691–700 of 812 posts
also the system should have a way to know who is upvoting all the time or downvoting all the time, those are noises statistically and should be somehow mitigated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wealthy people actually get less sleep than the poor for obvious reasons: their time is more valuable. They also work more hours and have less “free” time for the same reason.
The study mentioned here indicates otherwise https://www.tuck.com/the-inequality-of-sleep/ "the likelihood of short sleep increased with greater poverty" Poor people are much more likely to work irregular shifts and night shifts, which have a serious impact on sleep.
This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia. If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all…
I find this the crux of the issue at large, there is no such thing as "no problems".
Therefore, what was the point of this criticism in the first place? (in the article, not your comment)
It seems to me, the author didn't like that HN actually allows open discussion and respectful (mostly) sharing of opposing views.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think LessWrong [1] is described as “toxic.” 1: https://www.lesswrong.com
The "rationalist community" are pretty obviously a cult. They live in group houses, use logic to convince their partners to be polyamorous, have a religious obsession with superintelligence, stuff like that. Although I can't find the story I know I read a woman's experiences with sexual abuse and Yudkowsky's BDSM habits there sometime in the last year. Actually I believe she posted it then committed suicide; people o…
I read LW pretty regularly (FWIW, I don't live in a group house, am monogamously married, and expect superintelligent AI to arrive slowly and be less exciting than many LW types hope or fear) and don't remember seeing anything there that matches what you describe -- though of course maybe it was deleted or something.
But there is this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s93F5JmhCxKDxWukD/rememberin... concerning someone who committed suicide and (though this isn't mentioned there) left a suicide note describing her experiences of sexual abuse in the rationalist / Effective Altruist community. Nothing to do with Eliezer Yudkowsky in there, though, so far as I can see.
There is a comment in that thread that could very uncharitably be said to match your description. It's a response to someone saying "she complained about such-and-such failings in the rationalist community; let's change for her" (the failings in question aren't, or at least don't appear to be from the description in the thread, about sexual abuse), and the reply is concerned that spreading the message "if you complain about things and kill yourself then that's an effective way to get the things addressed" is dangerous because it might encourage people to kill themselves. Which might be wrong, but is pretty different from complaining that committing suicide "is an unfair way to start an argument".
Anyway, this is all a bit of a digression. As to whether Less Wrong is a counterexample to the claim that every online community with active moderation gets described as "toxic": no, it certainly isn't, and plenty of people have called it toxic. For what it's worth, I think it's a distinctly less toxic place than it was (say) three or four years ago. (The website was rebuilt from scratch and a new team of moderators installed, and both of those made it much more feasible to deal with the small but vigorous group of neoreactionary loons who had been making things unpleasant there for everyone else.) And for sure it's much less kooky than the real-world Bay Area rationalist community is alleged to be.
1) Moderators always assume the worst of people.
I remember asking one time about car repair online, and at the time, I had a repair that needed to be made to make driving at high speeds safe. But moderators and others seem to assume that when you can't do something 100% right immediately, you are therefore going to do something wrong. I simply wasn't driving at high speeds to make up for the issue - not everyone has access to the money they need all the time. I mean why would I even be posting such a question on a forum otherwise.
2) Downvotes are based upon agreeing with your answer and not especially geared towards how qualitative your answers are.
I've gotten upvotes for basically stupid answers, which have no business being upvoted ad infinitum for essentially being a dumb meme. I've been downvoted (rather than debated) for answers that others outright disagreed with. At this point, it really feels like online forums are a place to beat people's opinions into submission, which is something I strongly disagree with. There's a famous saying that states "If everyone is thinking the same thing, then someone isn't thinking." I hold fast to this comment, and I look forward to hearing why people think and believe different things, especially when they are able to articulate why. No forum I have ever been to has really appreciated this, especially in the face of controversy. This feels too much like a new breed of close mindedness, which I am supposing is not too different from the thought crime, which if I recall correctly was conceived in the book 1984.
It doesn't really seem to do justice to the problem that all moderation has: 1) Moderators always assume the worst of people. I remember asking one time about car repair online, and at the time, I had a repair that needed to be made to make driving at high speeds safe. But moderators and others seem to assume that when you can't do something 100% right immediately, you are therefore going to do something wrong. I sim…
I've always been interested to see if a forum moderator would "down vote proof" a post that falls into that category: Unpopular but well reasoned and not inflammatory.
In the same way that "anti-brigading" approaches watch for floods of upvotes from a single referral source, it seems like clearing + blocking down votes would be beneficial in the other direction (or temporarily suspending access to down voting for users exhibiting the behavior).
Most are paid shill cucks.
Fucking faggots.
For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India, Singapore, ...
If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of the self-promoters promoting self promotion that dominate LinkedIn and other social media places, Hacker News is a refuge.
What is missing from Hacker News is a handful of sensationalist topics that dominate the mass media but lead to discussions that never go anywhere and never terminate.
That's what they are designed to do. Neither the democrats or republicans want the situation with guns or abortion to change dramatically because it would disturb an ecosystem where they can count on a large proportion of the population to vote for them automatically, thus they can get elected while promising less.
What both sides have in common is they look at a place like HN and think that their side is being discriminated against because they are special snowflakes who really have something to say that matters about fake controversies and they don't seem to be satisfied posting to the 99.99% of forums that are choked with that stuff.
The real difference between HN and the social media giants is the business model. I believe Y Combinator runs HN to extend it's reputation, attract startups to join Y Combinator and otherwise participate in it's ecosystem. To do that it has to have quality.
Facebook, Google and other companies based on advertising pretty much have to be merchants of outrage because that is what people click on.
I liked this article, though I think it missed the best part of Hacker News. To me, Hacker News can feel like walking through Dumbledore's office -- magical and mind-bending collections of incredible devices, ideas, and oddities. Just yesterday someone posted a comment with links to UI design libraries that I've been subconsciously wishing for in my dreams (humaans, undraw.co), and I used it in a product demo. As a s…
Honestly it is a bit weird how you seemingly jumped the thread to address my other comment. My point is still the same whether it is about programming or programming culture. This material is mostly produced elsewhere and present in all programming outlets. What makes HN different is to a large extent what they focus on in the article, including the mix of programming and mainstream news. Most other outlets don't all…
Reddit/programming for instance is full of communists that just don't get it that somebody might be in it for the money (in part or in whole.)
LinkedIn is full of self-promoters self-promoting the idea of self-promotion and doesn't have much space for people who really care about tech.