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Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#31

Post by The_rationalist »

giantg2 wrote: post #28
The_rationalist wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even say that if you're not frequently getting downvoted with no comments, then your comments are harmfully not enough contrarian. If only there could be a webextension that would act as a meta recommender-system for HN comments that would highlight such sufficiently contrarian authors then I could quickly, heuristically read those more than average, valuable comments.

You can just scroll to the bottom. That's where all the downvoted comments go.

Being on the bottom is an aggregate that factor in the recency of the comment, isn't it? Moreover ideally only a subset of comments would be highlighted (e.g not the ones downvoted too much) and would benefit from making stats from the user comments history in order to increase the signal to noise ratio

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#32

Post by giantg2 »

The_rationalist wrote: post #31
giantg2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just scroll to the bottom. That's where all the downvoted comments go.

Being on the bottom is an aggregate that factor in the recency of the comment, isn't it? Moreover ideally only a subset of comments would be highlighted (e.g not the ones downvoted too much) and would benefit from making stats from the user comments history in order to increase the signal to noise ratio

True, in the absence of downvoted comments, it would just be the older ones on the bottom.

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#33

Post by Bakary »

giantg2 wrote: post #18
ra7 wrote: post #4

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384 : > I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?" This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me ki…

That question doesn't get asked enough. I'm tired of getting downvoted with no comments. I'm tired of people not understanding the subtleties of my positions and arguing against me just based on a communication issue.

Why not ask "Why do people misinterpret my comments" as per the concept in the quote and start from that to improve the way you communicate?

If people frequently misinterpret you, it's logically sound to look at the common denominator

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#34

Post by giantg2 »

Bakary wrote: post #33
giantg2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question doesn't get asked enough. I'm tired of getting downvoted with no comments. I'm tired of people not understanding the subtleties of my positions and arguing against me just based on a communication issue.

Why not ask "Why do people misinterpret my comments" as per the concept in the quote and start from that to improve the way you communicate? If people frequently misinterpret you, it's logically sound to look at the common denominator

It's not that frequent. It seems it's just a subset if the readers who misapply what I say. If it were a large part of the group, then I would be looking at myself more closely. I would guess that everyone has been misunderstood at some point on here.

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#35

Post by superasn »

I found most of the comments in thread pretty insightful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043088

But i found this one comment which really resonated with me:

Everything is a system. The economy, society, relationships, nature, traffic. You don't need math to reverse engineer a system. You just need to pay attention to it. You can say the right words to make a date happy. You can figure out which lane is the fastest route, better than Google Maps can. You don't need an app or data - your brain is a wonderful data processing machine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22043088

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#36

Post by brainbag »

I've actually been trying to find my top quote of 2020 again, so if anyone knows it I'd love to get a link. Someone mentioned an approach to optimizing for removing annoyances instead of new improvements. As a parent of a toddler in quarantine and a busy startup cofounder, my past processes for optimizing for ever-higher quality of life have largely been unavailable. Once I started looking around for annoyances, I realized there were so many mostly small ones. I began the process of resolving them, and it's been very satisfying.

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#37

Post by murm »

Bakary wrote: post #13
ra7 wrote: post #4

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384 : > I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?" This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me ki…

As a corollary to that person's insight, I've noticed that the reflex to judge and criticize is very strong. Avoiding unnecessary criticism and judgment and focusing on your own life takes constant conscious effort, even though it's probably one of the most logical choices you can make. This is particularly true when the people whom you criticize are manifestly doing quite well in general compared to you. Commenting…

> This is particularly true when the people whom you criticize are manifestly doing quite well in general compared to you.

In these cases someone might be doing hundred things right in their life and the one mistake is what catches all the attention and provokes criticism. I feel like if only humans could view themselves with the same ruthless no-excuses mentality as they do view others they would immediately realize how much there is in their own life to fix and fixing all that would probably keep them too busy to unnecessarily point fingers at others.

(I'm not saying that criticism is always unnecessary, but that there's probably all kinds of low-hanging fruit in people's own lives that they're not just able to perceive. This blind spot of course applies to me too which I find frustrating at times).

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#38

Post by bobbydreamer »

Mine is this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23100864

dmoreira 12 hours ago [-] doing it consistently over a long period of time. It took me years to realize that all nighters and overwork were a big mistake. What truly works is to show up everyday consistently for years. Like Bill said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Re: Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?

#39

Post by veddox »

giantg2 wrote: post #18
ra7 wrote: post #4

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384 : > I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself, "why would they do that?" This is my favorite because it’s simple, but so powerful. I’ve tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I think it has made me ki…

That question doesn't get asked enough. I'm tired of getting downvoted with no comments. I'm tired of people not understanding the subtleties of my positions and arguing against me just based on a communication issue.

Just yesterday I was about to downvote somebody for what I thought was a ludicrous suggestion. But when I started writing a reply, I realized that a), he may actually have had a point, and b), though I was still sceptical, I didn‘t actually understand the issue well enough to refute him.
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