER3> > The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much > directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and > their command of objective facts.

I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the political and legal experts would love everyone to accept).

Concrete counter-examples to your claim:

1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?

2) Did poorly educated blacks or women need training in the subtleties of constitutional law before they could have a valid opinion on universal suffrage?

Politics, by its nature, shoves itself in everyone's face. Thus everyone has a legitimate basis on which to argue about how they are to be governed, even if they are ignorant of the details of the governance mechanism.

<comment><USER4> Counters to your counters:

> _1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a > valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?_

No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinion is, therefore, at the entry-level of understanding United States marriage laws.

> _2)Did poorly educated blacks or women need training in the subtleties of > constitutional law before they could have a valid opinion on universal > suffrage?_

Depends on what you mean by "training" \- they need to understand what suffrage _is_ , so in that sense, yes, they do need training. This is the threshold for having a valid opinion.

Here are concrete counter-examples to your counter-examples:

1) If a gay couple were asked if they wanted the right to be married without first being told the sociological context and culture of marriage in the United States, and without understanding the legal ramifications of being married, their opinion would be null and void - just noise. They don't know what they're agreeing/disagreeing with.

2) If you asked women if they'd like the ability to vote, and they said yes, but couldn't answer you when you asked them what a democratic republic is, or how representation works in the United States, their opinions would be meaningless. It would be equivalent to pathos-driven desire to be able to do _something_ \- ultimately, a useless opinion.

Understand - I'm not being pedantic. Your examples may show a somewhat _low_ threshold for meaningful opinions, but the parent is correct in that you need some threshold for every opinion.

<comment><USER3> I was tempted not to reply because I think we're just arguing over the many possible definitions of the word "valid", and that can quickly become uninteresting. Here's a stab at not being too much of a hair-splitter.

In a nutshell, it sounds like your definition of "valid" (and parent's) refer to some frame of objectively true facts and a commonly accepted value system. I agree that one would have to take such a definition in order to find _intellectual_ value in a person's opinions on political matters.

My definition of validity (in the context of the previous comment) has to do with recognizing subjective individual value systems that must occasionally be trampled upon in order to have a functioning state. By their nature, political institutions touch your life whether you want them to do so or not.

So my view is that all people affected by a political institution have _valid_ opinions on the actions of said institution, even if those opinions are not particularly well informed or even logical. If an institution forces something into (or out of) your life, I take the position that you have a valid voice with which to support or oppose that action, even if I might find that support or opposition to be unpersuasive from a logical or evidentiary frame of reference.

To close the loop of example/counter-example, I think your two counter- counter-examples demonstrate opinions of low _intellectual_ validity, as they do not stem from a body of knowledge. However, I think they are fully _politically_ valid, because I don't see any way to have a politically legitimate institution while invalidating the opinions of those whose individual values are violated by its actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was mentioned in the thread:

"HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot"

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485))

It makes for an interesting read concerning speculation as to why HN is becoming less and less technical over time, and more about politics.

Technical issues and articles take time to read, digest, and understand. It takes a minimum level of expertise to be able to comment usefully on technical issues, so by the time a technical submission has been read properly, it's too late for it to reach the HN front page.

An interesting dilemma.

<comment><USER5> Definitely interesting. I'd say if we want to actively fight the entropy of the social news mechanic (ie. the feedback loop of popularity winning and slight dumbing down of anything increasing popularity), then perhaps we should glance quickly at an article and then jump back and upvote it based a snap judgement of its technical depth.

Of course we run the risk of upvoting well-dressed crackpot nonsense, but that's probably a lesser risk than becoming reddit.

<comment><USER6> I don't know if you guys proceed the same as me, but I merely open a tenth of links on home or new page.

Actually, when doing so, you can consider any opened link deserves an upvote, provided that at first glance, it is what the link title promised : it attracted your attention so may attract other people.

Nevermind if the point made in the linked article you upvoted is valid or not after a detailed review, the subject is interesting and may lead to interesting discussions - and top comments will instantly warn if the point is not valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When going slightly against common sense, people tend to randomly add Chinese quotes, usually from Lao-tzu, and it is almost always a bad idea. But here this text is vibrating strongly with one of the core idea of daoism, it is impressive.

It could be found more closely in Zhuangzi or even Lizi. These guys were living in a time when many have been killed for their ideas, and many had strong beliefs. Their solution for survival was to be an empty vase, a useless tool.

A good example is the tree: a straight trunk is the sure path to death for a pine tree, while if you are twisted in a way that makes you useless you survive much longer.

There is also this empty boat story. If a big vessel sees a small boat in her way the captain will shout at the small boat, but let the small boat be empty and the captain will just move around.

Daoism is all about being this empty boat. And it is it's limits: society also need people with strong belief and ready to die for them.

Just take slavery; it is a moral belief and duty to be against slavery. Even if by some rational reasoning slavery was proven a better solution than freedom, we would still have to stand against it, and some have died for this moral belief.

So I think I cannot fully agree here.

Edit: Or to be more precise, there is a limit to the reduction of one's identity. Maybe this limit is just that common identity we all share: humanity.

<comment><USER8> Great comment.

I'm not particularly gung ho about humanity as identity. That concept has very often been used as a carrier of more or less conscious prejudices and ideals.

Some philosophers (Agamben among others) make the case that humanity traditionally defines itself as the animal which goes beyond animality. This means that humanity is not a simple essence, but a process of separation and an attempt at transcendence. Which is obviously kind of messy and complex.

Plus, what's the reason to identify as human rather than mammal, animal, or simply life?

<comment><USER7> Yes, this differentiation between humans and other animal is kind of axiomatic here, but I fear that if you remove it the consequences are too dangerous. I believe that exploiting crops or cows in a field, and killing them, is morally acceptable, while exploiting fellow humans in a factory is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keeping your identity 'small' is really easy when you're rich and don't need to team up to effect change.

Identities are what form motivated groups, and groups -- or parties -- are, for better or for worse, what our form of democracy runs on.

Rich dudes can keep small identities and still make shit happen; poor everyone-else has to form teams, and with a diversity of levels of education, talent, intelligence and common sense, that will invariably mean pandering and WOOOOing a bit. Why? Because not everyone is smart enough to be affected by rhetoric. Ex hypothesis everyone else has already been 'taken', i.e. has considered opinions, so by elimination it's the aggressive, passionate idiots who play kingmaker. Thus explaining US politics.

So, Paul Graham, keep your identity small, but please enlarge your perspective. People are getting irrational because they're getting riled up, and they're getting riled up because riling-up is what gets the Irrational Vote, and that's the only one that's not already either bought or reasoned into passivity.

It's game theory, in other words. Like most human suffering.

<comment><USER10> Forget about politics. Forget about rich people. Most change comes from artists and science/technology folk.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like pg's theory here, it's definitely something I try to live by (keeping my identity small), but I think he missed a key observation:

Religion (perhaps moreso historically) and especially politics are mine fields because there are so many inputs and so many outputs. That is to say almost any policy decision will affect a lot of people in a lot of different ways. He touches on this by discussing vague and definite questions, but he doesn't really explore that avenue.

For instance, consider the evaluation of how much a government program is going to cost. It doesn't matter how precisely you can answer that question because it just leads directly to other questions such as where the money will come from and what the results of the program will be. Even if the follow up questions are precise as well, they bloom out into innumerable consequences far and wide. It's not just that the bar of having an opinion is low, it's because these decisions _actually_ affect all these people, and all in different ways. The fact that they may not have the expertise or knowledge to know the true affects and are easily manipulated by identity-appealing propaganda just exacerbates the problem, but it's not the root cause.

The more fundamental problem is that politics is a direct view into the massively interdependent organic ecosystem of large-scale human society. Even if you are the foremost expert on the implications of some political issue and your facts are indisputable, people will still (with good reason) disagree on the merits of those indisputable implications.

<comment><USER11> >It's not just that the bar of having an opinion is low, it's because these decisions actually affect all these people, and all in different ways. The fact that they may not have the expertise or knowledge to know the true affects and are easily manipulated by identity-appealing propaganda just exacerbates the problem, but it's not the root cause.

You make it sound like people end up voting to protect their own interests. A lot of studies show this is frequently not the case: Far more frequently they vote their _values_ , which ends up with a very different result. This is why the Republican "Family Values" theme has been so effective.

>Even if you are the foremost expert on the implications of some political issue and your facts are indisputable, people will still (with good reason) disagree on the merits of those indisputable implications.

George Lakoff talks about two major philosophies in the US that define the Liberal and Conservative movements, respectively. [1] I think he gets to the heart of the disagreement between these two sides, explaining why large groups of poor people, for instance, vote Republican despite this being against their own self interest (workplace safety, minimum wage, workers' rights, etc.).

That said, it seems sometimes that even indisputable facts (dangers of cigarette smoke, seriousness of lead poisoning, and more recently, anthropomorphic climate change and the proven failures of "trickle-down" economics) are frequently politicized such that people end up believing that there's still a debate among experts, and that all politicians are lying to support their own side. Propaganda at its best (or worst, I suppose).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_%28book%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_%28book%29) or [http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/elephant](http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/elephant)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think his 'theory' that discussions have more potential to be divisive when they involve our identity is dead on. His advice to 'keep your identity small', follows on from that premise well. Many people let their identity get polluted by what they do for a living to such an extent that they find it very difficult to cope when that is taken from them.

I have always been opinionated - I'm analytical and I enjoy forming opinions. Since moving to Europe, I have learned not to let political opinions become so ingrained that they become part of my identity. I have seen so many things done differently and still done well.

My question is this: Which things are worth being part of my identity? Values I esteem? Relationships I hold dear? Family roles? I think it is fair to say that belief (or disbelief) in God is a foundational human issue. If you are a believer, I think that belief demands something - it necessarily becomes part of your identity. I am a believer, so I don't know if same is true for non- believers.

<comment><USER13> _I am a believer, so I don 't know if same is true for non-believers._

Well, everyone is a non-believer in _something_ that others believe. Assuming you don't believe in, say, Isis, do you think that non-belief becomes part of your identity?

<comment><USER12> No. I realise that I over-simplified that part by highlighting only two opposites: belief and unbelief. I do realise there are degrees of distinction between belief in a deity and atheism, and there are polytheism and agnosticism as well.

I could have asked a question: for those who don't believe in god(s), is your Atheism a significant feature of your identity?

<comment><USER14> To answer that question: yes, but I wish it didn't have to be. The only reason atheism is a part of my identity at all is because it makes me a minority, and one that public opinion in the US ranks below even rapists[1]. If atheism were the norm and the religious were a minority, atheism would no longer have to be part of my identity, which I would greatly prefer.

[1] [http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2011-25187-001/](http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2011-25187-001/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > There may be some things it's a net win to include in your identity. For > example, being a scientist.

I know a lot of people who would consider this wrong, and I've noticed that sometimes, this is correct. I look at things from a scientific point of view, and because of this, I have a hard time understanding and empathizing with people with a religious background in discussion on religion.

I think it would be wrong of us to consider science as a concept above the scrutiny we eagerly apply to religion and politics in this article. Who says us scientists can't be wrong on an important level about certain things?

<comment><USER16> I think you're missing the point here. pg's saying the scientist identity is useful here, not because of science, but because it reminds you not to take any other identities.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Moreover, relativism has its limits, science and religion cannot be said equal before scepticism: if you have doubts about a theory or some experimental results you can and should investigate their truth. While it is not possible to falsify religious beliefs, or most political views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> First: notice how we are all expressing our opinions :)

 _I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people 's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan._

(NOTE: I'm not rigorously defining the word "governance" in this response, I can expand on my meaning further if people are interested)

Paul Graham is on to something in this essay. I think, however, that Carl Jung pinpointed the exact mechanism with far more accuracy.

Politics and Religion (for many people) in Jung's system of thought are often vehicles of "transferance", or, the transferring of one's spiritual principle or governance principle to a receiver (a priest, or politician, or guru) because people's psyche's are largely unconscious and rarely question or examine their own identity (consciousness, although Jung has a much deeper definition of identity). People "transfer" to the closest external match for that which their unsconscious wishes to have integrated.

Paul's statement about it being a part of their identity is inaccurate because it's actually the opposite. If the person in question were _not_ transferring their spiritual principle it would actually be an integrated peice of their identity and consciousness. There would no longer be an imperative to defend the vehicle that carries such an important peice of their "self". As people integrate more of their transfers and projections they have less and less need to justify their existence because that existence is self-contained rather than fragmented.

Understanding that the spiritual and governance principles within the psyche are actually subjective and not objective experiences is a sign of someone that has _truly identified_ those components. I say "truly identified" not because truth is defined by an authority or natural principle but because the person has identified the truth of it in relationship to their own non- physical (mental/psychological) experience.

<comment><USER18> I think pg is using the word identity differently than you (or Jung) here. He doesn't attempt to explain the source of the "strong convictions" that drive political or religious beliefs. He simply observes the connection between the case where people think of themselves as a certain type of person and consequently will defend the associated beliefs regardless of evidence.

So there's something about peoples minds that makes it costly for them to accept certain facts. For a long time now, professing a certain belief with conviction has been a way of associating yourself with a certain group has had and continues to have direct implications on a person's physical well-being. Given acting is hard and cognitive-dissonance is nasty, actually adopting the belief makes sense.

A more precise way express the essay's thrust might be "don't get attached to your beliefs."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Your opinion on politics reveals how you think, which is why people tend to be defensive of their opinions: They don't know any better -- anything that directly challenges how they perceive the world is too threatening to be the subject of a rational conversation. If you talk to someone on a similar wavelength who has similar experiences, you can probably have a meaningful conversation. In this case, politics is like music: Not everyone has the same taste or understands/appreciates the same things, so it's hard to explain the virtues of Radiohead to someone who only gets a buzz from the best classical or, forgive my elitism, someone who can't see past Lil Wayne. It's hard for polar opposites to hold meaningful conversations for the same reason it's hard for a super smart person to hold a stimulating conversation with an idiot, or for an old person to do the same with a young person (they're effectively from different worlds). People on significantly different areas of the spectrum perceive the world very differently and have dramatically different experiences to draw on.

</comment><comment><USER20> > A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same > way a bibilical literalist is committed to rejecting it. All he's committed > to is following the evidence wherever it leads.

At the risk of responding out of identity, but also with the hope of contributing constructively despite having some identity at stake:

A literal interpretation of the bible doesn't preclude accepting natural selection as an ongoing, observable process. It may reject that process as the explanation of our species' origins. Those two are often conflated, contributing to the identity-driven, emotion-filled discussion that PG describes.

Regarding the main premise of the article, I think it's possible to have rational, logical discussions about topics in which identity is involved. They are more challenging than, say, discussing Javascript. But I don't think those discussions work well on the internet. They require trust (that both parties will be heard in good faith) careful check of emotions, motivations, and reasoning. Those are even more challenging without high-bandwidth communication aids like facial expressions and tone of voice.

<comment><USER21> It's quite possible to see flamewars when discussing javascript, e.g. ember vs angular, OO-style or functional, etc. Or the classic emacs vs vim. So I don't think argumentativeness is exclusive to politics and religion by any means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Should this "identity" definition also include possible (conscious) vested interests in the subjects of these discussions? E.g. when people defend various corporations against their better knowledge, simply because they own a few shares or their business depends on them. I suspect this to be the case frequently when, for example, Google's wrongdoings lead to heated discussions here on HN and elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER23> Good essay - as all PG's are.

One critique - a scientist's identity can be in science itself (or its latest set of widely-held beliefs), which itself can also result in a essentially political/religious response wrapped up in scientific garb. I am thinking of periods of time leading up to a paradigm shift where there can be significant resistance to "where the facts lead" by those invested in defending the status quo ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions)).

Certainly, this not the same situation as a purely political or religious issue. It is worth noting though, since everyone works off of a basic set of assumptions that are not provable. Each person has a philosophy - a practical "religion" or "political party" regardless of whether they are officially associated with any public entity or institution.

</comment><comment><USER24> In terms of being rational, identity is just a kind of bias (among many) that needs to be removed.

I think a slightly more accurate generalization of PG's point is that many beliefs and belief systems permit learning (changing the belief) in the face of new evidence or perspective.

The things we most often consider "identity" oriented beliefs are the things that people are unable or unwilling to question (or to consider that they might be wrong about).

So a good way to find you own rationality limiting beliefs is to ask "What am I certain about?".

Politics attempts to solve the coordination problems around use of force, coercion, bribery, money, and infrastructure.

Identity is simply a useful way to rally voters for a political cause, which is why it's used by political and religious charlatans alike.

</comment><comment><USER25> Seems Paul "rediscovered" what Buddhism teaches us: You need to loose your ego to achieve Nirvana. With the difference that the Buddhists also tell you a method for going about this... :)

<comment><USER26> Heh, don't you see? By identifying as a Buddhist and classifying a particular bit of wisdom as "belonging" to that religion you are falling into exactly the trap that he described. I grew up in the Buddhist community and ironically the greatest trap that Buddhists fall into is pride. Similar to the technology community ;)

<comment><USER25> Interesting assumption of yours - where in my post did I identify [myself] as a Buddhist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminded me of point #2 of a comment I just read [1] on mistakes journalists make:

> "Mention every possible debate on the subject, without attempting to either > offer a conclusion or a new set of arguments for any of them."

Keeping your identity small may prevent you from participating in certain arguments but it doesn't make for a good story. I'd rather hear a spirited debate between proponents of radically different ideas than bland statements that scrupulously avoid engaging anyone's identy.

The more I think about it the more ridiculous it sounds to exclude things from one's identity. An exclusive identity is not any smaller than an inclusive one --it's just identified by its exclusions. Identity is who you are and thus can be no larger or smaller than the whole of you.

I think the real argument here is one for skepticism as can been seen in the second footnote:

> "A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same > way a bibilical literalist is committed to rejecting it."

Really?? First, I don't think biblical literalism requires a rejection of natural selection (unless that's shorthand for a naturalistic origin of life). Secondly, this statement itself seems like a religious argument in the sense that it implies scientists are somehow more detached and objective than biblical literalists.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171593)

<comment><USER27> From context it's clear that by "scientist" pg means an idealized scientist, i.e. a disinterested empiricist. Actual scientists are fallible humans who may indeed get caught up by identity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Where politics really differs from JavaScript is that we are taught from a young age that it is _important_ to hold strong opinions about it even if we know nothing about it. Flaunting one's ignorance is celebrated as civic engagement. Hell, when politics comes up at holiday dinners, my family gets more worked up if I recuse myself from discussion than if I say something that violates their most cherished beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER29> This also applies to professional growth. People often have a hard time receiving negative feedback because they experience it as an attack on their identity/ego rather than as an opportunity to learn.

The ability to take feedback constructively is probably one of the most important traits to hire for.

</comment><comment><USER30> Evolutionary history probably plays a role here. Science has given evidence that our faculties of reason are probably meant to persuade and not to reason about the world in an abstract manner. We probably evolved in hunter-gatherer tribes of 150-200 people where voice counted for a lot. You can influence by arguing within a group that small. And losing an argument could mean expulsion from the group leading to a low-chance of survival.

The problem is that this simply doesn't scale. Arguing political questions feels as real to us as it did to our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose lives literally depended on it. But this is just not the case in polities of a few hundred million. Hence it's likely beneficial to reduce political bickering for those not involved with politics.

</comment><comment><USER31> Some observation on HN these days: Many threads about PERL vs Python ... etc, .Net, Java, or whatever programming languages some people really hates are just moving towards polarizations as religion/politics discussions.

</comment><comment><USER32> In my opinion, he describes a basic mechanism of survival for cultures. Cultures that inspire such defensive "inability to think clearly" about the subject have increased survivability (social propagability).

But in order to survive, cultures must also change over time. I see the mechanism for this change as the individual's improvement of the culture for oneself, and then attempting to propagate it to insiders and outsiders. Triggers of this modification include conflicting experience, either direct or indirect via dialogue/argumentation with others.

</comment><comment><USER33> Both discussions are fine way to learn. You always learn, even from stack full of "meaningless" comments. Either you accept it or nor, makes no difference, you have learned something.

Learned to not read comments or proceed reading and absorbing other people expressions that you adopt/use willingly/unknowingly.

To decide importance, scale, seriousness or whatnot of discussion, it is up to individual and for his needs.

Some are more defensive of set value and want to preserve idea. Some give up ideas to change perspective and understanding regularly. Diversity makes it all interesting.

</comment><comment><USER34> Matters of Fact, vs. Matters of Opinions. I cannot recall which of Socrates' discourses goes into this in detail (I think Symposium), but it was a nice read. It makes you really stop and evaluate whether there is a point in having an argument or not, because when things are matter of opinions you may as well just accept and respect what the other party says.

</comment><comment><USER35> A related idea is expressed by philosopher and mystic Paul Brunton's motto:

        Study everything, join nothing.

Discussed here by Bill Vallicella:

[http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/...](http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2011/09/study- everything-join-nothing.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> I really loved the article, but would go furthermore and say like Mooji find out what you really are, ask the question who is I behind a thought based identity. More on yt:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_q6gZkoceg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_q6gZkoceg)

</comment><comment><USER37> So this raises the question: "How do you coax someone into questioning their own identity, or perhaps questioning whether they should consider themselves an x?"

</comment><comment><USER38> Can you achieve greatness without passion? Can you feel passionate about a topic without it creeping into your identity?

I don't claim to know the answers.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't feel the need to add anything to a discussion on an old article, except to say that it was very elegantly and succinctly written.

</comment><comment><USER40> I haven't seen any forum topic about politics escalate as quickly as one with religious discussions...

</comment><comment><USER41> Among my drinking buddies we have one inviolable and long standing rule:

 _No discussions of religion or politics_

</comment><comment><USER42> Hmmmm. I agree that you shouldn't identify with notions and ideas and labels, because that's just dumb and putting the cart before the horse. But generally, and ignoring the sensibilities of HN? No to most of that.

I started to care about politics since I saw corpses being shoved into a mass grave with a caterpillar while switching TV channels when I was a kid, and it hasn't let up since. Why should it? Politics by definition affects everyone, in ways that actually matter. Just take the web; it matters because it allows people to communicate, the people make it matter. Even more so with politics, which doesn't just affect everybody, everybody owns an equal share of it. Most people let theirs rot, but they still own it, and if the circus around it has been made that complex and hidden among many bloated layers of euphemisms and misdirection, to encourage apathy and and facilitate deception, then those layers need to be removed, instead of removing the "uneducated" from the debate. If a simple but adult mind can't understand it, something is fishy. Politics really isn't that complex as some people would love to make it out to be, or at the very least, sophistry is not complexity, and this makes for a huge chunk of political debate and opinions. As Chomsky said in some talk or other.. when he talks with intellectuals they have a hard time understanding even the most basic stuff, while some peasants in South America for example get it right away. I guess their being on the receiving end of it, instead of trying to rationalize the bloodshed their own gloved hand is doling out (or the hand of the uncle in whose lap they're sitting), helps.

Also, it reminds me of this quote:

 _The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn._

\-- Sophie Scholl

Safe from what, indeed? From being incorrect? From being inefficient? From raised blood pressure? Why not try to be safe from standing for nothing? I don't mean to be polemic but I truly don't get it. What is a "useful conversation"? Useful for what, exactly? Talking about Javascript is terribly useless when it comes to being a decent person. Talking about being a decent person is terribly useless for debugging Javascript. If it has no potential to make anyone sad, angry or happy, it's likely a gimmick in the bigger scheme of things. Which is fine for HN I guess, but not for general advice on what kind of person one should be. Thanks, but no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER43> Good analysis!

<comment><USER44> It's philosophy, not fact. Take it with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> He's right that people think they can have an opinion on politics or religion without actually knowing anything, but this is something they are taught to believe in school and church. It's a result of widespread poor upbringing and education, it's not an issue of "keeping your identity small".</comment>


What if Elon Musk went to Harvard? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/what-if-elon-musk-went-to-harvard-4f8433e8f456 <comment><USER2> Although I don't know if the Harvard connection matters, I thought this was an interesting idea:

Perhaps there is some intrinsic value of innovation and creativity that we can laud as being more valuable than creating the newest financial mousetrap and the compensation that comes with it.</comment>


Tradey – Find and follow stock market traders with a proven track record - <AUTHOR> https://tradey.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm slow-rolling my new application. Please let me know if you have any feedback, feature requests, likes, and dislikes. Regards, @philiprferreira</comment>


Ask HN: Revenue possibility from Chatbots - <AUTHOR> Let me start this on very simple note which is - there is no defined way to make money out of anything new (Chatbots are relatively new space), so the only thing is to try and experiment with couple of good ideas on making money from Chatbots.
Advertisement is obviously not the only way of earning money in the chat bot space. There are multiple other ways like — affiliate marketing, cross-selling, up-selling, etc. I believe that these channels too will help developers sustain their development efforts and build great products on chat bots.
I have few things in my mind which I would like to share on how Chatbots will help serving the needs of people and thereby making room for other services to loop in and charge for their services.
Just to give an idea, if a bot helps you on how to do your simple daily tasks like sending mails, then bot can also tell you that - hey, many other people are using this gmail service, would you like to use it?
So this way, it will behave like a personal opinion for end user which he might opt for, if information by Chatbot is good enough for him.
Now, you can think of more ideas on how to add more services to Chatbots which are not necessarily chat intensive initially (like simple tasks via account linking etc.) but will become chat intensive later on when bots could have personal opinions about the service/product when more people start using services on bots.
I would also like to mention that ChatterOn platform has started givings advertisement on messenger bots ,which might be a good start on monetization but certainly not future. <comment><USER2> The main goal that you have as a chatbot is maximizing your value to chat window real estate ratio.

One of the most popular bots I've written for my company just simply responds to `/officemap` with an image of that location's conference room map. Everytime someone uses it, the image fills at least a quarter of the chat window, which artificially shortens the lifespan of the messages at the top of the screen.

For that reason, I think I'd be very hesitant to pull in a chatbot that adds a single word more than the value I pulled it in for. I'd rather pay a subscription.

<comment><AUTHOR> But, chat window real estate ratio is a problem because the service which is map that you are using inside the bot does not fit the bot purpose adequately. Think, even human struggles to tell you the direction and to serve that, UI is definitely needed, so i think you are considering wrong use case or service inside the bot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think advertising is the best approach for digital monetization, because you don't have do invest a lot in customer relationship. I think chatbots will go through this route, too.

But most of the successful chatbots (initially) are going to be appendix of already successful apps/platforms, imo. And it is not going to be so big as people were thinking yesteryear.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason why initial bots are not successful because they were not better than apps out there and even worst when it comes to complete time to do the same thing.

So IMO, we all must have understood by now, that we were trying to fit wrong use case in chatbots, chatbots are mostly handy when it comes to interacting with user like google search does when next step is not known to a person, they just dig deep, and check out more possibilities and so on.

<comment><USER3> I don't use conversational bots. I find it stupidity to talk with a computer pretending that it is human. By the other hand, bots with commands (like !do- something or /do-something) I think works very well, since always (like the 90s in IRC). Just like a terminal, which is very productive (an UX very common among software developers but not common users).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right, it is many a times stupidity to talk to a bot, but again until we do not bring softwares in our natural form of talking/thinking, AI bots will not move forward, so we have to use other ecosystems to help bots grow like i mentioned integrating other common daily to daily services as mentioned in my article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Needs an "Ask HN: ".

<comment><USER3> And an "I" in place of "we". OP wants to discuss or advertise? Don't throw your product/company in the middle of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> done</comment></comment></comment>


Tor support in Facebook on Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-over-tor/adding-tor-support-on-android/814612545312134 <comment><USER2> When I realized just how much data Facebook collected on me I became too creeped out to continue using it. It wasn't even about trust. It was literally just too creepy.

Now you can access it when it's blocked and can't be easily tracked (supposedly) over the network, but you better believe the app is doing EVERYTHING it can to track you!</comment>


Blissful UI programming with ReactiveCocoa - <AUTHOR> http://venmo.github.io/blog/2014/05/20/ReactiveCocoa/

<comment><USER2> I've recently developed a renewed interest in iOS development particularly because of ReactiveCocoa. The idea of declaratively describing the intent of an action, rather than how it should work, has helped things "click" for me and I'm looking forward to using FRP and ReactiveCocoa in building a few personal iOS projects. I'm continuing to read more about it and this post was very helpful, thanks for sharing. I have a couple additional questions for any seasoned iOS / ReactiveCocoa / FRP devs that would definitely help me along as I progress:

1) Are there any performance gotchas or things to look out for when embracing ReactiveCocoa? One thing thats stuck with me as I read is making sure to understand and keep and eye on memory management, even after embracing ARC. Is debugging ReactiveCocoa code any different than the normal imperative way?

2) What parts of an app shouldn't be handled with FRP? Should everything fit into the framework or is a code smell to handle things both ways?

3) I'm a Ruby Dev and I'm looking hard at RubyMotion as a good toolchain for iOS Dev. It looks like ReactiveCocoa and Rubymotion can play well together[1], but is this a hack? Is there any issue with using Rubymotion and ReactiveCocoa together. Seems like a great fit, but perhaps my inexperience isn't aware of a deeper issue.

[1] [http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/06/18/reactivecocoa- rubymo...](http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/06/18/reactivecocoa-rubymotion/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not crazy about referencing self within the block to create changes. On OS X, NSObject supports keypath-to-keypath bindings, which can be processed with NSValueTransformer (a relic of the pre-blocks era, I suppose). Something like that, using blocks instead of value transformers would keep the processing functions pure (transformation functions, then) would be ideal, I think.

In the second part they do something like this, but the syntax is just strange to me, compared to: [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/reference/ApplicationKit/Protocols/NSKeyValueBindingCreation_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSObject/bind:toObject:withKeyPath:options):

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a friendly reminder that ReactiveCocoa is not FRP! For an explanation of Conal's conception of FRP, please see here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5875929/specification- for...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5875929/specification-for-a- functional-reactive-programming-language)

I use ReactiveCocoa very heavily at work, and find it very useful. Just want to avoid confusing the terminology with an existing concept which is well- defined and totally different.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of having unit tests with apps (maybe not full-on TDD but still). How would you create a unit test for something like this? Got any examples?</comment>


Welcome to Flush-Down Economics - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/philosophistry/welcome-to-flush-down-economics-f13fe1085f93 <comment><USER2> >> If you're using Zoom for free, if you have a free subscription to Disney+...

What shockingly bad examples to start with. Zoom, in particular — they're profitable, growing like crazy, and each marginal free plan user represents a trivial cost.

The rest of the piece isn't terrible, but what a strange way to kick it off.</comment>


Show HN: Crowdsourced kid activities for busy parents - <AUTHOR> https://kidalist.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built kidalist.com last week for people to submit, upvote, comment and bookmark resources for kid activities.

I am a parent and I saw so many suggestions on social and in publications all in list format. The lists were not user-friendly and about 90% of the resources were either super time consuming to set up and manage or low quality/not that fun or exciting.

Kidalist.com is an attempt to solve those problems and help busy parents find high quality activity suggestions for kids.

I'd appreciate your feedback and hope the website can be useful to your or anyone you know who has kids at home right now.

Thanks!</comment>


Android users finally buying paid apps, download numbers catching iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/47102/android-users-finally-buying-paid-apps <comment><USER2> This issue has never been about Android users being "conditioned" to pirate or whatever that flawed theory that sounded true said. The real issue was that Google only accepts Google Wallet payments, and the vast majority of users couldn't be bothered to make one just to buy some apps from the store. Now they are asking everyone in the beginning when they set-up their Android 4.0+ phone to make a Google Wallet account, and this should increase the number of users who will pay for apps.

In the past there was also the issue that paid apps weren't available in too many countries, but I think Google has largely solved the problem by now.</comment>