Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–38 of 38 posts

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#31

Post by Retric »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #30
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paradox is not an interesting thing; it's just a sign that your assumptions are wrong. But, it was not even an interesting paradox. 1) "random process" was undefined. 2) There was no limitation given as to choosing nothing or more than one answer. 3) At best the discussion might have been amusing, but that's just trolling IMO. PS: I thought about it for a while before flagging it.

> A paradox is not an interesting thing. > It's just a sign that your assumptions are wrong. That's an interesting position to take - Ray Smullyan might disagree with you. When I was discussing it with him the conclusion I came to is that there is something deep in a good paradox that helps us understand logic, math, thinking and reason. That's not true for unexpected results, which are often incorrectly called parad…

At best you have proof though contradiction: http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~larryc/proofs/proofs.contradict...

For a basic paradox like "This sentence is a lie" there are more options than true or false. Other things are best answered with "your asking the wrong question" etc. But, once you walk though the basic options paradoxes are just another example of the same thing.

PS: Yellow void toe air zen bubble toy 4:72 PM lisa. Not all collections of words have meaning.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#32

Post by [deleted] »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #30
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paradox is not an interesting thing; it's just a sign that your assumptions are wrong. But, it was not even an interesting paradox. 1) "random process" was undefined. 2) There was no limitation given as to choosing nothing or more than one answer. 3) At best the discussion might have been amusing, but that's just trolling IMO. PS: I thought about it for a while before flagging it.

> A paradox is not an interesting thing. > It's just a sign that your assumptions are wrong. That's an interesting position to take - Ray Smullyan might disagree with you. When I was discussing it with him the conclusion I came to is that there is something deep in a good paradox that helps us understand logic, math, thinking and reason. That's not true for unexpected results, which are often incorrectly called parad…

[deleted]

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#33

Post by nkurz »

underover wrote: post #24
nkurz wrote: post #17

I'm not a moderator, but I flagged it because it's not a direction I want to see HN moving. "Ask HN" type posts are tricky --- I'm worried if we start by allowing posts that are intended solely as conversation starters, we may soon end up with a front page full of popular quotes, dumb jokes, and one-liners. Had it been a link to an external page I wouldn't have been moved to act. It may also be that I just didn't get…

"It may also be that I just didn't get it. At a glance, it looked like a semantic game rather than a worthy paradox." Perhaps more than a glance is appropriate before flagging items? "I was probably also influenced by the quality of the discussion." Wouldn't down-voting the particular comment(s) you don't like be more appropriate?

Perhaps more than a glance is appropriate before flagging items?

Perhaps, but I don't think so in this case. The main reason I flagged it was not the 'paradox' but because it's not a direction I want to see HN going. If a rabbi and a priest walk into a bar, I'd flag it regardless of whether the punchline is hilarious. I'd agree that the moderator should take more than a glance.

Wouldn't down-voting the particular comment(s) you don't like be more appropriate?

I can't really assess 'appropriate', but it certainly wouldn't have been as effective. Knocking a 'funny' comment down from 16 to 15 points wouldn't have even been noticed, whereas using the flag to call it to the attention of a moderator for review had the effect I hoped for.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#34

Post by jacquesm »

With the weighing so much to the disadvantage of URL-less posts any comment in this thread about preserving the 'quality of the homepage' is moot. The only page where this would gain significant traction is on the 'ask' page, on the homepage it would be gone pretty quickly.

As a rule I limit my flagging to spam, for the most part the voting system works ok, most of the time.

And with RiderOfGiraffes penchant to pose interesting logical problems I think he should get the benefit of the doubt before hitting the 'kill' button.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#35

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

Retric wrote: post #31
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A paradox is not an interesting thing. > It's just a sign that your assumptions are wrong. That's an interesting position to take - Ray Smullyan might disagree with you. When I was discussing it with him the conclusion I came to is that there is something deep in a good paradox that helps us understand logic, math, thinking and reason. That's not true for unexpected results, which are often incorrectly called parad…

At best you have proof though contradiction: http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~larryc/proofs/proofs.contradict... For a basic paradox like "This sentence is a lie" there are more options than true or false. Other things are best answered with "your asking the wrong question" etc. But, once you walk though the basic options paradoxes are just another example of the same thing. PS: Yellow void toe air zen bubble toy 4:72 PM…

"This sentence has no proof" (and add all the difficult bits about formal systems, what you mean by proof, and the containing of enough complexity to model arithmetic) is a paradox, and it's led to some very interesting mathematics. (I observe that Goedel said that any true paradox could be used as the basis for an incompleteness theorem.) Yes, it's also led to a lot of cranks spouting huge amounts of nonsense, but that just proves that people will insist on misunderstanding things, and then loudly demonstrate their lack of understanding.

Paradoxes in the true mathematical sense are useful in mathematics, and I thought that many here on HN would find that they sufficiently provoke their intellectual curiosity to be regarded on topic.

However, clearly you disagree, so clearly we disagree. I found the submission interesting, the discussion less so, and wish the inappropriate comments had been flagged/killed to allow the interesting and contentful discussion to flow. That's not what happened.

People complain that HN has jumped the shark, and the submissions are of poor quality. Personally I think it's the inappropriate comments that are dragging HN down, the insistance by so many to add largely content-free and insight-free comments. And yes, I admit that I've done it too.

PG says that the greatest threat to HN isn't the poor quality of submission, but the poor quality of comment. Perhaps submissions should die less often, and comment be killed more often.

Perhaps not. I don't have solutions, but I do know that this submission was a paradox, and that some true paradoxes are of interest and use in formal mathematics. Others aren't - it would be interesting to know if this is the former, and that's what I'll be exploring with some of my colleagues over the next few days.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#36

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

jacquesm wrote: post #34

With the weighing so much to the disadvantage of URL-less posts any comment in this thread about preserving the 'quality of the homepage' is moot. The only page where this would gain significant traction is on the 'ask' page, on the homepage it would be gone pretty quickly. As a rule I limit my flagging to spam, for the most part the voting system works ok, most of the time. And with RiderOfGiraffes penchant to pose…

In the interests of disclosure, it wasn't I that submitted it. I was just surprised and sorry to see it go.

Given the poor quality of the comments perhaps I was less surprised than I might've been, but as I've said elsewhere, I just wish the bad comments had been flagged, not the submission.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#37

Post by nkurz »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #35
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At best you have proof though contradiction: http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~larryc/proofs/proofs.contradict... For a basic paradox like "This sentence is a lie" there are more options than true or false. Other things are best answered with "your asking the wrong question" etc. But, once you walk though the basic options paradoxes are just another example of the same thing. PS: Yellow void toe air zen bubble toy 4:72 PM…

"This sentence has no proof" (and add all the difficult bits about formal systems, what you mean by proof, and the containing of enough complexity to model arithmetic) is a paradox, and it's led to some very interesting mathematics. (I observe that Goedel said that any true paradox could be used as the basis for an incompleteness theorem.) Yes, it's also led to a lot of cranks spouting huge amounts of nonsense, but t…

I found the submission interesting, the discussion less so, and wish the inappropriate comments had been flagged/killed to allow the interesting and contentful discussion to flow.

Good reply, and good points. It's probably a better paradox than I thought at a glance.

But while one doesn't want to throw out too many babies with the bathwater, at least with fruit trees, it's often better to prune too much than too little. You might get less fruit this year, but you end up with a stronger tree and better root system.

In this case, I think the better solution would be to make a page about the paradox, and link to that. It's hard to know, but I think a more fully fleshed out blog post about the paradox might have produced better discussion.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#38

Post by Retric »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #35
Retric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At best you have proof though contradiction: http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~larryc/proofs/proofs.contradict... For a basic paradox like "This sentence is a lie" there are more options than true or false. Other things are best answered with "your asking the wrong question" etc. But, once you walk though the basic options paradoxes are just another example of the same thing. PS: Yellow void toe air zen bubble toy 4:72 PM…

"This sentence has no proof" (and add all the difficult bits about formal systems, what you mean by proof, and the containing of enough complexity to model arithmetic) is a paradox, and it's led to some very interesting mathematics. (I observe that Goedel said that any true paradox could be used as the basis for an incompleteness theorem.) Yes, it's also led to a lot of cranks spouting huge amounts of nonsense, but t…

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are proof though contradiction which as I said can be interesting. (Or I should say they are part of the set of proofs though contradiction.) However, the paradox is not interesting it's just paradox = bad assumption.

So, don't read to much into Gödel, you also can't prove 1 + 1 = 2 except by making an equivalent assumption. Yet, that does not mean what you think it means.

PS: I don't think HN has jumped the shark, but I do try and keep it clean. IMO, it was fairly close to the acceptable line but to close to the HN equivalent of a funny cat photo, (hey look a paradox how cute), but a longer post taking about a well defined paradox and it's implications would have been acceptable and had a much cleaner discussion.

Post reply on HN