No. The topics reddit has focused on so far have generally been the topics hackers are interested in. That's why the Ron Paul stories stand out so much. I know a huge cross section of hackers of all different types, and Ron Paul doesn't figure anything near as large in their conversation as he does on reddit.
It would be easy to astroturf reddit. And I don't think even Ron Paul suppporters would deny that the campaign most likely to do it would be that of an outsider candidate whose supporters were renowned for their effective use of the Internet.
But you know, I am done talking about this. Whenever I even mention Ron Paul I end up wasting hours in arguments isomorphic to arguments with trolls. I'm not claiming Ron Paul supporters are trolls, just that trying to reason with fanatics tend to produce the same sort of threads as trying to reason with trolls.
The discussion on this thread is precisely why politics is off limits on news.yc. In this case it crept in through a point about the design of news aggregators. But politics is like floating point contagion. If you make a point that's even partly about politics, that's the part everyone will focus on,
and the discussion becomes a political one.
I'm curious what you would consider a "good" argument (not isomorphic with trolls) argument against your statements in this thread?
Perhaps I'm misreading, but many of your comments come off as essentially dismissing the Ron Paul phenomenon as the work of a handful of zealots. It's not surprising that his supporters disagree with that notion, as it implies that their efforts and views are not legitimate.
BTW, here is a video of Ron Paul with a bunch of hackers. The room was completely packed and overflowing into a second room (connected by video). Of course they aren't all RP supporters, but a large fraction are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCM_wQy4YVg
I'm curious what you would consider a "good" argument
A good reply is one that you can reply to by taking the discussion further, instead of having to re-explain what you said in the previous comment. The distinctive thing about conversations with both trolls and zealots is that you're always having to begin comments with "no, what I said was..."
I can see how you would think that a news aggregator is more prone to manipulation than your friends, but surely you can concede that it's also a broader sample. The problem with a conspiracy theory is that you have rebuttal-proof circumstantial evidence: there is literally nothing I can do to convince you that there isn't a conspiracy, except to point out that everyone else who sees conspiracies like this is wrong. As you put it on your old blog:
"Don't see purpose where there isn't.
Or better still, the positive version:
See randomness."
This doesn't seem to be a discussion of politics. It sounds more like psychology to me: you're very surprised that reddit is behaving in a way that you wouldn't have predicted, and so you're creating an extra phenomenon to explain it, instead of revising your original theory. It's a little pre-Copernican.
It would be easy to astroturf reddit. And I don't think even Ron Paul suppporters would deny that the campaign most likely to do it would be that of an outsider candidate whose supporters were renowned for their effective use of the Internet.
But you know, I am done talking about this. Whenever I even mention Ron Paul I end up wasting hours in arguments isomorphic to arguments with trolls. I'm not claiming Ron Paul supporters are trolls, just that trying to reason with fanatics tend to produce the same sort of threads as trying to reason with trolls.
The discussion on this thread is precisely why politics is off limits on news.yc. In this case it crept in through a point about the design of news aggregators. But politics is like floating point contagion. If you make a point that's even partly about politics, that's the part everyone will focus on, and the discussion becomes a political one.