I agree some parts of our society have basically forbidden any kind of discussion. That is in need of real change. Respectable and honest discussions between adults should be allowed.
Sucks that conference speakers are being "checked" for political affiliations. Why not let the topic stand on its own?
But of course, everyone is free to not listen to people that don't support them in some way. It's a delicate line.
> "grumbling about the need for a space for musical jam sessions."
What? I have to believe that isn't common and it's being used as a "see how lazy/unprofessional/undedicated _everyone_ in SV is"
Conference speakers being checked for political affiliation is crazy but not surprising - are there specific examples of this?
On sites like reddit you often see reasonable arguments shot down based on the author's political leanings gleaned from their comment history. The chilling effect is made clear when you see people having to preface their commentary with "I hate x, but... {insert argument here}"
I think it's more that pre-reddit/twitter/facebook we all had separate online forums, chat rooms, etc and now it's all centralized to the same few sites.
For example before reddit we didn't have popular fascist subforums hosted on the same site as a liberal politics subforum, where people could cross-post and PM between them.
This is a good point. I used to frequent DemocraticUnderground back in the 2004 days during the Kerry campaign. It was as bad an echo chamber as anything we see today. The alternative site was FreeRepublic (or 'freepers', as we called them). However, the fact that you didn't have to go to that site or see those people's opinions if you didn't want to, made a big difference to how vitriolic the whole thing felt.
Sucks that conference speakers are being "checked" for political affiliations. Why not let the topic stand on its own?
But of course, everyone is free to not listen to people that don't support them in some way. It's a delicate line.
> "grumbling about the need for a space for musical jam sessions."
What? I have to believe that isn't common and it's being used as a "see how lazy/unprofessional/undedicated _everyone_ in SV is"