The culture of first world nations however, is completely fubar, has been since before all of us were born, and will probably continue to be long after we're all dead. (second and third world nations are also completely broken, but we expect that.)
It's the same kind of nonsense when people say "We've destroyed the planet!" No we haven't, we destroyed our own survivability in our own habitat, but the planet _is fine_, and will shake us all off some day without so much as a thought about it. The internet is equally indifferent and unaffected by our stupid capitalism problems.
So "second world" countries are those which are not quite stone-age savage, but are still noticably behind.
So an example of a "Second world" nation would be the United Kingdom, which enjoys many of the modern luxuries of the first world, and much of the social freedoms and progress, and yet still suffers under a completely irrational monarchy and lacks essential freedoms such as the right to self defense. As citizens of the United Kingdom are completely forbidden from keeping arms for the sole purpose of defense of self, family, and property, they are essentially servants of the state. Such a nation cannot then be justly described as "first world", as real first world nations such as the United States have enjoyed these additional freedoms for many generations now.
If my definition is not "official" then I apologize, nobody ever really explained the meaning of the phrases to me and my understanding is simply based on 3 decades of contextual usage. The implication is that there is a single path of progress which all nations are basically following. The first world is setting the example, and the rest are following our lead.
('that we still have such a long way to go is one of the reasons it's so amazing we haven't nuked ourselves to extinction yet :)')
Could you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this again?
Do we not have an _obligation_ as participants in this world society to speak up about horrors? Inaction leads to more suffering. If the discussion is only happening on HN, how can we justify our inaction to ourselves in the name of adhering to some arbitrary guidelines? "First they came for the..."
I understand why the guidelines exist. I even agree with them, mostly. However, I don't see the harm in tolerating necessary discussions about social awareness. This is where the adult conversations are happening. They aren't happening anywhere else. I am genuinely afraid of the social consequences of this policy.
Also, there is some confusion regarding where the violation occurs. Was it my original comment? Because I don't see a violation in my original comment. The comment you replied to was simply trying to clarify my statements for someone who asked for a clarification. Is clarification a violation? If so, this looks like "thought-crime" right? I would be grateful if you can clarify this for me.
Hacker News is just one kind of website, not every kind. To survive, it needs to stay focused on its mandate, the gratification of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We've learned a lot over the years about what serves that spirit vs. what kills it. Comments like what you've been posting are among the most toxic to it. I'm sure there are many other places where they'd be fine, but here they're off topic, and encourage worse.
People frequently want to use HN for other things, such as political and ideological battle, but that would soon kill the site. Are those matters important? Yes they are. But does a forum dedicated to other, less important things, also have a right to exist? I think it does.
In terms of the comment I replied to, you crossed into religious flamewar, national flamewar, and ideological battle, all of which are things we don't want here. For this kind of discussion, you need to find another website, or perhaps create one. There is room for many more communities online.
The current system of hell-banning repeat offenders doesn't actually prevent the savvier users from seeing their content. Instead of that, what if comments could be split into two sections, threads about social ramifications and similar humanitarian concerns, and threads about intellectual curiosities and technology specific discussions?
Users could opt-in/out of each type of conversation, perhaps the social threads could be opt-out by default.
I understand what the site is trying to do. I also understand that there aren't really "other websites", because as I said this is where the real adult conversations are happening. HN is the only legitimate major source of news on the planet today in 2018, thanks in no small part to community participation. Everywhere else is garbage news and flame-wars as you've stated. I don't think "flame-wars" are a product of having grown up conversations about important topics, they're a product of having a lot of non-grown-ups participating in grown-up conversations. The up/down voting system does a great job already of filtering worthwhile content, it should not also be necessary to censor people.
_this_ conversation is, in my humble opinion, extremely interesting. What is the social responsibility of a website like HN which starts small but grows into something much larger? Look at what happened with Facebook when they ignored their social responsibilities in favor of their preferred direction. That's a conversation which should probably be had. And if we're being honest, and let's be honest, the best way to have it would be an Ask HN, and you and I both know that'd be flagged right away. My concern is: history has repeatedly taught us the severe consequences of that.
This seems like one of those situations where everyone knows it's broken and everyone wants it to be better, but strict adherence to "regulations" prevents otherwise free-willed people from doing what they know should be done. And then after the inevitable tragedies that result, people look back in hindsight thinking "why were we such fools". Often in the form of hollywood dramatizations ;)
I appreciate you taking time to hear me out, anyway.