461–470 of 812 posts
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I didn't read anything dripping fear and contempt for tech culture in the article, much less the excerpt you quoted. It seems accurate to me.
Yes but it does have a tone like the authour is treating HN as the ”other”, and trying to view it from outside with some bemusement.
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That seems like a huge straw man. What they say is that people use data improperly on Hacker News, which is also my experience. Very frequently things like papers posted as supporting evidence don't really support the posters position. Sometimes they don't say even remotely what the poster thinks. But that takes time to figure it out, at that point it has already fulfilled its purpose and people don't care anymore. T…
This is exactly what I've seen here. I've had to read through reports and papers people have cited to see whether or not the paper supported what they were arguing. Or sometimes, people would link to incredibly biased sources whom bury the lede of the stories they cite which in turn only tangentially support what they said.
If the fundamental nature of short-duration comment consumption is antithetical to fact checking, that's certainly a problem.
But it's still superior to uncited points, as it is ultimately verifiable.
In a choice between the two, I'll take the ill (claims appearing more supported than they are) for the good (inculcating a culture of transparent citation).
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It's always interesting to see a light-grey thread at the bottom of a page that's full of lucid, not-overly-aggressive political discussion. In one sense it's a shame when thoughtful, evidence-based discussion is discouraged for being off-topic. But I suspect that's ultimately what makes those discussions possible; they're happening between relatively small numbers of discussants, in a space that doesn't draw in peop…
In one sense it's a shame when thoughtful, evidence- based discussion is discouraged for being off-topic. But I suspect that's ultimately what makes those discussions possible; No. Thoughtful, evidence-based discussion should never be discouraged or deemed off-topic - no matter how sensitive the topic. ( People reading this, even 10-15 years on, might find the mores of this age whimsical, at best. ) The only reason o…
I think most people would accept that thoughtful, evidence-based discussion should be discouraged while sitting in the front row at an opera, or in the midst of a professor's lecture.
What I'm describing is similarly an issue of logistics, not content. I'm not making a claim about sensitive topics, and I'm certainly not proposing dishonesty or the suppression of uncomfortable truths. The problem with off-topic content is simply that: it's off topic, and on a forum thread or the top of an HN post it makes on-topic conversation more difficult to conduct. Forked-discussion settings like Tumblr and Twitter are closer to a conference than a lecture, and can sustain popular off-topic discussion with less derailment.
The relevance of politics and sensitive topics is only in my second point, that places like HN which center on non-political topics can create particularly good discussions. I largely agree with you, I'm endorsing the fact that HN doesn't ban politics or sensitive topics; the rules of avoiding flamebait, grandstanding, and excessive derailment help to prevent pointless yelling while preserving good political discussion around the margins.
(As an aside which risks being off-topic: why David Geffen? I've never seen someone use him as their go-to example of sucking up to a billionaire.)
How much do these guys make?
I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts. The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while rakin…
> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if…
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That paragraph is a smug, flowery dismissal of the kind of evidence-based discussion that happens on HN. It's passive aggressively accusing HN commenters of wrongthink and of abusing unreliable tools like "data" and "logic" to counter "humane arguments" (read: emotional arguments). It basically dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective--we've all probably encountered this ty…
> ...dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective... "Data" absolutely can be malleable or selective, it all depends on how the argument is constructed and is easily prone to abuse. The points she makes are rock-solid. That said, I still do enjoy HN immensely and can tolerate the warts and libertarians.
Reproducibility crises or statistical hacking news articles are evidence of success. In a less-introspective system, those self-reevaluations didn't even happen!
Viz, the 300+ years it took for a shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric consensus.
I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts. The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while rakin…
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I don't really see it though. The article seems pretty clear on what kind of discussion they think is unproductive. One can argue whether text is data, but it still has structure and meaning. When they say " ill-advised citation" or "logic, applied narrowly , is used to justify " that is what they are arguing. You own argument seem much more a moral one though. For one it doesn't even say what you said it says. For e…
I saw parent commenter as making an epistemological argument rather than a moral one. There are two fundamentally different sources of truth: ethical consensus and physical data. They are ultimately incompatible, in that only a single option can be your ultimate source of truth. Albeit other(s) can be valued to some degree. The issue they took, and I would take too, with that portion of the New Yorker article is that…
> ... it [the cited paragraph] attacks the idea of physical data as a valid, supreme source of truth.
It attacks the idea of using glib, incomplete, or poorly examined "facts" as the basis for a valid argument.
If you want to say that poorly vetted "facts" are a basis for "supreme truth" and, further, that you can only choose that or else some kind of mushy ethical considerations... that's your prerogative, but you're wrong.
Hacker News is a well-moderated community, but it's illustrative to see where Hacker News fails at moderation. While Hacker News is great at protecting the community from disruptive individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting unpopular individuals against the community turned mob. I support Hacker News moderating itself however it chooses. However, if we are looking at it as a moderation model for large, open,…
Yep. After eight years on the site I finally had a comment removed, and my response to dang to discuss it was completely ignored. Made me feel dumb for even trying.