Live data from Hacker News

HN comments are underrated

danluu.com

191–200 of 383 posts

Re: HN comments are underrated

#191
post #62

I often find my self searching through old HN comments for all kinds of things. Just off the top of my head I've searched for comments on: Redis, ZFS, Raft, SQS, ZMQ, message queue, RDS, connection pools, ECS in the last few days. I've learned quite a lot of things from reading comments by people with way more experience in these matters than I have. And that's probably less than half of my searches. A google search…

Indeed. Searching on https://hn.algolia.com is an integral part of my workflow. When I read an article I often want to see:

a) What did people say about it on HN? Because the comments there are often superior to the comments on the site itself. If there are multiple threads on it separated by years, it's often interesting to read them all and reflect on how opinions of reasonable people have drifted over time.

b) Did I upvote any of the threads? (i.e. Have I read this before?) Did I, perchance, leave a comment?

Often this process adds a few more favorites to my list (https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=...), which is also growing to be an integral part of my workflow.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#192
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First your anecdotes are not persuasive compared to two incredibly successful companies and one incredibly successful industry. Second, you missed the point. It isn't about prohibiting anyone from expressing a negative opinion or sugar-coating things. That's a false dichotomy. It's about not attacking the messenger and not looking to place blame. It also means accepting valid criticism. You can be 100% honest without…

This brings to mind the three whys, and why it is important to ask them for both positive and negative situations. Blame culture is extremely toxic, but negative feedback can have as much benefit as positive if approached from the correct angle.

[deleted]

Re: HN comments are underrated

#193
post #153
post #91

A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point. Down-voting should be for disruption, not ignorance. Ignorant comments are fine. Get them out there so they can be aired and corrected. Laymen get to know what they think. Experts get to know what laymen think. Occasionally there's a good idea. Talk is cheap and we should do more of it. The alternative is people being far more ign…

Silent ignorance is fine. It's the loudly wrong people that are the problem. Wrong comments take more effort to rebut than they do to post; get enough of them and the SNR drops too low, because often the rebuttal is also "noise" - most people don't need a comment reminding them that global warming exists, for example.

My assumption is that commenting has the effect of reducing ignorance, even where ignorant comments are plentiful i.e. silent ignorance is more deadly than mostly-ignorant noise. This is because the very act of writing a comment, be it laden with misconceptions, causes its author to think, at least a little. Also reading different points of view helps people to identify common misconceptions and to make up their minds.

(This doesn't include disruptive comments like fluff, complaining and gratuitous humour.)

Re: HN comments are underrated

#194
post #71

I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. California can not even replicate 40 years old TGV, but somehow it will build space-like technology for fraction of price. And than there are politics. Entire world should accept millions of refugees. But SF is different, and should not even host 400 homeless who arrive every year.

> I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. HackerNews flies off the rails when it comes to anything Elon Musk related, or anything banking/finance related. Musk invented everything and is infallible; the bankers are ruining everything and are irredeemable.

Funnily enough, i find hn a lot more balanced than any other forum I've seen when it comes to finance in general and HFT in particular.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business startup ideas are essentially experiments in economic theory. Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics. It didn't used to be this way, and I kind of miss the HN of old... where logic and fearlessness were valued more than affiliation or keeping up of brand appearances. I've been finding it increasingly disconcerting that the incentive here lately has been t…

Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments. Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.

Regarding /r/economics, if you find it bad now you should have seen it before. I for one doesn't miss the Austrian bullshit that used to be very common there.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#196
post #171

It's not complicated, just hard to digest. Anti-white racism. It's identical to the antisemitism of the far right in the 30s and 40s, except it is with whites.

> Anti-white racism. It's identical to the antisemitism of the far right in the 30s and 40s, except it is with whites. Wow, I officially have a new "worst-comment-seen-on-HN". Sir, have you ever experienced anything close to racism? And do you have any idea what antisemitism in the 30s and 40s actually was like? I am a young white male who has spent several years living abroad in the Third World. And yes, I have expe…

It's a single sentence and you read things into it I was not quite thinking of. Obviously the death camps are not presently open for business. My original post (which I shortened to that) explained my thoughts more clearly but I opted for brevity and in the name of brevity sometimes...

I was thinking of two things. 1. The rise of antisemitism in the early 20th century, and 2. An accompanying diabolism, the antisemitic Jews.

In the 30s there were self hating Jews who aided the Nazis in destroying their neighbors. Notably George Soros was one of those, at the age of 14 he was helping his father help the Nazis, and what is more, he stated that it was just an exhilarating experience! It is all in the public record, he doesn't deny it.

I believe the far left, modern leftist activists are very similar to George Soros. They are like the self hating Jews who acted as NSDAP collaborators, except this time it is white people instead. I see white people advocating hate against whites on a fairly regular basis, especially at the universities.

This is something that concerns me because before now rightists have been put into gulags/prison camps/re-education centres/killing fields in Communist countries. There do exist groups of people who advocate white genocide, in South Africa for example.

Unlike the mockery of c_c_c, the main worry of the right in Europe and the US is not about being subject to oppression by minority groups, it is worry about oppression by their own people who appear enthused by a modern version of Communism they call social justice which to a 1st approximation appears to be a mix of Christianity (original sin) and Marxism (equality). We see in Germany they are importing millions of foreign peoples and we don't believe in altruism, we believe they are to be a weapon against the right and/or to achieve an ulterior motive. The volumes are so large they are replacing their own people. In France that process is so far advanced that, well, you can see for yourself. You can't tell me there's something normal going on in that country.

Population replacement, without the consent of the people, this is very very wrong, actually the correct term is genocide. Presently we are in the preliminary stages strategists call 'Preparation'. That is why the far right is rising fast in Europe. People are seeing that something horribly wrong is happening without their consent and they're getting ready to fight back. That is what Trump and Brexit are about, but that is just the beginning of what will be a difficult struggle to nip this new communism in the bud.

> Sir, have you ever experienced anything close to racism? And do you have any idea what antisemitism in the 30s and 40s actually was like?

Not sure if this was rhetorical but I'll answer it anyway. Yes to the first. I've been attacked twice, both times by black men, in two different EU countries. I'll elaborate more if you want me to. That does colour my impression of migrants somewhat, and I also believe it to be much more common than the statistics relate because the police told me there was no point in filing a report each time. On a positive note I work with a black migrant who has acclimated perfectly well into the country and you couldn't wish for a more reasonable person. So I think there are good people and bad people, but I no longer believe they are evenly distributed if that makes any sense to you. Some groups of people really do have a horrible culture, it isn't a random distribution.

In the case of the Jewish experience, only by secondhand accounts, like yourself. I've watched the Nazis: A warning from history, a documentary series by the BBC, which was enlightening and read a number of books around the subject.

I think I understand how it happens, and what is more, I believe the pre-War history is almost entirely neglected in the mainstream media. The whole thing was entirely predictable in advance, just like the conflict that is likely to arise in Europe in the coming years.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics." I find that HN is pretty weak on economics. But it's a tech blog, so ... And I'm not so sure that 'business ideas' are about economics. Usually, they are simply about doing things using newly available technology, in ways that are obvious in hindsight. I don't think that AirBnB conceptually is rocket science - it's the gre…

I beg to differ! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12556160

I agree there are some smart Econ things here, but when there's a tech article that wavers into Econ elements, I find it all to be lacking, generally.

My point: HN folks are not thinking about market power, value chains, supply chains, forms of financing, currency markets - they're thinking about tech.

At the risk of getting 100 down-votes - this is best exemplified by Bitcoin. It's a very powerful, cool technology - but almost nobody seems to grasp what it means from a financial perspective, i.e. as a currency, as a store of value etc. etc.. HN readers see it in 'techno-social' terms, i.e. 'cool tech' and 'free from big banks' 'decentralization' etc..

Re: HN comments are underrated

#198

HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too. It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who…

What you see as "groupthink" is really your bias attempting to dismiss any number of people for disagreeing with you. I understand the point of your post, I just don't find that particular bias funny enough to let it pass uncommemted.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. HackerNews flies off the rails when it comes to anything Elon Musk related, or anything banking/finance related. Musk invented everything and is infallible; the bankers are ruining everything and are irredeemable.

Funnily enough, i find hn a lot more balanced than any other forum I've seen when it comes to finance in general and HFT in particular.

I can't argue with that. I think the population's general level of financial knowledge is low, which is sad considering the influence it wields.

I suppose my expectations of this place is higher because...it is a great comment section. But the financial discussion is heavily conspiracy laden.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#200
post #154
post #91

A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point. Down-voting should be for disruption, not ignorance. Ignorant comments are fine. Get them out there so they can be aired and corrected. Laymen get to know what they think. Experts get to know what laymen think. Occasionally there's a good idea. Talk is cheap and we should do more of it. The alternative is people being far more ign…

> A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one karma point. That is such a good idea it has actually been integral to HN for, oh, I don't know, a pretty long time... From the FAQ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ): ''' How is a user's karma calculated? Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly…

No, I mean downvoting costs both the downvoter and the downvotee one point each. People won't downvote comments they merely disagree with but they will still try to correct injustice and disruption. I'm no game theorist but that's my guess. It also reflects human psychology where righteous anger comes with a personal cost.
Post reply on HN