> Aren't you doing exactly that right now? "speaking out" on Hacker News against people you disagree with?
>> If you want to improve the system you first understand how the system works, then work hard and do things that will improve the system.
>> Criticising is only useful when it actually influences something.
The trick is to achieve system understanding first. On Hacker News, the system is set up to reward intellectually stimulating arguments, e.g. taking a systemic view of social phenomena. Since there are at least some open-minded people here, that kind of criticism may actually influence something.
To effectively "speak out" on China, you need an entirely different skillset, including being able to reference a large corpus of shared knowledge that most people on HN are probably unaware of.
Since China does not yet allow criticism to be very influential, it is likely that the effort invested into criticism would be better spent, for now, on increasing the likelihood that future criticism will be influential. There are many possible ways to do that; it appears the person you're replying to has settled on a particular one I don't quite understand yet.
Aren't you doing exactly that right now? "speaking out" on Hacker News against people you disagree with?
> Criticising is only useful when it actually influenced something.
Of course. And countries with freedom of speech allows criticism to be influential.