<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>johnnyworker</author><text>&amp;gt; People want to believe that govt and big tech are this omniscient, monolithic entity. If that was actually the case then how do they not catch whistleblowers who leave trails of evidence months before leaking?&lt;p&gt;Power. Cowardice. People saying &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s all fine&amp;quot; because they don&amp;#x27;t want to live in a world where the only reason they&amp;#x27;re not in fear or pain is because they kissed the ring. It would not reflect well on them, so they choose to view it differently.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;exxon-knew-about-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the above is possible, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be possible where the stakes and capabilities are orders of magnitude higher?&lt;p&gt;Plus, the problem isn&amp;#x27;t to so much to keep anything &amp;quot;secret&amp;quot;. Usually it&amp;#x27;s enough to offer another view point aligned with power, that people can flock to out of cowardice and&amp;#x2F;or as a token of allegiance.&lt;p&gt;We all know who Assange is, we know that he was hounded and tortured for calling attention to war crimes. So? Nothing happened to anyone responsible, and at &lt;i&gt;best&lt;/i&gt; Assange might be free, one day. Similar for Snowden. So yeah, why &lt;i&gt;wouldn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; people just blow whistles all the time, right?&lt;p&gt;And come to think of it nobody -- that is, none of the power centers, all sorts of &amp;quot;sides&amp;quot; in all sorts of conflicts -- can stand honesty. They may disagree on the lies they want to push instead, but they all agree that the truth is not an option, knowingly or not. No need to plan anything, they can just go by smell and instinct and they&amp;#x27;ll work together to persecute people with integrity without even realizing they&amp;#x27;re doing it. &amp;quot;Omniscience&amp;quot; in this context certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t include being aware of oneself, it&amp;#x27;s more like a stalker who knows every little detail about the life of their victim, but has no clue that they themselves have a massive problem.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;-- Adam Curtis</text><parent_chain><item><author>matrix87</author><text>If there&amp;#x27;s one thing I&amp;#x27;ve learned from technology, it&amp;#x27;s that people put way too much faith in technology&lt;p&gt;People want to believe that the tech is good enough to build this advertising simulacrum the guy in the video refers to. It&amp;#x27;s all a fantasy&lt;p&gt;People want to believe that govt and big tech are this omniscient, monolithic entity. If that was actually the case then how do they not catch whistleblowers who leave trails of evidence months before leaking?&lt;p&gt;Anyone who talks about tech like it&amp;#x27;s some kind of deity clearly shouldn&amp;#x27;t be talking about it, or at least only for the sake of marketing</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>You&apos;ve just been fucked by psyops [video]</title><url>https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12326-you_ve_just_been_fucked_by_psyops</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>javajosh</author><text>Technology gives people more plausible excuses to believe what they want to believe. It only has to stand up to the barest scrutiny. &amp;quot;Everything my tribe does is great; everything yours does is horrible. Therefore any evidence against my tribe is fabricated, any evidence against yours is accurate.&amp;quot; And so on. This is already happening at scale.</text><parent_chain><item><author>matrix87</author><text>If there&amp;#x27;s one thing I&amp;#x27;ve learned from technology, it&amp;#x27;s that people put way too much faith in technology&lt;p&gt;People want to believe that the tech is good enough to build this advertising simulacrum the guy in the video refers to. It&amp;#x27;s all a fantasy&lt;p&gt;People want to believe that govt and big tech are this omniscient, monolithic entity. If that was actually the case then how do they not catch whistleblowers who leave trails of evidence months before leaking?&lt;p&gt;Anyone who talks about tech like it&amp;#x27;s some kind of deity clearly shouldn&amp;#x27;t be talking about it, or at least only for the sake of marketing</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>You&apos;ve just been fucked by psyops [video]</title><url>https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12326-you_ve_just_been_fucked_by_psyops</url></story>