Gov Parson pushes to prosecute reporter who found security flaw in state site

I'm not an expert in this area, but was interested in that story when it happened. Reading commentary from others in the industry suggested that they were, at best, naive in their handling of that contract. Yes charging them was a political act to save face, but they put themselves in that position through ignorance. Quite a different situation from a reporter and responsible disclosure in my opinion.

I'll take your biggest question first.

> In your opinion, is there a way to fix this sort of thing?

Yes, it requires patient, reasonable, intelligent people operating in good faith to sacrifice personal comfort, etc. and get involved in politics.

Politics is literally a zero-sum game when it comes to voting as it is currently structured in most of the United States.*

But when people with the above characteristics get involved, it literally moderates the extremism that we decry. No matter the level (local, state, or federal), whether you decide to run for office, helps others run for office, get involved with a party, or find a particular issue, being involved makes a difference. You may not be able to easily quantify, but it does make an impact. You may also be bringing a critical perspective in short supply to the political process too.

> On what rational grounds do you attempt to prosecute or make such things illegal?

I heard four reasons for the 2017-2018 SB 315 bill.

1. To ensure the next time someone shared a vulnerability that made the state look bad, that a D.A. would have the choice to bring a criminal case (which would obviously color perception of the story). 2. To bring the law into parity with Federal criminal statutes. 3. To give the Attorney General a "tough on cyber crime" campaign plank. 4. The banks were asking for help prosecuting criminals.

Here's the final text of the bill that passed the legislature, https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20172018/1.... The most relevant text are lines 12-14 and the subsection carve outs on line 16-20.

For further context, voter rolls were already public information and can be acquired via a request to the SoS office.

The larger red flags were the default usernames and passwords in the instructional pdfs for the election systems.

Both of these symptoms (and more) spoke to a woefully underfunded or poorly run office w/r/t to IT.

Getting more funds to have properly, well-secured systems takes political capital and there's not a lot of return of that type of political capital expenditure.

The current SoS has an engineering background and I've been seeing much better public facing systems put in place during their tenure.

*. Please, please, please can we get approval based voting?

Heh, understanding apache configuration files just made me facepalm harder and wasn't really critical to seeing the impact on the cybersecurity industry if people aren't able to responsibly disclose.

The important thing was to take the time, speak to the bill's author, speak to my colleagues, build a coalition of lobbyists from industry (big companies, startups, etc.), and not stop fighting the bill even after it passed the legislature.

I would assume this is pure politics.

He knows perfectly well who is to blame, but he's using the situation opportunistically to further his own career.

The issue isn't just that he's objectively and morally wrong, it's that most voters don't see through the grandstanding.

All they see - and all they want to see - is a rich old white dude punching down at some college-educated kid who thinks he's clever enough to have an opinion.

It's not obvious a jury will parse this any differently.

Although I'd hope someone like the EFF would turn up with some heavy hitter experts to add some friction to the self-serving bad take.

This is why it's hard to do politics. While everyone is fact-checking and getting outraged about the reality the political game is being played on a different level with different rules - by people who are often quite good at winning it.

I have a strong feeling this will backfire spectacularly.

To any technical or even semi-technical person, the facts of this case are laughable. The Governor thinks that he can steamroll this case through, and is betting that most will not understand the underlying technical details and give into the fear mongering "hacking" narrative.

But the thing is, as soon as this goes to court, there is a 100% chance the EFF or another organization is going to step in. Once the defense can explain the layperson exactly what happened here, the governor is going to go from "protecting the people from hackers" to "dumbass trying to cover his own ass".

The Governor and his cabinet clearly think they have this one in the bag, but I think the EFF or another org is going to step in and hand his ass to him in court.

This argument, which I at least partially agree is probably true, always bothered me. If they just want to have their name out in the public often, they just need to to strongly push for any solution. Here, he could have been loud and vocal about how the security of these sites is unacceptable and started handing out public awards to the person (people?) that found the issue.

The fact that one approach was chosen over the other suggests where is more to the reason.

Its standard GOP politics we've seen for the last 4 years. Use the legal system to bully people not to make you look incompetent. This is unique because he's using the criminal system and not the civil courts. How many people did Obama sue in office? Compare that to Trump who's gone after family members, the media, etc.

And it discredits the press to have them remembered as 'hackers'.

> some people just can’t be reasoned with.

It's been eye opening to see and recognize such people on the internet over the past 10 years or so. It's been a lot more scary to be able to recognize the same character flaw in real people I'm physically around.

"The Führer is always right".[1] Robert_Ley, 1941.

History has seen this before. It doesn't end well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip

I feel like there have to be actual hackers out there thinking "You think that's hacking? I'll show you hacking!"

Interesting interpretation. However, what the reporter did is pretty analogous to finding a classified document on the ground, looking at the first couple pages to see if they were legit, then informing the correct authorities before writing a news story. Which is still something you want to encourage, and is insane to prosecute.

I'm not saying you are wrong in this particular case (As I know nothing about the particulars of vaccine distribution in your state), but this has been the case across the entire country, red and blue. At a rough approximation, vaccines were distributed more or less equally across rural and urban areas, but due to high demand in urban areas, there were long wait lists in them.

> (if you want evidence of his antipathy to Missouri's cities, look no further than covid vaccine distribution - St. Louis had maybe one single site, but rural areas had more vaccines than they could use. My elderly parents had to drive for hours to get to one of those underused sites because there simply weren't any vaccines to be found in the metro area.)

I lived in SoCal at the time and had to do the same thing. I drove about an hour and a half into the desert to get it when my name came up, and I lived in the city of San Diego.

before I read this I was opposed to this but now that I read what you wrote and it makes sense, prosecute the shit out of them.

He "decoded the html"! C'mon, man! That's hacking!

> For politicians, winning elections is central. It is the source of all of their power. They know that the way to win elections is to get people on their side to show up and vote. Losing votes from the other side is essentially irrelevant — they weren't going to vote for them anyway. Politicians are fighting apathy, not the opposing party.

This is called "perversion".

> Once you understand this, ...'s behavior makes [it]

an accomplice and an entity of abysmal value.

--

Back to the elephant in the room: journalism was there to determine facts, reality. Outside narratives, facts exist, sometimes clear. It's like in judicial matters: advocatus dei and advocatus diaboli are there to attain to truth in a dialectic manner, proposed and implemented to exhaust the thinkable reasons involved - never there you meet the lunacy of "serving the client's interest". The disconnection to facts you indicate would be a horrible disease.

I think it's more of a "screw gamers/intellectuals/scientists/researchers because my base hates them" tact.

I hear what you're saying, but since there is such a zero chance this results in the journalist going to prison - I'm not entirely sure it has any effect - honestly if I was trying to become well-known as a journalist, I'd very much want to be in this spotlight - I'd be trying to find another mess up on Missouri's part to become part of this story. It very possibly has the opposite effect (the "Streisand effect").

The only _known_ effect is that this becomes a hot story and we're all outraged one way or the other.

I've got plenty of life experience that proves that people in power who employ technologically competent people often refuse to listen to expert advice because might makes right.

You don't have to be malicious to be incompetent.

> due to lack of knowledge, rather than malice

I suspect it's a mix of both.

> Governor's office clearly employs technologically competent people.

But you're assuming the Governor would pass the basic test that even shows that he is competent at listening to other competent people.

The OP is saying the test is for holding office, not voting. There absolutely should be a higher bar for holding office than for voting.

Very true. Just like gifted programs in schools. We should keep the bar as low as possible so that no one can ever claim we're racist.

There are a handful of states whose constitutions (ostensibly) “test” a for morals by requiring candidates for public office to believe in god. This, despite the federal constitution clearly stating:

> No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

There are already requirements for most elected officials. Age, citizenship, and residency requirements are common. Thus the slippery slope argument "if we have any requirements at all that's a slippery slope to having arbitrarily bad requirements" already applies equally to the current situation as it would to any proposal to change the requirements.

History is littered with examples of eugenics programs, but that doesn't mean we should ban genetic testing.

Maybe? He's looking stupid for at least some part of the state population, so it's costing him some amount of votes. And losing in court would be another round of that.

Calling someone a hacker when they are clearly not remotely hacking, and saying they exposed private info when in fact it was the government, both seems like things that could be defemation to me.

It all depends. If one side believes the election was stolen and proceeds to rig elections in their favor in retaliation. America is done. We're at a point where fact don't matter. This is story illustrates that. Fact that SSN were sent out publicly doesn't matter. Fact that any security expert would say this wasn't hacking doesn't matter. Experts no longer matter. Whether they are doctors, scientists, etc.

Yep, Brazil comes to mind.

So is the south of France. My cousin moved to Paris because his kids were going to school with Marine Le Pen supporters

Perhaps, but we do not claim Missouri.

Journalists reporting on security vulnerabilities in public systems getting sued for copyright violations would be novel, especially when the actual data involved (SSNs) is not data covered by copyright protections for the owners of those public systems.

Perhaps you are trolling?

You might want to update the guidelines (or your reaction to these types of situations) to be consistent, dang.

> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

This scenario clearly meets those criteria.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

The OP specifically said he wanted to have an intellectual discussion about how anti-intellectuality has recently become a prevalent issue among a particular political party, something of interest and concern to all people, regardless of country or political affiliation. I can't think of a more extenuating circumstance, especially with the disturbing historical precedents we've seen in the last century around this issue, but it's disappointing to see that you disagree.

You are trampling curiosity in the name of avoiding trampling curiosity.

That’s not what the southern strategy was. It was a cynical ploy by Republicans to court racist Democratic voters in the south who were unhappy with the civil rights bill. It worked and they switched to the Republican party, which realigned the ideological tilt of American politics.

Not letting the other team get any wins will be known as The McConnell Strategy in the history books, as he has practiced a policy of complete obstruction while in the senate.

That appears to be everyone's strategy.

> You're alienating people like me from being on your side.

On one side are the computer scientists and engineers who understand the nature of the problem. On the other side are ignorant and/or dishonest actors out to avoid being embarrassed.

It's all on you if you pick the wrong one out of loyalty to a political party.

Do you expect people to pretend the trend isn't happening in order to comfort you? What does it say about your own values that they are so loosely held that you'd sacrifice them out of contempt like this?

>You're alienating people like me from being on your side.

You're alienating yourself by following reactionary impulses in response to true statements.

I'm also honesty not sure how true this theory of reaction is generally. I'm sure it's true for some, but in many cases it functions as a rhetorical strategy to put people on the defensive who are making legitimate criticisms.

>But none of this was anti-science, nor did it have anything to do with COVID, and you've brought up both.

It's anti-intellectual, and therefore a pertinent comparison, and they used the term anti intellectual and covered all the necessary bases. The cultural and social forces driving both are the same, and here, again, I feel like saying "don't talk about this because it alienates me" is just a rhetorical strategy to put people on the defensive without addressing the merits of what they are saying.

You're making it about sides. Facts are not one sided. If someone speaking truth makes you feel bothered, that's your problem, not theirs. We should be able to speak to one another without getting emotional about which team someone aligns with.

Republicans are fostering anti-intellectualism which is (in fact) anti-science. From my perspective you'd be alienating yourself out of spite. This goes for Democrats or any political party.

There aren't sides! I'm not on your side, I don't even know you. No one here owes you anything.

You're saying "you must woo me to do the right thing" and it's complete garbage (you've already admitted OP is "probably right"). If you're going to vote out of spite because people aren't "taking a chill pill" you can go pound sand. I'm tired of this "you didn't tell me in the perfect way, so I'm right and you're wrong" reductive nonsense.

> Please don't make this a partisan issue.

It is a partisan issue though. Republicans across the United States are largely pushing to reject science and schooling and are increasingly pushing through laws and changes that make the populace dumber, and more easily controllable.

You know this is happening, yet you still voted for republicans in the past.

It's your own fault if you continue to do so even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this is destroying America.

Whether or not you feel alienated is no concern, your feelings don't matter here, and the fact that you are feeling alienated means you have the capacity to change, because the people that keep voting against intellectualism don't feel alienated, they feel emboldened when someone calls them out, they feel pride in knowing they are doing something "the left hates me for", even if that something is destroying America in the process.

This is literally the definition of an anti-science attitude from a camp that has demonstrated anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes on a plethora of subjects for the last several years but even going as far back as 20-30 years ago. Heck Regan planted the seeds of anti-intellectualism in the (R) party decades ago and they have done nothing but take hold and flourish.

Alienation is exactly the type of thing one should use to combat this. Rationally minded people in the (R) camp SHOULD feel alienated by their intellectual peers when they spew anti-intellectual rhetoric and pass/support anti-intellectual policies or willingly associate, without protest, with people or groups known for doing so. You can't flip the script and say you feel alienated by your intellectual peers (HN) for not jumping with you onto the anti-intellectual band-wagon and/or for calling systemic anti-intellectualism out for what it is. Doing so would be as ridiculous as arguing that you find same-sex couples alienating/offensive/triggering because they tread on your precious sensibilities as an anti-LGBT person. In that scenario, you should feel alienated, because that is the primary societal force that will pressure you into recanting being an anti-LGBT person. Intellectuals are alienating you because they want you to get rid of the rest of your bad opinions, not just the select few you have already shed, before you can take your place at the table.

Three things:

1.) This is an attack against a type of security researcher. Attacks against researchers are always anti-science.

2.) You’ve admitted to feeling alienated by truth. You might want to think that over and ask yourself some questions. That’s genuinely sad.

3.) If the truth genuinely alienates you, I don’t care about you or your feelings.

Re-read "anti-science" (a - relatively - minor collateral) with simply "bestial": refusing the value of a basic grasp of the world, and its function as a limiter. ("Bricks are not edible but that is not a valid reason to avoid eating them, when lower drives call". Very many are embracing the false and the absurd as "legitimate": it is just satanic.)

By the way: «voting [that thing] out» is not enough. That thing having held the office is a very horrible incident, and it must be made very clear to all those who were distracted.

This is a bad take. This new breed of Republicans thrive on personal attacks and ignore policy entirely when voting.

Of course it's anti-science. You don't think this governor has advisors that told him the reporter looked at source code that anyone can look at it and it's not hacking?

He's grandstanding for his constituency. Why? Because he knows his constituency won't understand nuance and won't hold him accountable, because he's attacking science, not guns.

> Please don't make this a partisan issue. I live in Missouri. I've voted for Republicans in the past. You're alienating people like me from being on your side.

Every group of humans - indeed, thanks to the central limit theorem, every sufficiently large sampling - is going to be normally distributed and there are going to be folks on either side offset from the mean.

However, that doesn't indicate that the mean isn't interesting or worthwhile to discuss, and isn't representative of the group as a whole.

> You're alienating people like me from being on your side. It doesn't matter that you're probably right.

You're blaming other people for something that is 100% under your control. If you don't want to accept the truth because you don't like the types of people who share it, that's just spite on your part.

Quit electing people like this.

There are signs WAY before you need to "try to vote him out of office".

“You’re right but don’t say that” is not a persuasive argument.

Hello, tone argument.

Throwing a temper tantrum when someone objectively mentions the ideology of a party - threatening to take your toys out of the sandbox - really doesn't help your case in the "superiority" department.

The reason things are so "partisan" is because of the political extremist actions and policies from your party.

How is it alienating to point out a trend that's clearly happening? I feel like this is exactly the problem, where refusing to acknowledge the problem is the problem. "Please don't bring these issues up, it's a problem I don't want to deal with".

Are we expected to just pretend like there's not this huge anti-science movement on the Right because your feelings might get hurt? Look at all the anti mask, anti vaccine rhetoric. This isn't ok.

Plenty of problems on the Left too, and we should talk about those too.

Everything good is on my side, everything bad is on the other. How dare you introduce nuance to such a clearly black and white conversation?

This is not really intellectually honest answer.

I really do not understand how it is possible to separate Parson from Republican Party in Missouri? They very very much the same.

It is like saying that Gavin Newsom is something different than Democrats in California.

He's just calling out whats mentioned in the polls. How is that alienating you?

It is absolutely anti-science and anti-intellectual. To prosecute this person relies on destroying a meaningful distinction, which is the distinction between computer hacking and security research. "Why were you poking around the website? Developer Tools? Why were you using Developer Tools?" The governor is saying you should do what the government says rather than thinking for yourself.

I'm sorry you feel that the parent comment has an air of superiority about it. Perhaps you can help some of us out by demonstrating how we can have a more productive conversation about the data and the graphs in the cited poll. Can you give an example of how you'd like the poll discussed? And I'm honestly asking here, btw, for the sake of the quality of discussion.

I grew up and spent some of my adult life in Missouri. I interacted with folks in the Missouri GOP quite a lot in the mid-naughts and early 2010s. Lots of GOP state rep staffers, some state reps, some state-wide candidates who have been oscillating in and out of politics in the years since, etc. I even had a few long meals with Eric Greitens way back in the day when everyone knew he was going to run for something but he was still playing Veteran Charity Organizer and denying any intention to run.

(Actually, I always pegged Eric for a moderate/conservative Democrat, but wasn't surprised to see him play the game he played given that his defining characteristic was always his careerism/ambition. I even mentioned after one of those meals that he'd probably prefer to run as a Dem but will definitely be running on the GOP ticket because he cares more about power and prestige than anything else & anyone with a brain knew running as a Dem in any statewide race in Missouri was a dead end. Actually, totally independent of this conversation, Eric is actually a really interesting case study in coalition politics; his resignation was as much about him snubbing folks with appointments than his sex scandal per se. Anyways.)

My interactions with folks in MOGOP back then scared the hell out of me. I could see the party coalescing around a pretty dark sort of nihilism. And not even really in terms of policy per se. It's the individual people, divorced of their politics, that really made me scared. On a personal and individual level. The deeply concerning interactions and conversations I had with specific rising stars in MOGOP are actually one of the reasons I left the state.

I understand your attitude toward partisanship, I really do, and I've voted for Missouri Repbulicans in the past as well. But that state party is in a really dark place right now. A few good apples -- and they do exist -- don't really matter when party leadership are scary as fuck narcissistic nihilists.

(And, yeah, all politicians suck or whatever... but MOGOP is really something else. The rising stars from back then who are all either ascendant or in control now are not just gross politician types... they're genuinely just really scary human beings.)

Can being a loyal Democrat or Republican diminishes your influence? It feels to me that most parties try much harder to please the undecideds than their base

> Please don't make this a partisan issue. I live in Missouri. I've voted for Republicans in the past. You're alienating people like me from being on your side.

this event is completely political and is made possible by the fact that one party alone has decided that facts don't matter - a whole team of said people rushed behind this governor to start a politcal campaign based on fact-free made up realities, which is now the common mode of action for the right wing. The GOP also happens to be a party that claims to be extremely upset about liberals supposedly trying to ban speech that "hurts their feelings". this is after all where the terms "snowflake" and "cancel culture" come from, and in fact was a campaign slogan by the Trump campaign called "fuck your feelings", which you would see emblazoned on shirts worn by what we would assume were previously congenial grandparents.

based on all of this, it would appear hypocritical for right wing voters to claim that speaking of these issues are "alientating". The grandparents wearing T shirts that said "fuck your feelings" was pretty alienating to see. Where were the right wing voices warning that liberals might feel "alienated" by that ? Does anyone on the right have the slightest concern for anyone not like them ? I've yet to see it.

The anti-science, anti-intellectualism, us vs them, anti-vaccine mindset that Parsons has is pretty emblematic of Southern Republican governors, senators, and congresspeople. Parsons responded in the expected, knee-jerk 'my political opponents are out to get me' that's been the theme of the GOP for a while now. Even though this security issue had nothing at all to do with politics. This was a consistent theme around Covid and vaccinations at both the state and national level. I think that's the background of the parent comment. Painting Parsons' response in his broader political actions and fellow party politicians' actions.

You can’t remove his actions from context though. They are only even possible because of a deliberate and calculated campaign to discredit science and knowledge and punish those who have it. They’re banking on people like you just looking to keep the peace at any cost.

If you’re not actively working to dismantle the current Republican Party, we cannot be on the same side. I don’t mind alienating you; the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

>It doesn't matter that you're probably right.

I guess reality does have a well known liberal bias :)

Words like "your side" and "your camp" don't exactly de-escalate here. BTW I'm not trying to avoid making it a partisan issue, on the contrary.

About that sense of superiority, it is relative to a pretty low bar, when people prioritize whether a person is on their side even over whether the person is right.

The clustering of inane views amongst a particular identifiable group of people is fascinating. And inane views happen on both sides. I find it super interesting to see how each side chooses which bonkers views they do, and how they line up.

Especially interesting is when they are not self consistent. For example, "my body, my rules," which is adopted by both sides in different contexts (abortion and vaccinations) both of which arguably are issues that involve personal choice but that also (again, arguably) affect the well being of others.

Finding the partisan alignments amongst these things is super interesting and should not be a third rail (meaning an untouchable topic) in discussions, imho.

why should we have to coddle you

"It doesn't matter that you're probably right."

You're the problem.

> barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings

If you have any evidence to support this, I invite you to post it. Because according to the study below:

"Getting a Bachelor's degree adds another large increase in lifetime earnings. With median earnings of $56,700 ($27.26 per hour), or $2.3 million over a lifetime, Bachelor's degree holders earn 31 percent more than workers with an Associate's degree and 74 percent more than those with just a high school diploma."

But more importantly, college should NOT be job training. It should be a place to learn critical thinking, to experiment in a safe environment, and a place to learn what you even want to learn about. A college graduate should be able to learn what they need to learn, including pursuing a career in the trades.

I agree that we need more plumbers. But the idea that young adults -- in practice, working class and poor ones -- should be denied the opportunity to learn and grow and instead be offered trade school or nothing, is profoundly unfair.

This is not to say that we couldn't improve the status quo. We could make college less expensive or free, consolidate degrees (getting a law degree in 4 or 5 years of college rather than 4 years of college + 3 more of law school), etc. But a blanket statement that "college is net detrimental to society" seems ignorant even in the kindest light.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c...

I largely agree with the sentiment that we need more plumbers than liberal arts graduates. One answer, though, is "why not be both?"

Post-secondary education, regardless of the specific major a student chooses, does provide a significant benefit to society: especially in the early years, it teaches students how to think critically. Perhaps this skill could be taught earlier during secondary education, but at least in the U.S., it is not. And this skill is incredibly important for becoming an informed member of the electorate who can separate truth from bullshit.

Youre underestimating the value of a college degree. Research like [1] shows that degree holders have significantly more lifetime earnings than high school. You also miss how the democratization of education has benefited our society and helped lift millions out of subsistence lifestyles and class lock-in.

"This world needs a lot more new plumbers than new liberal arts majors"

This is a completely subjective and politically charged statement. I think the world needs more informed and educated critical thinkers. Its curious how the 90s led to a collapse in liberal arts departments and enrollments, and 20 years later we're now in an era of disinformation at massive scale.

1. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education...

I found college had a net positive effect on me. It gave me a great deal of discipline and the helped me develop important critical thinking skills. Though I did a mix of STEM and economics, I can't vouch for other degrees.

Regardless, I disagree that it's a waste of a person's best years. Most work is some variation of drudgery, I think it's great young adults get to spend a few years learning about interesting topics and making new friends.

It'd be nice if America could do that and not saddle these youngsters with crippling debt (as other countries manage to do), but I wouldn't say that feature of the American education system invalidates the basic concept.

The whole "college = liberal arts majors" is a wildly reductive argument and is extremely common among the types that OP is referring to. It's pretty disheartening to see it repeated here.

> makes people waste their best years

What do you mean "waste"? Just that they're building career capital instead of directly earning money? You've got your whole life to work, spending that time learning, meeting new people, and trying new things seems way less "wasteful" than just starting your career 4 years sooner. Plus it gives you time to figure out what you want to do, most 18-year-olds aren't really equipped to decide what they'll want to be doing when they're 50 and the value of starting a career sooner is greatly diminished if you just end up switching careers anyway.

> teaches them mainly, useless stuff

Meh, most knowledge is useless, but it's not always easy to determine which knowledge will be useful in advance. I thought my linguistics class was useless (though interesting) at the time, years later I went into data science, turns out linguistics is pretty important for NLP. Also, I think learning for the sake of learning is a Good Thing, even given that most knowledge is useless.

> barely breaks even in terms of lifetime earnings

Got a source for that? Cause last I checked, holders of even most "useless" degrees out-earn those with just a high school diploma by something like $15k/year, making them well worth it financially unless you pay the sticker price for a private or out-of-state school. For better or worse, there are a ton of decent jobs in the US that just require any college degree.

> and makes people bitter because they feel they are not valued by society the way they believe they should

I haven't seen that at all. I know people who are bitter because they have a ton of student debt and are struggling to pay it off, but I don't know anyone who expects to be put on a pedestal because they have a college degree, if anything they're bitter at their colleges and/or their high school guidance counselors. Also, those people are outliers in terms of their debt levels, the average new college graduate (among those who take out student loans) earns ~$55k and leaves with ~$30k in debt, which is very manageable almost everywhere in the US and probably puts them at a higher income (though with less wealth) than their peers who started plumbing apprenticeships at 18.

> makes people waste their best years

I strongly believe that one's best years can be after college. Our society fetishizes youth too much. I've grown more as a person in the few years following college than I did in the decade prior.

We'd need to significantly improve high schools before considering eliminating college. Let's face it. We can't expect American high schools to teach students anything about the world. We've had schools try to spin the slave trade as sending "workers" to the New World. We've had attempts to show "both sides" of the Holocaust. And yes, college isn't perfect at teaching liberal arts, but it's better than not learning at all.

I don't mean to straw man you, so I'm not implying this is what you said, but a liberal arts education is extremely important! Where else do you learn that racism isn't just slurs, that a bus route can be racist, that a health policy can be racist? Where can you get introduced to writers of color, to works by people from all times and all races? Where can you get an in depth view into how art reflects society and society reflects art?

Even if you don't step into a classroom, college teaches so much by forcing students out of their hometown and out of the communities. One of the biggest issues with racism and discrimination and partisanship is that most people haven't met the other side. College is a way to meet the other side in one's formative years.

I'd argue that college is the single most liberalizing institution in people's lives. No other institution takes students, transports them into a (hopefully) diverse, intellectually stimulating center and teaches them about society.

> It is the society's fault that people feel compelled to go to college

That may be true but the amount of assistance available through student loans and grants enables people to actually go. Without that, the people that feel compelled to go still wouldn't because they simply couldn't afford it.

Higher education in this country is a minefield of unintended consequences.

The very same article I linked to suggests yours is a minority view among those who have attended college:

> When it comes to their own experiences with higher education, an earlier Center survey found that the vast majority of college graduates (from both two- and four-year institutions) say college was useful for them in terms of helping them grow personally and intellectually (62% say it was very useful in this regard, 31% say it was somewhat useful). Large majorities also say it was useful in opening doors to job opportunities (53% say very useful, 29% say somewhat) and in helping them develop specific skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace (49% very, 35% somewhat).

I think the cost of higher ed is an enormous societal problem which leads some to feel embittered towards the system as a whole for good reason. But it's important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and to separate the ballooning cost from the education itself.

Worth noting that Ivy League costing hundreds of thousands is quite different from college too. Also, the major matters heavily. In something like computer science, you may be able to get by fine without a degree, but good luck becoming a doctor or lawyer with an online education.

I can find a competent plumber trivially. Hiring white collar jobs are much harder, especially specialized tech work.

I think the anti-college popularity ties directly to the incredible cost of it in the USA, not that its necessarily a bad thing.

Then (as it was already well known and evident) you have a deeper problem with a faulty political system, that creates monstrous overgrowths of mental patterns begging for votes instead of progressive ("look-up-to") models.

Telling example: "We believe in self-determination" // "There are unclaimed votes available in those anti-abortionist tribes" // "Ok then, we take them". This should be a joke, not an event. There is a systemic issue.

Most of my friends are politically and socially liberal, whereas I'm liberal on some issues, conservative on others, and have a decent number of views that are hard to categorize on a liberal/conservative spectrum.

One thing I've noticed about the friends who are dyed in the wool liberals is that they seem to be more susceptible than average to pseudoscientific practices such as reiki, crystals, homeopathy, etc.

And that jives, I think, with historical trends. Go back 100 years and G.K. Chesterton was chiding the liberal upper-class socialites who were taken in with this stuff.

Of course, my own observations are just anecdotal, but I would be curious to know if anyone else has noticed it.

> Denial of the science of intelligence differences, the relevance of intelligence in life outcomes and how heritable it is.

> Belief without evidence that black/white racial differences in outcome are completely due to modern systemic racism and not partly due to a byproduct of cultural differences

I think what you're describing is that a lot of liberals and leftists are opposed to the use of science to justify what they would probably consider racist beliefs. They might point to the use of scientific racism in the past as a reason not to repeat such mistakes. They might also question the intentions of the (disproportionately white) people who tend to focus obsessively on these issues to the exclusion of many others.

I think "a lot of the skepticism" is a VAST over estimate. Are you telling me that the anti-vaccine, anti-CRT (created a boogeyman out of nowhere btw), and various school boards revising how we should try to more objectively teach history/science are worried about higher ed being ineffective?

I mean yes there is definitely criticism on higher ed and what value students are getting for the now extremely high price tag, but to say that this is what is the issue is definitely missing the point

For me going to college was about getting away from my horrible family. They still managed to screw me over and prevent me from finishing my last year of schooling, but my life was forever made better by the distance.

The class stratification in society is absolutely intense, if you're coming from a bad family you just need to get away from them as soon as you can. I made the mistake of not estranging myself from my own family much sooner. If I could change one thing about the way America works I'd eliminate the requirement for parental involvement when it comes to getting financial aid.

If your parents like to beat you up, you should be able to just walk out when you're 18 and get help to go to school. But that's not the system now. Aside from a small handful of exceptions which are painfully difficult to get, you're basically on your own. I think in Europe everyone just gets help to go to college so this isn't an issue there.

It is not 70% of kids, and this number is not hard to look up. It has been trending around 30% for enrollment into 4-year institutions. Of those, ~60% complete the degree within 6 years.

I agree that most students who got to college don't make good use of the time or investment, but it is still a minority of people who even attempt college.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_302.60.a... https://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=40

Then reform college: you need to increase the chances that make instances like that thing holding office in Missouri incidents of the past. You need to educate people, to help develop the eyes to see and cringe.

This is either excellent satire or a symptom of going off the deep end.

Still cracks me up to know that the "mark of the beast" is just a rudimentary hash folks in the bronze age used to communicate semi-secret names, in, for example, love letters.

Excessive money printing that also happened under an R admin? Freedom reducing laws like laws that limit the freedom to access a safe abortion? Or laws that limit the freedom to vote? What freedoms specifically?

Increased taxes for who? Taxes were massively cut for wealthy people a couple years ago and the only proposal to raise them that got any traction recently didn’t even raise them back to the previous level - still a net cut.

Also, Covid is a big deal for the families of the 600k dead from it directly and the unknown number indirectly due to inability to access medical services. Just because it didn’t affect you personally doesn’t mean it’s not a real problem.

I took it seriously as well, realized it probably wouldn’t kill me, but still followed precautions so as to avoid hurting others who would most likely have died or gotten seriously ill. I feel like that’s a pretty minimum requirement for a functioning society - compassion for others, who are not in your exact situation.

You're probably completely unaware that the excessive money printing (quantitative easing) you seemingly blame on democrats was proposed and initially implemented by by a Bush appointee (Bernanke) and then more recently and more famously done by a Trump appointee (Powell), both in cases where the alternative would've been a global financial catastrophe not seen since the great depression.

> I respectfully disagree to anyone who thinks Biden is treated the same as Trump was.

People respect Biden more than they respect Trump. This isn't Biden's fault, nor the fault of the people.

> I later got covid and only lost sense smell/taste for 4 days. Didn't feel the need to miss any work.

Bruh. You went to work while you were sick with covid?

> I respectfully disagree to anyone who thinks Biden is treated the same as Trump was.

Of course they are not. How could they be, considering the large difference in behavior towards journalists and the world in general?

You would probably be better off with an attitude reboot. You don't always have to be the victim.

What distinctions between men and women are being denied that you feel need to be made?

Have you done any work to asses your biases along these fronts? What makes you think that the immunity after getting infected from covid is better than getting vaccinated and not getting sick at all? I know I don't personally have the time to be sick, I have a family to feed.

The upcoming midterms are extremely important because the out of power party is likely going to take back the House, and all signs are pointing to them not affirming any winner of the 2024 election if that person is a Democrat, which will directly lead to the utter breakdown of Democracy in the USA.

You don't do do science by being skeptical of things. You do it by asking questions and by developing experiments that can test the hypothesis within ethical bounds. How do you start to make these experiments where the outcomes could lead to an increase in deaths?

9.693 million doses have been administered over about 10 months. If we assume linear administration, that's 4,039,164 human life years of testing.

People here aren’t good at detecting sarcasm.

> You're just a lab rat if you take the vaccine before it has had 209,348 years of trials.

Or, you know, 3. Like most new vaccines. Except with this one, an exception was made because people were (are) dying by the millions, and because most of those 3 years is an observation period for rare and obscure side effects that take time to manifest. But do nevertheless happen. We did what we usually do in medicine: risk-benefit trade-off. The decision wasn't a close one, but that doesn't mean that being concerned about the risk is somehow absurd.

Point being: using charitable interpretations of your opponents' arguments does not make for brief and funny sound bites.

I think people are missing the sarcasm here.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html